Mediagazer: Underwhelming Start to iTunes Radio Lights Fire Under Apple (Billboard)

9:15 PM ET, April 9, 2014

Top News:

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Analyzing Comcast's argument for taking over Time Warner Cable — Comcast has very bad reasons for wanting to buy Time Warner Cable — Defending the massive takeover to the FCC requires some leaps of logic — Comcast wants to own the internet — or, at least, the cables that carry it to most Americans' homes.

Discussion: Softpedia News, Techdirt and Daily Dot

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:
Comcast and Time Warner Cable execs grilled by lawmakers

Discussion: The Wrap, Capital New York, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Globe and Mail and @erk248

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:
CBS, Viacom, Disney and other media that count on Comcast for income stay silent on merger

Discussion: @ceciliakang, @buzzfeedben, @brianstelter and @jackshafer

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

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

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Comcast: Without Time Warner Cable, we can't compete against Google, Netflix

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

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

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

NYT should have acknowledged WSJ's persistent legal fight to open up Medicare data — Times Should Have Nodded to Wall Street Journal in Medicare Story — The New York Times led its print edition today with an extensive treatment of an important story: that a small fraction of doctors …

Discussion: USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, Mediaite, Talking Biz News, @jackshafer, @erikwemple, @ashleyshuston, The Week, The Verge and Associated Press

Brad Stone / Businessweek:

Automattic, Steward of Wordpress, Snaps up Longreads — In the desert of short news bites and unsatisfying blog posts, the website and weekly email Longreads is a refreshing anomaly. Since 2009, the small Oakland-based company has been linking to stories of over 1,500 words …

Discussion: WordPress.com News, Longreads.com, VentureBeat, Gigaom, TechCrunch, @dankennedy_nu, Re/code, @brewpr and The Verge

Billboard:

Underwhelming Start to iTunes Radio Lights Fire Under Apple … Questions? Comments? Let us know: @billboardbiz

Discussion: App Advice, Business Insider, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Electronista and TechnoBuffalo

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: Columbia Journalism Review, Mediaite, @jcstearns, Lost Remote, @jennifersaba and @mdornic

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: Kirk LaPointe's … and @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, Erik Wemple and @jfleck

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

How publishers-turned-platforms pay their amateur contributors — As digital publishers look for new ways to make money, many of them are chasing the the publisher-as-platform model. From financial sites like Forbes and The Street to entertainment sites like BuzzFeed and Entertainment Weekly …

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, Reuters, Forbes, @yoavlurie and @mathewi

Associated Press:

Afghan probe begins in attack on AP journalists — KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan central government authorities on Wednesday began questioning the police commander who killed an Associated Press photographer and wounded an AP reporter, a day after he was transferred by helicopter to the capital …

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.

Edirin Oputu / Columbia Journalism Review:

WNYC is beefing up its data journalism — New York's public radio station is expanding its data reporting — WNYC's data team has tracked a lot over the years: cicadas, flood zones, and even wireless internet access on the subway. Now the station's newest project, a community data experiment called …

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

Mike Farrell / Multichannel News:

Cablevision Names Kristin Dolan COO — Sweeney Gets President Nod — Cablevision Systems finally found a replacement for former chief operating officer Tom Rutledge, and she was part of the family all along. — Cablevision said it has named former president of Optimum Services Kristin Dolan as COO, effective immediately.

Discussion: Media & Entertainment

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