Mediagazer: Microsoft confirms it's closing Xbox Entertainment Studios and halting production of new original TV shows (Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web)

10:25 PM ET, July 17, 2014

Top News:

Glenn Greenwald / The Intercept:

NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children — Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday's killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave …

Paula Mejia / Newsweek:
Foreign Journalists Ordered to Evacuate Beach Hotels in Gaza

Discussion: @sarahussein, The Huffington Post, @newsweek, @sherinet, @_ms_r, @_ms_r, @ediz99, @themainlisa and @abarnardnyt

Tyler Hicks / New York Times:
Pulitzer-prize winning NYT photographer describes witnessing the deaths of four boys in Gaza

Discussion: New York Times, Prof Chris Daly's Blog, Guardian, The FJP, @westwingreport, @nancykric, @mattapuzzo, @jonathanweisman, @hystericalblkns, @lucykafanov, @justinraimondo, @cblatts and @grahamliddell

New York Times:

Time Warner Chief's Turnaround Effort Opened the Door to Fox's Bid — On a Saturday in early June, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, got an email from Chase Carey, the president of 21st Century Fox, proposing lunch. — They met a few days later in the executive dining room of the Time-Warner Center.

Discussion: New York Times, USA Today, mUmBRELLA, FierceCable, @peterlattman and @alansmurray

New York Times:

Fox Challenges ESPN with Pursuit of Time Warner — Rupert Murdoch loves nothing more than taking on an entrenched powerhouse, and with his audacious $80 billion bid to purchase Time Warner, he showed a willingness to go up against one of the industry's most powerful players — ESPN.

John McDuling / Quartz:
It's not TV that Rupert Murdoch wants: It's HBO

Discussion: Bloomberg and Mashable

David Carr / New York Times:
In Modern Media Realm, Big Mergers Are a Bulwark Against Rivals

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:
21st Century Fox Bid Puts CNN in Cross Hairs

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

William Turvill / Press Gazette:

John Sweeney loses job in cull of all Panorama's staff reporters: ‘Management will gain more control’ — John Sweeney has revealed his office nickname for the past few months has been “dead man walking”, and he was not surprised to have been made redundant by the BBC today.

Discussion: Telegraph, @wturvill, @wmckdc, @charliebeckett, @goldentent and The Wrap

BBC:
BBC News to cut a further 415 jobs

Discussion: Guardian, Press Gazette, @trushar, @lucynews, @imkevinyoung, @marcsettle, @marcsettle, @marcsettle, @trushar, @ronmooremoreron and @leimdorfer

Roberto Baldwin / The Next Web:

Microsoft confirms it's closing Xbox Entertainment Studios and halting production of new original TV shows — Today has been a tough one for Microsoft. After announcing 18,000 layoffs, it has also confirmed that it is shutting down its original programming studio, Xbox Entertainment Studios in the coming months.

Discussion: Re/code, Variety, Adweek, Multichannel News, AdAge, The Wrap and @adamostrow

Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
After Shutting Down Xbox Studios, Microsoft Faces Trust Issues With Advertisers

Discussion: VideoNuze Analysis and Forbes

Caroline Little / Poynter:

NAA president responds to criticism, says industry must embrace all media, including print — Newspaper group CEO: We need to embrace all media including print — A longtime newspaper man who recently turned academic, Mr. David Boardman posted an essay sharing his personal lamentations …

Discussion: @thenewschick, @jayrosen_nyu and Gigaom

CNBC:

US Copyright Office says Aereo not a cable company under terms of Copyright Act — US copyright officials have told Aereo that they do not consider it a “cable company” under the terms of copyright law, according to a letter obtained by CNBC. Aereo, which lost a key Supreme Court ruling …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Public records tools, reader metrics, and more among new Prototype Fund winners — The latest round of small grants from the Knight Prototype Fund includes several projects and digital tools that could eventually prove useful to journalists. — A developer from Grist wants to build tools …

Discussion: Knight Foundation, Poynter, @jcstearns, @djordjepadejski, @knightfdn and @jferrell03

Kevin Collier / Daily Dot:

The FCC has officially received 1 million net neutrality comments — net neutrality is too boring a topic to rile up Americans. — As of Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had received 1 million official comments about whether to allow Internet providers to divide …

Discussion: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, The Hill, Washington Post, Ars Technica and The Huffington Post

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Nailed It: Buzzfeed Cracks The Pinterest Code — Buzzfeed is one of of the fastest growing media companies ever, with a monthly audience of 150 million and counting, thanks chiefly to its unmatched understanding of what people will read or share on Facebook.

Discussion: @bupbin, @barryschnitt, @niemanlab, @cdirusso, @kevinroose, @saila and @joelcifer

Sheila Marikar / New York Times:

Websites Like Thought Catalog and Upworthy Aim to Uplift — On a bright afternoon, Alex Magnin, chief revenue officer of the website Thought Catalog, strolled through Dolores Park in San Francisco, sipping a cup of green tea. Mr. Magnin, 29 and clad in a rumpled plaid shirt …

Discussion: @ntwealth and The Awl

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

How to Teach Google What a Story Is — Google wanted to solve a problem we can all understand. People take so, so many photographs and yet they actually do very little with them. A chosen few are posted to Instagram. Most sit in vast wastelands of thumbnails on phones or in iPhoto never …

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

What's going on at Scientific American? Deleted posts, sexism claims, a fired writer. — Throughout its 169-year history, Scientific American has been an august and sober chronicler of the advance of human knowledge, from chemistry to physics to anthropology. — Lately, however, things have become kind of a mess.

Discussion: @brianpmoore666, @jswatz and @dabeard