Mediagazer: Comcast and Time Warner Cable give big to some senators reviewing merger (Palmer Gibbs/Sunlight Foundation Blog)

2:35 PM ET, April 9, 2014

Top News:

Edward Wyatt / New York Times:

Senate Committee Begins Its Review of Comcast Deal — WASHINGTON — Comcast took its case for acquiring Time Warner Cable to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, arguing at a Senate hearing that its proposed $45 billion takeover would benefit consumers by generating greater investment …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Palmer Gibbs / Sunlight Foundation Blog:

Comcast and Time Warner Cable give big to some senators reviewing merger — Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is a vocal critic of the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. Franken is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which holds a hearing about the merger on Wednesday.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller, @emilysteel, @sunfoundation, CNNMoney.com, Engadget and The Verge

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Comcast: Without Time Warner Cable, we can't compete against Google, Netflix — Comcast says it has “one arm tied behind our back” on eve of Senate hearing. — Comcast today filed a 175-page “public interest statement” with the Federal Communications Commission to explain …

Free Press Blog:
More Than 50 Public Interest Groups Oppose the Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger

Discussion: The Switch, @katyonthehill, The Huffington Post and The Switch

Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:

Why CNN Is Launching A News Show Built For Twitter — As every media company from Yahoo to Microsoft to Crackle looks to up the amount of original Web video it produces, here comes CNN. — The television news network has been in the middle of major overhaul undertaken …

Discussion: Lost Remote, @jcstearns, @jennifersaba and @mdornic

Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:

Q&A site Quora raises $80M to build the next Wikipedia — Quora believes it has built the best question and answer service on the Internet. Now, it's looking to Wikipedia for inspiration. — With a fresh $80 million in the bank, Quora's head of business operations, Marc Bodnick …

Discussion: Gigaom, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Re/code, TechCrunch, Forbes, Reuters, @mathewi and @yoavlurie

Jim Bach / American Journalism Review:

A New Code: SPJ Struggles to Define Rules of Online Journalism — The Society of Professional Journalists, after leaving its code of ethics untouched for nearly 18 years, has released a revised draft that includes, for the first time, updated guidance on how journalists should behave in the rapidly changing field of digital news.

Discussion: @rogerswrites

Joel Achenbach / Achenblog:

Journalism is aggregation — While reporting a story last week I had a sudden revelation: I'm an aggregator. I'm one of them. I'm the person that I've been kvetching about for years now. “They think information wants to be stolen.” You know the rant.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Hibu lays off nearly 200 journalists — Chalk up another flop to another plan to turn a profit with digital hyper-local media. — Hyper-local was the all the rage a few years ago, but there are few success stories in 2014. — Hibu, which was the former Yellow Pages, had an aggressive plan …

Discussion: The Times Herald, TheGazette and KCRG-TV

Carrie Battan / The New Republic:

Podcasts: The Last Refuge of the C-List Celebrity (and Bret Easton Ellis) — oday we're going to talk about goddamn camera phones, and everybody wanting to take a picture of every goddamn thing," the rapper-turned “Law and Order: SVU” star Ice T said recently. “ This is not gangster. This is not fly.

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

Oxygen Shifts Focus to Millennial Viewers — In another sign of the growing influence of the millennial generation on Madison Avenue, the Oxygen cable channel will be revamped to appeal to a modern young woman, offering several new series with a multicultural focus.

Discussion: @sulinnichols

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Marty Baron is partly right about the Washington Post and Ezra Klein — but mostly wrong — It's hard enough being the editor of a newspaper like the Washington Post at the best of times — and these are clearly not the best of times — but it has to be even harder to try and defend your decision …

Discussion: Felix Salmon and @dankennedy_nu, Thanks:@mathewi

John Glenday / The Drum:

Time borrows $1.4bn to buy British sister company — US publishing giant Time has announced its intention to raise $1.4bn of debt in order to purchase the UK operations of the media brand which are currently owned by Time Warner. — Time the publishing arm of Time Warner …

Discussion: International Business Times, Telegraph and Bloomberg

Randall Chase / Associated Press:

Guild can intervene in fight for Philly newspapers — WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A Delaware judge says the union representing hundreds of workers for Philadelphia's two largest newspapers can participate in the dissolution of their ownership group. — The judge this week granted a request …

Helienne Lindvall / Guardian:

Muso a friendly way to fight piracy — Finding your music on infringing sites feels like being burgled, but a producer and songwriter has come up with a solution — Imagine if you downloaded a file from an illegal filesharing site or cyberlocker and, when you tried to open it …

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Publications aim to make debunking as popular as fake images — Adrienne LaFrance and Matt Novak live in different cities and write for different sites in the Gawker Media network. LaFrance is a freelancer who contributes to several other publications. Novak works full-time on his blog, Paleofuture, which is part of Gizmodo.

Discussion: @thatbebulls**t, @poynter, @history1800s and @caitlindewey

Press Gazette:

UK minister responsible for the future of press regulation, Maria Miller, resigns over expenses row — Culture secretary Maria Miller quits over expenses row — The government minister responsible for the future of press regulation, Maria Miller, has resigned as Culture Secretary …

Discussion: The Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Star, Mirror.co.uk, Telegraph, The Independent, BBC, Bloomberg, Guardian and Telegraph

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Reddit Execs Ellen Pao and Jena Donlin Get Serious About the Site's Business (Q&A) — Reddit is one of the biggest sites on the Web. Now it just needs to start making it rain. — Since 2005, the online community message board and link-sharing site has risen from an esoteric bulletin board service …

Discussion: @pkafka, @laurahazardowen, @niemanlab and The Switch

Tom Perry / Reuters:

Egypt arrests journalist said to work for Al Jazeera - agency — Egyptian security forces have arrested a man who worked for Qatar's Al Jazeera television network and accused him of inciting and taking part in violence, the state news agency MENA said on Wednesday.

Discussion: Amnesty International, allAfrica.com, Minneapolis Star Tribune and @hany2m

Laurie Burkitt / Wall Street Journal:

IMAX to Sell 20% Stake in Its Chinese Business — China Media Capital, FountainVest to Help Movie Firm to Expand — BEIJING— IMAX Corp. plans to sell a 20% stake in its Chinese business to two China-focused investor groups in an $80 million deal that the big-movie-screen operator hopes …

Discussion: Variety, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and Forbes