Mediagazer: Fairfax strikers say it is ‘up in the air’ whether staff return to work at 3pm (Nic Christensen/mUmBRELLA)

12:35 AM ET, May 8, 2014

Top News:

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Amazon, Netflix and tech giants defend net neutrality in letter to FCC — In a rare public stand for the internet retailer, Amazon has come out against the Federal Communications Commission's purported plan to bifurcate the internet into faster and slow lanes as part of its new network neutrality rules.

Discussion: The Verge, TIME, Free Press, Broadcasting & Cable, The Hill, Reuters, Washington Post, GeekWire, Re/code, @designhawg, @tonyromm, @tcarmody, NationalJournal.com, NationalJournal.com, @katyonthehill, iMore and Business Insider

Katy Bachman / Adweek:
Two FCC Commissioners ask Wheeler to delay net neutrality proposal, but Wheeler doesn't budge

Discussion: FCC.gov, @amy_schatz, New York Times, PC Magazine, Bloomberg, The Verge, Talking New Media and The Next Web

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:
Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, @eonnewsnet, International Business Times and Al Jazeera America

Reuters:

Exclusive: Cars.com investor Gannett mulls bid for entire company: sources — (Reuters) - Gannett Co Inc (GCI.N), one of the newspaper owners of Cars.com, is exploring a bid for all of the auto sales website and has discussed teaming up with private equity firms in a deal that could reach $3 billion …

Discussion: Talking New Media

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

EndlessTV Serves Up Free Web Video to Your Phone, Minus the Ads. How Long Can That Last? — Lots of people are trying to figure out ways to help people “discover” digital video, and lots of them don't work because they don't solve a real problem: Most folks have no trouble “discovering” video on their own.

Nic Christensen / mUmBRELLA:

Fairfax strikers say it is ‘up in the air’ whether staff return to work at 3pm — Sources at Fairfax Media say that it is “up in the air” as to whether staff at the publisher's various major mastheads will return to work at the end of the walkout at 3pm today, while management has threatened …

Discussion: @i_shudder, @picketer, Business Insider Australia, @jamus__, @sclark_melbs, @coxdan, @kimbo_ramplin, @margokingston1, @margokingston1, @jamus__, @nicchristensen, @kate_mcclymont, @veritychambers, @jan_villalon, @rose_bolger and @dowsteve

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, @gabrielsherman, @davidfolkenflik and Inside Cable News

Seth Fiegerman / Mashable:

Marissa Mayer: Stop Asking If Yahoo Is a Tech or Media Company — In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs visited Yahoo's headquarters and urged employees to decide once and for all whether it wanted to be a media company or a technology company. — Yahoo's identity crisis, if you want to call it that …

Discussion: New York Times, Tech Trader Daily, TechRadar.com, @art_policarpio and TechCrunch

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

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

College newspapers are following students online, but will revenue come along, too? — Late last month, The Columbia Daily Spectator at Columbia University announced a big change, Peter Sterne reported in Capital New York. The publication would still update its website daily …

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Reinventing the internet: What if AMC took the plunge and unbundled from cable? — There's been much speculation about the possibility that HBO could one day directly compete with Netflix by offering consumers a way to subscribe to its HBO Go service without signing up for cable.

Discussion: @dkthomp

Federico Mastrogiovanni / VICE News:

Photo Auction Raises Money for Another Murdered Mexican Journalist — Applause and hoots of laughter can be heard from the steep stairs that lead up to the small room at the Gimnasio de Arte Cultural Center in Mexico City, where an auction to benefit the family of murdered journalist “Goyo” Jiménez is taking place.

Kevin Downey / TVNewsCheck.com:

ConnecTV Shifts Focus To Video Clip Sharing — ConnecTV moves from its original social media app function to video clip sharing, selling advertising and offering video clips that link to stations' websites and YouTube channels. It may be facing competition from Shazam …

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Publishers get creative with an à la carte approach to digital media — The all-you-can-eat approach to digital media is going away in favor of a la carte. — Consider Facebook. It launched Facebook Messenger and Paper as standalone apps following its acquisition of Instagram.

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

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: Digital Media Wire, Re/code and VentureBeat

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.

Discussion: @forbestech

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

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.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVNewser, Forbes, Deadline.com, Olympics, Variety, Reuters, @davidfolkenflik, @friedrich_mike, @jbflint, @jbflint, New York Times, @kimballkjar, @fbihop, @edmundlee, Capital New York, The Verge, Inside TV, @amanda_massa and @abeaujon

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: Deadline.com, @danacimilluca, Los Angeles Times, The Verge and multichannel.com

Anna Prior / Wall Street Journal:

21st Century Fox Q3: net income $1.05B, 12% revenue increase on cable growth and Super Bowl — 21st Century Fox reports a better-than-seen increase in revenue, helped by the Super Bowl. — 21st Century Fox reported a better-than-expected 12% increase in third-quarter revenue …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, The Wrap, Variety and TVNewsCheck.com

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

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) …

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: Gawker, The Verge, Newser, VentureBeat, ANIMAL, Mashable, @nycjim, The Huffington Post, @ihnatko, @danahoule, NPR, @a_grossman, @hughhewitt, @jameeljaffer, @propublica, @nytimesworld, Wall Street Journal, @jesselynradack and Media Law Prof Blog

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 …