Mediagazer: Automattic acquires visual editor Scroll Kit, company to shut down in 3 months (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

3:07 AM ET, April 25, 2014

Top News:

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Comcast Says Netflix Slowed Down Its Own Streams — A couple days after Netflix and Comcast fought in public, the two companies, who are supposed to be partners, are at it again. — Three days after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings publicly opposed Comcast's planned acquisition of/merger with Time Warner Cable …

Discussion: @dangillmor

Ken Florance / Netflix US & Canada Blog:

Netflix says it opposes Comcast/TWC merger because Comcast charges both Netflix and its customers to connect to each other — The Case Against ISP Tolls — As the person at Netflix responsible for content delivery, I spend a lot of time thinking about Netflix's Open Connect CDN and its interconnection with ISPs.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, @mattjay, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, Reuters, Mashable, @ddayen, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Verge, @jyarow, @botnet_hunter, @mathewi, Engadget, @xpangler, @b_fung and ZDNet

Jennifer Khoury / Comcast Voices Blog:

Comcast: Neflix degraded its Comcast streams, seeks to shift its costs onto all Internet users — COMCAST RESPONSE TO NETFLIX — Netflix's argument is a House of Cards. But there is no need for us to engage in a point-counterpoint with Netflix to demonstrate the continued distortions and inaccuracies on which it relies.

Discussion: @om and @pkafka

Tom Wheeler / Official FCC Blog:

FCC chairman to have net neutrality “enforceable rules” by the end of the year, mandate that ISPs “not act in a commercially unreasonable manner” — Setting the Record Straight on the FCC's Open Internet Rules — There has been a great deal of misinformation …

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:
The FCC doesn't want to destroy net neutrality, but it's going to anyway

Discussion: Variety, @mcandrew, Ars Technica, Free Press Blog, TechPresident, @acedtect, Business Insider, VentureBeat, Mashable and Kirk LaPointe's …

Tim Wu / The New Yorker Blog:
Barack Obama's Flip-Flop and the End of Net Neutrality

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Aftermath of Ukraine Photo Story Shows Need for More Caution — The Times led its print edition Monday with an article based in part on photographs that the State Department said were evidence of Russian military presence in popular uprisings in Ukraine. The headline read: “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia.”

Discussion: Consortiumnews.com, Mediaite, @jayrosen_nyu, @billmon1 and Pressing Issues

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Storyful's Verification Tech Could Stop Fake News From Spreading On Facebook — Twitter is the king of real time news, but people's eagerness to retweet juicy stories sometimes outweighs their willingness to verify the facts first, leading them to parrot misinformation.

Andy Mitchell / Facebook:
Facebook partners with Storyful to launch FB Newswire, a news feed for journalists on Facebook and Twitter

Glyn Moody / Techdirt:

Russia Orders Bloggers To ‘Register’; Outlaws Anonymous Blogging, Continues Clampdown On Social Media — As we've reported, Russia has been steadily trying to bring the Internet under control with ever-more stringent measures. After tackling general Web sites through powers that allow …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @craigmod, Engadget and The Verge

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

NYT Up To Nearly 800K Paid Digital Subscribers, Plans New Food And Opinion Apps — The New York Times is crowing about a quarterly rise in revenue today, and that comes thanks to increases in both print and digital ad revenue. Digital subscriptions saw some of its strongest growth in recent memory …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Mediaite, TheMediaBriefing, Capital New York, Digiday and AdExchanger

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:
New York Times Reports First Ad Revenue Increase In Three Years

Discussion: AdExchanger, @printinthemix and @jmcduling

The New York Times Company:
NYT reports 2.6% increase in revenue, digital advertising revenue up 2.2% to $37.8M

Discussion: New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Capital New York, @pkafka, @edmundlee, Bloomberg, @orskov and The Huffington Post

Paul Farrell / Guardian:

Journalists' sources are no longer safe in Australia — Can government agencies instantaneously track down journalists' sources? It's looking more and more likely, and it's a dangerous state of affairs — The idea of living in a world where government agencies could almost instantaneously track …

Discussion: @colvinius, ZDNet, @ms_em_, @farrellpf and Guardian

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Automattic acquires visual editor Scroll Kit, company to shut down in 3 months — Automattic Buys Scroll Kit, A Code-Free Website Builder That Once Got Legal Heat From The NYT — WordPress maker Automattic's acquisition spree to build out its platform continues apace.

Discussion: @gluejar, VentureBeat, @kraykray, Digiday and @codybrown

Vice:

Simon Ostrovsky Has Been Released — VICE News is delighted to confirm that our colleague and friend Simon Ostrovsky has been safely released and is in good health. We would like to thank everyone for their support during this difficult time. Out of respect for Simon and his family's privacy …

Discussion: @simonostrovsky, New York Times, Variety, New York Magazine, Gawker, The Huffington Post, @bishopk, Guardian, Politico, Mashable, Poynter, Capital New York, The Week, Talking Points Memo, ABC News, Globe and Mail, Committee to Protect … and TIME

Simon Rogers / Mother Jones:

Hey Wonk Reporters, Liberate Your Data! — When it comes to data journalism, everyone's a critic. — The launch of three major data journalism operations in only a few weeks—the revamped 538, Vox, and the New York Times' The Upshot—have produced a slew of opinion pieces.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @newswhip, @jayrosen_nyu, @albertocairo and @smfrogers

Alexander Howard / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:
Publishers Can Afford Data Journalism, Says ProPublica's Scott Klein

Discussion: @beckybowers, @towcenter and @macloo

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Hulu adds Chromecast-like mobile remote control features to Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 — Hulu is the latest company to go all-out on Chromecast-like multiscreen features: Hulu Plus subscribers can now access the video service through their Android and iOS devices on Microsoft's Xbox One as well as Sony's PS3 and PS4.

Discussion: Hulu Blog, The Next Web, CNET, TechCrunch and 9to5Mac

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Netflix to Launch on Three U.S. Cable Operators via TiVo — Netflix has grabbed its first foothold with cable operators in the United States, with plans to launch on three smaller companies next week through an app on TiVo DVRs. — The deals are with RCN Communications, Atlantic Broadband and Grande Communications.

Discussion: multichannel.com, Associated Press, Gigaom and Wall Street Journal

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Why Do So Many People Describe Aereo ‘Complying’ With Copyright Law As The Company ‘Circumventing’ Copyright Law? — We mentioned this briefly in our writeup of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Aereo case, but I wanted to focus in on one particularly annoying issue that has come …

Discussion: @stevenlevy and Radio & Television …

Steve Dollar / Wall Street Journal:

Tribeca Film Festival Is Showing Online-Only Productions for First Time — Works Range From Documentaries to Comedies — Not every work spotlighted at the Tribeca Film Festival plays in a theater. — For the first time this year, the festival features online-only productions …