Mediagazer: Yahoo Beats Street For Q1 On Sales Of $1.09B, EPS Of $0.38 But Flat Display Sales Of $438M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

6:20 PM ET, April 15, 2014

Top News:

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Former Pulitzer juror's opinion: the prizes stay relevant by providing benchmarks, inspiration — What's the Point of the Pulitzers? — Do the Pulitzer Prizes still matter? Do they stand for anything except journalistic self-congratulation? The question comes up every year around this time.

Discussion: @anoushasakoui, @mattzeitlin, Associated Press, The Week, Melville House Books, The Huffington Post, NPR, Realscreen and Boing Boing

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Do Pulitzers Help Newspapers Keep Readers? — The 2014 Pulitzer Prizes were announced Monday afternoon. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners of the annual journalism awards. We're fans of high-quality journalism at FiveThirtyEight, and we're hoping to see the organizations …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
Pulitzer prize for The Guardian - silence from the UK's right-wing press

Discussion: Pressthink, The New Yorker Blog, The Awl, Agence France-Presse, Los Angeles Times, @paullewis, Associated Press, @stuartmillar159, @giner, @schmidtphi, Times of India, The Times of Israel and Washington Post

Erin Griffith / Fortune:

Exclusive: Automattic seeking to raise more than $100 million — The round will value the company behind WordPress.com at north of $1 billion. — FORTUNE — Automattic, the company that runs blogging platforms WordPress.com and WordPress VIP, is out raising between $100 million and $150 million …

Discussion: Gigaom

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Beats Street For Q1 On Sales Of $1.09B, EPS Of $0.38 But Flat Display Sales Of $438M — Yahoo has just reported its Q1 earnings, with ex-TAC revenues of $1.087 billion and earnings per share of $0.38, and net income of $314 million. — That just about beat analysts' expectations on revenue …

Discussion: Forbes, Guardian, Business Wire, Forbes, Globe and Mail, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Tech Trader Daily, @lucas_shaw, ZDNet, CNET and Re/code

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

NBCUniversal To Launch Video Series Via Hulu, Web and VOD — With pitches slated in next few weeks from digital players like YouTube and AOL, NBCU makes a play to keep digital ad dollars from migrating to rivals — NBCUniversal is best known for the hundreds of TV shows it airs on its broadcast and cable outlets.

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, Home Media Magazine, The Wrap and @bristei

Tony Haile / American Journalism Review:

Give Journalists the Right Metrics, Not Pay-for-Performance — That there is even a debate about whether newsrooms should have access to metrics is in some ways surprising. Of all the professions, journalists are some of the most inquisitive, tenacious and focused upon the impact of their work.

Discussion: Gigaom, @treybarrineau, @jonathanshainin, @annaleighclark, @burtherman, @carr2n, @jeffjarvis and AJR.org

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

INNovation fund backs eight projects from news nonprofits with an eye towards sustainability — A public radio app that aggregates user-generated content, a food education night with a tasting menu, and a WordPress tool that helps track the influence of stories.

Discussion: Investigative News Network and @virtualex

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Netflix Asks Appellate Court to Reconsider ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Ruling — The streaming company warns of the consequences of “creating a new species of copyright,” saying its business will be threatened if the ruling is left untouched. — “The Innocence of Muslims”

Discussion: Techdirt, MediaPost, Center for Democracy … and TheHill

Wall Street Journal:

Broadcasters weigh contingency plans in the event of losing Supreme Court battle with Aereo — Broadcasters Seek an Aereo ‘Plan B’ — The nation's largest television broadcasters are considering contingency plans in case they lose a high-stakes Supreme Court battle against online video startup Aereo Inc.

Discussion: TVNewser, TVSpy, @amolsharmawsj and Engadget

Journalism.co.uk:

English-language news network The Local plans to expand into eighth country in Europe — How The Local reaches 4 million people across Europe - Daily Post ‘handing over control to readers’ via Facebook - Q&A: Career advice for journalists #askajourno

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

Why some publishers are killing their comment sections — The promise of the Internet, we are often told, is the opportunity to have a two-way dialogue. Anyone visiting a publisher's comment section, however, might wonder whether that's a promise or a threat. — Internet comments have long been a conundrum.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, @samkirkla and @digiday

Alex Kantrowitz / AdAge:

New Look AOL Homepage Puts Video Front and Center — Ahead of NewFronts, AOL Puts New Video Player Front and Center — How Advertising Performs in a Social Media World … AOL's recently declared plans to “double down” on video appear to be taking shape.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Digital Media Wire, @maymann and FishbowlNY