Mediagazer: Comixology users can now download DRM-free backups of some comics (Chris Welch/The Verge)

10:35 AM ET, July 25, 2014

Top News:

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 …

Kamal Ahmed / BBC:

BSkyB - James Murdoch's master plan comes closer to fruition — Today's announcement that BSkyB has made a £4.9bn bid to buy Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia from 21st Century Fox is, on the surface, a straightforward play by a British pay-tv business to become a European giant.

Discussion: @stevenjbarnett and USA Today

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:
Why Harry Potter And The Simpsons Are Key To A Fox-Time Warner Deal

Discussion: @buzzfeedben and @peterlauria3

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

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Our Bad Media:

Six more plagiarism accusations against BuzzFeed's Benny Johnson — More Plagiarism From “One Of The Web's Deeply Original Writers” — Yesterday, this blog posted an article about serial plagiarism by Buzzfeed's Benny Johnson that came after said reporter called out another publication for plagiarizing his own work.

Discussion: Our Bad Media, @blippoblappo, @barryap1 and @mobute

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: Politico, FishbowlNY, @bennyjohnson, @juddlegum, @hunterw, @jktrotter, BuzzFeed, Poynter, @samfbiddle, @scotteweinberg, @davidfolkenflik and @timothypmurphy

Financial Times:

Financial Times says digital subscriptions up 33%, making up 2/3 of paying audience; overall circulation up 13%, year-on-year — Financial Times - 2014 interim statement — The FT's total circulation is at an all time high - up 13 per cent year on year to more than 677,000 across print and online.

Discussion: Press Gazette, Guardian and @emilyjg

Bloomberg:
Pearson Cutting 4,000 Jobs as First-Half Sales Decline

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Simon Zekaria / Wall Street Journal:
Financial Times publisher Pearson posts first-half net profit of £227M, sales fell 6.5% to £2.05B

Discussion: Pearson, Reuters, MarketWatch, Life Style Extra and EducationInvestor magazine

Washington Post:

Iran confirms arrest of Post correspondent — Iran confirmed Friday that The Washington Post's correspondent in Tehran has been arrested on unspecified charges. — Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, director general of the Tehran Province Justice Department, told reporters that the …

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 …

Press Gazette:

Four security guards accused of helping to destroy Rebekah Brooks evidence have case against them dropped — Four security guards accused of helping to hide or destroy evidence around the time of Rebekah Brooks's arrest will not face trial, a court was told today.

Discussion: Guardian

John Plunkett / Guardian:

London Live applies to Ofcom to slash local programming — Four months after launch, TV station wants to cut primetime local content from three to just one hour a day — London Live's local evening programming includes Not the One Show, a reference to BBC1's The One Show.

Discussion: Guardian, The Drum, @jamesrbuk, @jake_kanter, broadcastnow.co.uk, Broadband TV News and @jimwaterson

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: Gizmodo, The Verge and Gigaom

John Plunkett / Guardian:

Newsnight's Evan Davis: 'It could all go wrong, but it'll at least be an adventure' — Davis replaces Paxman as lead anchor and faces the challenge of attracting a bigger audience to the BBC show — Evan Davis is the new star presenter of BBC2's Newsnight - but it almost didn't happen.

Dara Kerr / CNET:

Judge takes issue with Apple's $450M e-books settlement offer — After the tech giant agrees to pay millions in the e-book price-fixing lawsuit, the presiding judge says, “I'm concerned about the terms of the settlement.” — Apple — Skirting an upcoming trial, Apple agreed to pay $450 million …

Discussion: Re/code, The Register and 9to5Mac

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Comixology users can now download DRM-free backups of some comics — Maybe Amazon's purchase of Comixology isn't the worst thing to ever happen after all. Comic book readers on iOS have been fuming over the loss of in-app purchases following the company's acquisition …

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, Gigaom, Hollywood Reporter, PC Magazine, TechHive, Comic Book Resources, Comic Book Resources, Newsarama.com, Washington Post, Guardian, App Advice, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Boing Boing, Engadget, Good E-Reader and AppleInsider

Alex Ben Block / Hollywood Reporter:

Time Warner Cable Signs on for ESPN's New SEC Net — ESPN closed the deal, which also includes Bright House Networks, to bring carriage of the newest college conference network to about 60 million U.S. TV homes. — The college football conference that has been a big winner on the gridiron in recent years …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times and SI.com

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Google Granting Around Half Europe's Search De-Index Requests — But Won't Show Its Workings — Following a meeting between European regulators and search engines yesterday, to discuss the latter group's implementation of a recent European Court of Justice privacy ruling …

Discussion: Guardian, ZDNet, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo UK, Telegraph, Washington Post, Forbes and Ars Technica

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: Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and Folio, Thanks:@msebastian

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 …