Mediagazer: Miami Herald editor blasts unprecedented ‘culture of censorship’ at Guantanamo Bay (Jim Romenesko)

10:55 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: Techdirt, Daily Dot and Softpedia News

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, Forbes, The Daily Caller, The Huffington Post, @emilysteel, @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, @jessepesta, @jackshafer, @erikwemple, Mediaite, @ashleyshuston, The Week, The Verge and Talking Biz News

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, Re/code, @dankennedy_nu, @brewpr and The Verge

Billboard:

Underwhelming Start to iTunes Radio Lights Fire Under Apple — The failure of iTunes Radio to halt the decline of music downloads has prompted Apple Inc. to consider the most dramatic overhaul of its iTunes music store in more than a decade, according to executives familiar …

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

Rosie Swash / Guardian:

Bobbi Brown to become Yahoo beauty editor-in-chief, raising conflict of interest questions — Makeup mogul Bobbi Brown to take over Yahoo's beauty section — Founder of Bobbi Brown cosmetics will keep her role at makeup company while fulfilling new role as section editor-in-chief

Discussion: Fashionista, Bloomberg, @jowens510, Erik Wemple, @howardkurtz, thedrum.com and @moorehn

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 and Kirk LaPointe's …

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

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 …

Jack Gillum / Associated Press:

Obama administration will probe whether ZunZuneo, or “Cuban Twitter,” sent political messages — WAS ‘CUBAN TWITTER’ PROGRAM POLITICAL OR NOT? … WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is looking into whether a “Cuban Twitter” program secretly backed …

Jim Romenesko:

Miami Herald editor blasts unprecedented ‘culture of censorship’ at Guantanamo Bay — Last month, four Miami Herald journalists who visited the Guantanamo Bay detention center were told they couldn't publish the names of staff members and had to photograph troops from the neck down.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

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 …

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 …

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

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, Reuters, TechCrunch, Forbes, @yoavlurie and @mathewi

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.