Mediagazer: Slate debuts its membership model, Slate Plus (Joshua Benton/Nieman Journalism Lab)

10:40 AM ET, April 21, 2014

Top News:

Aereo Case Will Shape TV's Future — Throughout America's business history, the victories and spoils went to the visionaries who made all manner of things — actual things like cars, pharmaceuticals and entertainment. — But more and more, many of the splashy business victories …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Businessweek, Plagiarism Today, Deadline.com, TVSpy, Washington Post, @nycjim, The Week, @peterlattman, @brianstelter, @carr2n, @marklittlenews, @jonathanwald, Variety and SCOTUSblog

Lyle Denniston / SCOTUSblog:

Case preview: Supreme Court to hear oral arguments from Aereo and broadcasters on Tuesday — Argument preview: Free TV, at a bargain price? — At 11 a.m. next Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hold one hour of oral argument on copyright issues surrounding a new technology for Internet streaming …

Discussion: Gigaom, Business Insider, @zseward, @dangillmor and Re/code

Ted Johnson / Variety:

Concept for Live TV On-the-Go Was Around Long Before Aereo — Aereo markets itself with the simple motto, “Watch Live TV Online.” — The technology is new; the concept, not so much. — The mantra for the digital age has been to give consumers what they want, anywhere and anytime they want it.

Discussion: Latest News & Headlines, TheHill and Re/code

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

NBC had psychological consultant talk to David Gregory's wife and friends about ratings slide — As ‘Meet the Press’ struggles in the ratings, plenty of questions for host David Gregory — If “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory were a guest on his own show, he knows the kinds of questions he'd be asked.

Discussion: Mediaite, Poynter, The New York Observer, @jamesddetroit, @rosiegray, @jayrosen_nyu, Weekly Standard, @joshuafoust, @blakehounshell, Taegan Goddard's …, @ktumulty, @nycjim, @expatina, @howardkurtz and The Huffington Post

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Slate debuts its membership model, Slate Plus — Slate would like to make one thing perfectly clear: It's not a paywall! (Language around that issue's been a sore subject in the past.) Slate editor David Plotz: … For $50 a year, Slate superfans will get some additional content …

Discussion: Slate, Poynter and @jeffjohnroberts

Hussain Al-Qatari / Associated Press:

Kuwait court shuts 2 newspapers over coup articles — KUWAIT CITY (AP) — A Kuwaiti court has temporarily suspended the publication of two independent newspapers over articles about a secret probe into allegations of a coup plot to overthrow the Gulf monarchy's government, the official state news agency reported Sunday.

Discussion: Reuters and BBC

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

SAY Media-Owned Blogging Platform Typepad Enters Day 5 Of On-And-Off DDoS Attacks — You can now add Typepad, the blogging service owned by SAY Media, to the growing list of technology companies that have undergone DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which crash websites and other online services for what are now days a time.

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Newspaper industry narrowed revenue loss in 2013 as paywall plans increased — The newspaper industry narrowed its total revenue loss in 2013 to 2.6 percent, the best performance since the mid-2000s, according to figures released today by the Newspaper Association of America.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, WWD Media Headlines, @jacquiemcnish, Reflections of a Newsosaur, Mashable, Associated Press, The Huffington Post and Media & Entertainment

Alexis Sobel Fitts / Columbia Journalism Review:

Early reception of Showtime documentary demonstrates difficulty of covering climate change — Walking the public opinion tightrope — Early reception of a celebrity-packed Showtime documentary demonstrates the difficulty of engaging audiences on climate change

Discussion: bookforum.com

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Firm That Helps Authors Buy Their Way Onto Bestseller Lists Goes Into Stealth Mode — For years, it was an open secret in the book publishing industry that any author willing to spend enough money could nab a spot on the major bestseller lists by engaging the services of a company called Result Source Inc …

David Barboza / New York Times:

Lucrative Stardom in China, Using a Webcam and a Voice — ZIGONG, China — Dolled up with makeup and a blond wig, the pretty young Chinese woman sat at home in her bedroom on a quiet Sunday evening and began singing karaoke. — A large microphone and three webcams clipped to a desktop monitor streamed …

Reuters:

Ukrainian journalists said held by separatists — (Reuters) - Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have detained a Ukrainian journalist, accusing her of “war crimes” during the “Euromaidan” protests that toppled the Moscow-backed president, her lawyer said on Monday.

Discussion: TIME and kyivpost.com