Mediagazer: BitTorrent works on changing image, plans new features: encrypted chat, mobile app, paywalls (Javier Espinoza/Wall Street Journal)

7:10 AM ET, April 16, 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: @mattzeitlin, Associated Press, @anoushasakoui, The Week, Melville House Books, Guardian, Boing Boing, The Huffington Post and LA Observed

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:
Do Pulitzers Help Newspapers Keep Readers?

Discussion: Poynter, DailyNewsGems, The Daily Caller, AJR.org, Publishers Weekly, @zeynep, The New York Observer, @markcoddington, @pkafka, @jbenton, Kirk LaPointe's … and The Pulitzer Prizes

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

Fresh Off Pulitzer Win, The Globe Tentatively Toasts Its Future — When The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer on Monday for its reporting on the bombing at the city's marathon last year, the newspaper's editor, Brian McGrory, asked for a minute of silence before praising the journalists involved in the coverage, each one by name.

Discussion: @jasonschwartz

Al Tompkins / Poynter:

ABC News says Center for Public Integrity should share Pulitzer for investigative reporting — ABC News President Ben Sherwood sent a four-page letter to WIlliam Buzenberg, executive director of The Center for Public Integrity, asking CPI to share credit for the Pulitzer Prize …

Discussion: @mattdpearce, @atompkins, @markkatches, @jtierney6 and New York Times

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Andy Coulson tells phone-hacking trial he heard David Blunkett voicemails — Ex-NoW editor tells jury Neville Thurlbeck played him recordings of former home secretary declaring love for a married woman — Andy Coulson has revealed he heard voicemails of the former home secretary David Blunkett declaring his love for a married woman.

Discussion: Reuters, BBC and ITV

Johana Bhuiyan / Capital New York:

Bought by Vox as part of Curbed network, Eater outlines expansion plans, names editor in chief — Food site Eater ‘Vox-ifies’ with new top chef, slow-cooker plans — Eater, the national food-blog network founded by Lockhart Steele, has named Amanda Kludt the site's first ever editor in chief, Capital has learned.

Discussion: @jmbooyah and @nbj914

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: Wall Street Journal, Mashable, VentureBeat and Gigaom

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Game of Thrones Sets New Torrent Swarm Record — Yesterday the second episode of Game of Thrones' fourth season made its way onto the Internet. As expected, this generated quite a bit of activity on various torrent sites. — From all over the world people virtually gathered around …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, TIME, BGR, Forbes, DSLreports, Daily Dot, Inside TV, Softpedia News and The Wrap

Tilmann Knoll / INMA:

German media giant Axel Springer visits Silicon Valley to study culture at digital companies — Axel Springer's takeaways from Silicon Valley? Transformation must center on technology, interdisciplinary cooperation — What executives from German media company Axel Springer learned …

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, Softpedia News, MediaNama, @lucas_shaw, AdAge, Globe and Mail, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNET, Re/code, Tech Trader Daily and ZDNet

Nate Raymond / Reuters:

Apple cannot escape U.S. states' e-book antitrust cases: judge — (Reuters) - Apple Inc on Tuesday lost an attempt to dismiss lawsuits by state attorneys general accusing it of conspiring with five major publishers to fix e-book prices. — U.S. District Judge Denise Cote's ruling paves …

Discussion: Bloomberg, Gigaom and AppleInsider

Ryan Nakashima / Associated Press:

Freedom Communications' L.A. Register launches Wednesday, led by Aaron Kushner with print focus — New LA Newspaper Embraces Print in Digital World — Aaron Kushner believes he can launch and grow a print newspaper in a world gone digital. — The former greeting card executive is trying …

Discussion: The Breakdown

Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:

The originator of “Retweets are not endorsements” is NYT editor Patrick LaForge, in '07 or '08 — Meet The Man Behind Twitter's Most Infamous Phrase — “It makes me cringe now,” the creator says. — The internet is an unforgiving historian with endless primary sources …

Discussion: @cwarzel, @alexmcdaniel, @jimmycdii and @sewellchan, Thanks:@steverubel