Mediagazer: Bloomberg struggles to break out of the box (Dean Starkman/Columbia Journalism Review)

6:25 AM ET, July 25, 2014

Top News:

Ernesto Londoño / Washington Post:

Post reporter, other journalists appear to have been detained in Iran — Three American citizens, including The Washington Post's correspondent in Iran, appear to have been detained this week in Tehran, U.S. officials and the newspaper said Thursday. — Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Times, Committee to Protect …, @modavari, @londonoe, @benweinthal, Fox News, The Huffington Post, @lrozen, BuzzFeed, @thekarami, @max_fisher, Mediaite, FishbowlDC, Politico and New York Magazine

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Google's $1B purchase of Twitch confirmed — joins YouTube for new video empire — Google has reached a deal to buy game livestreaming firm Twitch for $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter. — Citing unnamed sources, Variety said back in May that Google had made an all-cash offer …

Discussion: Softpedia News, Electronista, TechCrunch, @dannerdcubed, Deadline.com, @lucas_gonze, Pocket-lint, Mashable, Gizmodo, Polygon, Variety, BGR, 9to5Google, Android Police, The Wrap, Broadcasting & Cable, App Advice and Eurogamer.net

Juliette Garside / Guardian:

BSkyB to buy Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland for £4.9bn cash — Broadcaster to buy Fox's 57.4% interest in German firm, while Italian purchase to use cash and National Geographic sale — BSkyB is to become a pan-European broadcasting company after agreeing to buy Sky Italia …

Discussion: The Wrap, Telegraph, USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Sky News, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Variety and New York Times

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Joshua Topolsky, editor in chief of The Verge, joins Bloomberg as editor of a series of new online ventures, will be replaced by Nilay Patel — Josh Topolsky of The Verge Is Joining Bloomberg — Josh Topolsky, the co-founder of the technology website The Verge, will join Bloomberg …

Discussion: The Verge, @joshuatopolsky, @piercedavid, @justin_b_smith, Poynter, FishbowlNY, @jbenton, @tyrangiel, Capital New York, Talking Biz News and Business Insider

Dean Starkman / Columbia Journalism Review:
Bloomberg struggles to break out of the box

Discussion: @abeaujon, Talking Biz News, MediaWire Daily and BuzzFeed

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:

Why Harry Potter And The Simpsons Are Key To A Fox-Time Warner Deal — Uniting the Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox production studios would give Rupert Murdoch control over the two largest film and television catalogs ever assembled, creating a highly lucrative annuity and allowing …

Discussion: @buzzfeedben and @peterlauria3

Reuters:
Carey pressured from both sides of Fox Time Warner deal to stay in job

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
Why Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Time Warner would be bad for TV viewers

Discussion: The Raw Story, The Wrap, Forbes, Washington Post, The Conversation, Hollywood Reporter and Mediaite

Amy Schatz / Re/code:

Major League Baseball Cries Foul on Net Neutrality Proposal — Count Major League Baseball among those who aren't wildly excited by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to allow broadband providers to offer fast-lane Internet access to content companies. — Last week, the sports league's …

Discussion: The Verge and Gigaom

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

Time Warner Cable C.E.O.: F.C.C. workload may delay Comcast merger — In a memo sent to Time Warner Cable employees Thursday, C.E.O. Rob Marcus said that a strained F.C.C. could delay approval for the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. — In the letter, Marcus cited …

Brian Fung / Washington Post:
Behind Comcast's truthy ad campaign for net neutrality

Discussion: @b_fung and @timkarr

J.K. Trotter / Gawker:

BuzzFeed Editor Caught Lifting Text From Yahoo! Answers — Yahoo! Answers, one of the great artifacts of Internet history, is intently studied at viral news website BuzzFeed, where its trove of half-literate questions (and even less literate answers) has supplied material for at least fifty different posts and listicles.

Discussion: Our Bad Media, Politico, @bennyjohnson, @hunterw, @juddlegum, @jktrotter, BuzzFeed, @davidfolkenflik, Poynter, @samfbiddle, @scotteweinberg and @timothypmurphy

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Conde Nast's Golf World Magazine Goes Digital-Only — Fewer Than 10 People Laid Off — Creativity Top 5 — The 67-year-old Golf World magazine is closing its print edition and shifting entirely to digital media, where it will be part of the Golf Digest website, the magazine said Wednesday.

Discussion: Associated Press and Folio, Thanks:@msebastian

Jacob Silverman / Politico:

The State Department's Twitter Jihad — Can a bureaucracy out-tweet the terrorists? — The skirmish began like so many others: with a tweet. On June 26, a Twitter user with the handle @AboudouAbdallah, who identifies himself as living in Morocco and supporting the terrorist group Islamic State …

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Amazon Drops 5% After Missing In Q2 With In-Line Sales Of $19.34B, Larger Than Expected Loss Of $0.27 — Following the bell today, Amazon reported its second quarter financial performance including a $0.27 per share loss on revenue of $19.34 billion. Analysts had expected Amazon to lose $0.15 on revenue of $19.34 billion.

Discussion: Amazon.com, New York Times, Bloomberg, @chris_ciaccia, @forbes, TIME, Forbes, Publishers Weekly, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, AdAge and ZDNet

Alexa Olesen / Foreign Policy:

China's Pengpai mixes public service journalism and party objectives, pleases no one — The New Website That Has China Buzzing — “Pengpai” has tens of millions of dollars in funding, and everyone in journalism is talking about it. But no one seems pleased. — GOOGLE +

Abby Phillip / Washington Post:

Wikipedia blocks anonymous edits (and trolling) from a congressional IP address — A Wikipedia administrator has blocked anonymous edits from a congressional IP address for 10 days because of “disruptive” edits being made by someone located in the House of Representatives, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed.

Discussion: Mediaite, The Wire, The Hill, @jeffbearer, @saladinahmed, @jimmackaywnew, PandoDaily, @mcclure111, @absodeviation and @jeresig

CNN:

Journalist working for CNN abducted in Ukraine — Donetsk, Ukraine (CNN) — A Ukrainian journalist working as a freelancer for CNN remains in detention two days after he was abducted by pro-Russian separatists. — Armed men from the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic seized Anton Skiba outside …

Discussion: Committee to Protect …, Guardian, RT, Poynter, OSCE, The Straits Times, CBC News, The Inquisitr News, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, NY Daily News, Business Insider, Mediaite and @ivancnn

John McDuling / Quartz:

An epic battle in streaming music is about to begin, and only a few will survive — “One thing is for sure,” declared an influential American critic and record industry analyst, Bob Lefsetz, in a recent post on the topic of streaming music. “One service will dominate, it's where we'll all go …

Discussion: @tcarmody, @morrowgl, @damienjoyce, @amchamkristiina and Guardian

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

And minder makes three: For White House interviews, it's never just one-on-one — When NBC News White House reporter Chuck Todd conducts background interviews with government officials these days, he and his source usually aren't the only ones in the room or on the call.

Discussion: Politico, NationalJournal.com, @washingtonpost, The Huffington Post, @tlupick and Poynter