Mediagazer: Philadelphia newspaper guild won't bid for company (Maryclaire Dale/Associated Press)

8:50 AM ET, April 25, 2014

Top News:

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

More than a social network: Facebook aims to be the source for breaking news — Facebook has always been filled with “news,” just not the kind you'd find in a daily newspaper. — Recently, however, Facebook had made several moves to shift the content of your News Feed towards hard news …

Discussion: Capital New York, @mikeisaac, @startupljackson and @niallharbison

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

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

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix to Launch on Three U.S. Cable Operators via TiVo

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

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

Jennifer Khoury / Comcast Voices Blog:
Comcast: Neflix degraded its Comcast streams, seeks to shift its costs onto all Internet users

Discussion: Softpedia News, Washington Post, @michaelpryor, @samgustin, @davezatz, @om, @jyarow, @pkafka and Daily Dot

Simon Ostrovsky / VICE News:

‘I Had It Pretty Easy, Because I Was Let Go’: Simon Ostrovsky On His Detention in Sloviansk — On Thursday, armed gunmen who held me prisoner for four nights and three days released me into the streets of Sloviansk, in eastern Ukraine. My release was as unexplained as my capture.

Discussion: @joshuafoust

Vice:
Simon Ostrovsky Has Been Released

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

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Former Tumblr President John Maloney is Now Circa's New President — What do you do after you help a young CEO build a giant digital property? — Take a couple years off, then try doing it again. — That's what John Maloney is doing. The Web veteran, who spent four years running …

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

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

Pandora's success hinges on eating terrestrial radio's lunch, company says — Pandora is now much more attractive to advertisers who typically buy ads on terrestrial (aka traditional) radio, the company said during an earnings call today. — While terrestrial radio might be boring and filled …

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:
Pandora reports Q1 loss, guidance hits sour note again

Discussion: USA Today, Pandora, Wall Street Journal and Hollywood Reporter

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, @billmon1, Mediaite and @jayrosen_nyu

Ryan Singel / Medium:

How The FCC Plans to Save the Internet by Destroying It: An Explainer — The FCC wants to make good on President Obama's pledge to make net neutrality into law. It's just having a very hard time actually doing it. — Net Neutrality is the simple concept that the company that provides …

Discussion: Variety, New York Times, @gigastacey, @brighteyesdavid, PoliticusUSA, @scottros, @saketkulkarni, @erikrose, Free Press Blog, Free Press, Benzinga, The Huffington Post, The Verge, The Wrap, ZDNet, Mashable and kottke.org

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”

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

Nicole Levy / Capital New York:

Cosmopolitan.com hires Jill Filipovic, burnishes feminist cred — Jill Filipovic (left), on the beat in Cameroon. (Via jillfilipovic.com) — Betting that articles about restrictions on women's reproductive rights are just as shareable as slideshows of cleavage at its best …

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: Scroll Kit, @kraykray, Digiday, @codybrown, @automattic, @gluejar and VentureBeat

Maryclaire Dale / Associated Press:

Philadelphia newspaper guild won't bid for company — WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Workers at Philadelphia's two largest newspapers won't be able to mount a bid for their troubled company, after a wealthy potential backer balked at the projected $77 million opening price.

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Spotify says it's ‘a matter of time’ before it overtakes Apple's iTunes in Europe — Streaming music service says it has added 1m active users in the UK alone in the last four months — Streaming music service Spotify has added more than 1m active users in the UK in the last four months …

Reuters:

Sina penalized for porn as China censorship bodies jockey for power — (Reuters) - A move by China's authorities to strip Sina Corp of some online publication licenses as part of a pornography crackdown should be seen as a warning shot at the country's Internet firms to toe the Party line on freedom of expression, experts said.

Discussion: Xinhua News Agency, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, BBC, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Associated Press and CNNMoney.com

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Q&A: David Leonhardt says The Upshot won't replace Nate Silver at The New York Times — Yesterday, The New York Times launched The Upshot, a new politics and policy vertical that was conceived when Nate Silver left the paper for ESPN. The project is led by David Leonhardt …

Discussion: 10,000 Words, @jayrosen_nyu, Globe and Mail, @mathewi and Daily Dot

Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders and Torservers.net, partners against online surveillance and censorship — Reporters Without Borders and Torservers.net have joined forces to create and maintain 250 additional relays for the Tor network. — “In doing this, our two organizations are thumbing …