Mediagazer: MLB is urging iTunes to pull team-related podcasts (UPDATE) (Joe Lucia/Awful Announcing)

5:35 PM ET, May 7, 2014

Top News:

Neil MacFarquhar / New York Times:

Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web With ‘Bloggers Law’ — MOSCOW — Russia has taken another major step toward restricting its once freewheeling Internet, as President Vladimir V. Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers …

Discussion: VentureBeat, ANIMAL, The Verge, Gawker, @ihnatko, @jameeljaffer, @hughhewitt, @danahoule, Mashable, The Huffington Post, @a_grossman, @nycjim, @propublica, @nytimesworld, @jesselynradack, WABE 90.1 FM and Media Law Prof Blog

Olga Razumovskaya / Wall Street Journal:
Putin Signs Law to Restrict ‘Foul Language’ in Books, on Stage and in Film

Discussion: CNN, Slate, Telegraph, The Wrap and Mediaite

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

Jet Magazine to Shift to Digital Publishing Next Month — Jet, the pioneering African-American weekly magazine that rose to prominence covering the civil rights movement, is expected to announce Wednesday morning that it will no longer publish a regular print edition, the latest in a growing list …

Discussion: The Week, USA Today, The Root, @mrspradley, Chicago Business, Chicago Tribune, MadameNoire, stlamerican.com, O'Dwyer's Blog, Wall Street Journal, MediaWire Daily and Mashable

J.K. Trotter / Gawker:

Fox News Just Unsettled Its $8 Million Hush-Money Settlement — Remember Brian Lewis, the former vice president of media relations for Fox News and even more former confidante of Fox News president Roger Ailes? This past November, Fox paid approximately $8 million in hush money to settle …

Discussion: @gawker, @davidfolkenflik, @gabrielsherman and Inside Cable News

Peter Suciu / Fortune:

Can Netflix kill cable TV if it's part of it? — The streaming TV company has always been portrayed as a television-killer. In the wake of several deals to put its service on cable boxes, the reality is more complicated. — FORTUNE — Streaming television services such as Netflix (NFLX) …

Jeff Baumgartner / Multichannel News:
Suddenlink To Offer Netflix On TiVo Devices

Discussion: multichannel.com, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Home Media Magazine and Variety

Chris Cillizza / Washington Post:

Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That's far fewer than even a decade ago. — A majority of American journalists identify themselves as political independents although among those who choose a side Democrats outnumber Republicans four to one, according to a new study …

Discussion: Politico, The Awl, @jayrosen_nyu, Washington Examiner, @scottbix, NY Daily News, The Week, The Corsair and Mediaite

Press Gazette:

Hacking trial summing up: ‘Who polices the journalists? No Mrs Brooks[’ — Jurors in the phone-hacking trial were today told to consider who knew about the “rotten state of affairs” that went to the top of the News of the World. — Former editors Rebekah Brooks (pictured above: Reuters) …

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Prosecution tells hacking trail it was role of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner to know what they were doing

Discussion: The Independent, Bloomberg, thedrum.com and BBC

Gideon Spanier / London Evening Standard:

ITV is sitting pretty, but problems lurk — As ITV's Adam Crozier prepares for his fifth annual meeting as chief executive next Wednesday, he can claim he deserves his £8.4 million pay and bonus. — ITV has been on a golden run since the ex-Royal Mail boss joined in 2010 with a five-year …

Kristen Schweizer / Bloomberg:
ITV, UK's biggest commercial broadcaster, acquires 80% of Leftfield Entertainment for $360M

Discussion: Forbes, Broadcasting & Cable, Guardian, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, The Irish Times, Hollywood Reporter, broadcastnow.co.uk, ifamagazine.com, Financial Times, thedrum.com, Deadline.com and Variety

Londn Evening Standard:

BBC Trust scandals may scare off new chair candidates, MP warns — The Government may struggle to persuade a strong enough candidate to head the BBC Trust after the wave of scandals that have hit the corporation, a senior MP warned today. — “You only have to look at Chris Patten's experiences …

John Plunkett / Guardian:
Howard Stringer and Marjorie Scardino in line to replace Lord Patten

Discussion: The Wrap, Herald Scotland, Guardian, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, MediaTel, Rapid TV News, Sky News, thesundaily.my and Hollywood Reporter

Patrick Frater / Variety:

Why Alibaba's IPO Matters to Hollywood — As China's e-commerce giant seeks a $150 billion flotation it is building an array of video and internet options and moving upstream into content. — Asia Bureau Chief — HONG KONG — The proposed share sale in the US of Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter

Joe Lucia / Awful Announcing:

MLB is urging iTunes to pull team-related podcasts (UPDATE) — In one of the more disappointing things we've seen out of them lately, MLB is reportedly requesting that iTunes pull several team-related podcasts from their service. Among the affected podcasts are Twins podcast Gleeman and the Geek …

Discussion: Poynter, @bkoo, @joe_toc, @markcoddington, @jimmiebjr and Electronista

NBCSports:

IOC awards Olympic Games broadcast rights to NBCUniversal through to 2032 — Agreement ensures the long-term financial security of the Olympic Movement — The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday awarded NBCUniversal (NBCU) the broadcast rights in the USA for the Olympic Games through to 2032.

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Daily Mail pays ‘substantial damages’ and apologises to JK Rowling — The Daily Mail carries an apology today to the author JK Rowling in which it states that it has paid her substantial damages over an article that claimed she had told a misleading “sob story.”

Discussion: Poynter, Press Gazette, @djmgaffneyw4, @aljwhite, @oliverburkeman, BBC, The Huffington Post and @dawnhfoster

Ben Fischer / New York Business Journal:

BuzzFeed chairman Ken Lerer pledges independence, says IPO is a possibility — BuzzFeed Chairman Ken Lerer said Tuesday the growing media powerhouse won't sell itself and strongly hinted at an initial public offering one day, while not exactly denying recent reports of failed acquisition talks with The Walt Disney Co.

Discussion: @mjenkins and TechCrunch

Sharri Markson / The Australian:

Staff strike as Fairfax takes sword to snappers, subs — FAIRFAX staff have voted to go on strike in response to the news the company will sack 80 newsroom staff across production, layout and photographics and outsource the work. — Staff tweeted that a snap 24-hour strike …

Discussion: @tanyachilcott, @michaelsin_, ABC, Reuters, @meadea, GlobalPost, @domsequitur, @belindaseeney, Sydney Morning Herald, Mark Skulley, ABC, NEWS.com.au, HeraldSun, Guardian, @ivorytowerjourn and @larasinclair

Nic Christensen / mUmBRELLA:
Fairfax announces 70-80 redundancies across production, lifestyle and photographic

Wall Street Journal:

DirecTV Working With Goldman, Advisers on Possible AT&T Deal — Move Is Sign Satellite Broadcaster Serious About Combination — DirecTV is working with advisers including Goldman Sachs to evaluate a possible combination with AT&T Inc., people familiar with the matter said …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

TuneIn relaunches with a big focus on social to become the Twitter of radio — Streaming radio aggregator TuneIn relaunched its mobile apps and website Wednesday, introducing a Twitter-like follower model and adding new ways for podcasters, radio staions and brands to reach an audience.

Discussion: Re/code and VentureBeat

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What does a design director at ProPublica do? David Sleight on what happens when you engage design with reporting — Last month, ProPublica, the investigative nonprofit news organization, published a nearly 9,000-word examination of the re-emergence of segregation in public schools.

Discussion: @clockwerks, @litherland and @ezraklein

Dorothy Pomerantz / Forbes:

Nielsen Is About To Help Programmers Profit From Your Online TV Viewing — For all the talk of a “golden age” of television, traditional TV networks have a big problem, and Mitch Barns, the new CEO of audience-measurement company Nielsen, thinks he can fix it.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Publisher ‘DRMs’ Physical Legal Textbook About ‘Property,’ Undermines Property And First Sale Concepts — We've talked in the past about just how badly certain industries would love to expand the restrictions created by DRM onto physical goods. And that's because, unlike what copyright system defenders …

Discussion: The Laboratorium, Josh Blackman's Blog, @dangillmor and Washington Post

John Eggerton / Broadcasting & Cable:

American Cable Association appeals to FCC after Viacom blocks its own websites in carriage dispute — Polka: Viacom's ‘Retaliatory’ Web Move Raises Openness Issues — Criticizes blocking move's affect on ACA's smaller operator members — American Cable Association president Matt Polka …

Discussion: multichannel.com, Broadcasting & Cable, Variety, FierceCable, @om and multichannel.com

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Here are the BBC's plans for the first ‘24/7 World Cup’ — The BBC has been upping the game for digital sports coverage in recent times, with the Olympic Games and its Winter counterpart showing what an all-encompassing, cross-platform broadcasting extravaganza can look like in an age of near-ubiquitous connectivity.

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

Good Magazine plots an editorial comeback — In 2012, cause-driven magazine Good magazine made a fateful decision, laying off six of its nine editorial staffers in favor of pushing a “community-based publishing system.” The platform, which was essentially reddit for social good …