Mediagazer: Apple's Beats Acquisition Gets Approval From The European Commission (Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch)

9:45 AM ET, July 28, 2014

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

The New York Times Will Continue Drug Testing Despite Pot Legalization Stance — NEW YORK — The New York Times came out in its Sunday editorial in support of legalizing marijuana, kicking off a six-part series to make its case. — But the editorial board's new stance doesn't mean incoming Times employees can partake.

Discussion: TVNewser, ABC News, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, The Latest Word, New York Times, Gothamist, Guardian and The Inquisitr News

Andrew Rosenthal / New York Times:

Behind NYT's decision to endorse marijuana legalization and publish its “High Time” series — Some Background on Our ‘High Time’ Series — The decision to call for the end of marijuana prohibition was long in the making. — The Times editorial board has for years supported the legalization of medical marijuana.

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

The ravages of BuzzFeed's Benny Johnson — Perhaps former BuzzFeed “viral politics” staffer Benny Johnson should have asked himself the question he posted to the site's readers in May: “How Well Do You Know Basic U.S. Politics?” — That post, which leads readers through a quiz, carries this editor's note at the top:

Discussion: @dabeard, @sarahkendzior, The Daily Banter, @elongreen, @joepompeo, @jayrosen_nyu, @ramanewdelhi, PandoDaily, FishbowlNY and Gawker

Ben Smith / BuzzFeed:

BuzzFeed fires Benny Johnson after finding 41 instances of plagiarism in review of 500+ posts, will add note to each offending post — Editor's Note: An Apology To Our Readers — What we're doing about an episode of plagiarism. — Starting this Wednesday, Twitter users began pointing …

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Apple's Beats Acquisition Gets Approval From The European Commission — Apple has the green light to proceed with its acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music from the European Commission. Both companies do indeed sell headphones in the EU, which is part of the motivation behind the scrutiny …

Discussion: AppleInsider, ZDNet, Engadget, Cult of Mac, Belfast Telegraph, The Next Web and hypebot

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Apple to Buy Radio App Swell for $30 Million — Apple is close to buying the Pandora-for-talk-radio app Swell, according to multiple sources. — The deal is worth about $30 million, these sources say. — Swell had raised $7.2 million from investors including DFJ, Google Ventures and InterWest Partners.

Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, Business Insider, @brianstelter, Cult of Mac, Mashable, Gizmodo UK, BGR, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, App Advice and AllAccess.com

TechCrunch:
Apple Secretly Acquired “Pandora For Books” Startup BookLamp To Battle Amazon

Discussion: GalleyCat, Melville House Books, Bookseller news, Digital Spy, VatorNews, Softpedia News, Re/code, VentureBeat, Cult of Mac, Business Insider, Gigaom, @jyarow, App Advice, Gizmodo UK, AppleInsider, The Next Web and 9to5Mac

Leo Barraclough / Variety:

Murdoch's BSkyB Ups Stake in Virtual Reality Company Jaunt — Rupert Murdoch's U.K. pay TV operator BSkyB has invested $400,000 in Jaunt, a Silicon Valley company specializing in 360-degree virtual reality cinema. This follows BSkyB's $350,000 investment in Jaunt in December 2013.

Discussion: London Evening Standard, Hollywood Reporter, C21Media, Broadband TV News, Digital TV Europe and The Drum

Ben Cardew / Guardian:

MH17: how Storyfuls social sleuthing helped verify evidence — Stories such as the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane show the importance of checking Twitter and YouTube content — In the aftermath of an event as tragically uncertain as the MH17 plane disaster …

Discussion: @fiona_rogers

Globe and Mail:

Jailed journalist Mohamed Fahmy denied presidential pardon in Egypt — Dashing the hopes of his family, Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy will remain in an Egyptian jail after his name and those of his Al Jazeera colleagues were absent from a list of presidential pardons issued …

Discussion: @lindseyhilsum, @indexcensorship, Christian News … and Gulf Business

Matt Galligan / Medium:

Why Circa doesn't have RSS (yet) — By Matt Galligan, co-founder and CEO of Circa. — RSS pioneer Dave Winer wrote up a blog post asking the question “Where's Circa's RSS feed?”. In it he describes a desire to use an RSS feed of Circa's news to be alerted when things are going on, hopefully leading to sharing of that content.

Discussion: @mg and Scripting News

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Maine newspaper connects the present to the past in 29 parts — The whole thing started with a question — what was happening with the Passamaquoddy in Maine? — Sources had reached out to Colin Woodard, a state and national affairs reporter with the Portland Press Herald, about rule of law problems on the Passamaquoddy reservation.

Discussion: @cliffschechtman and The Portland Press Herald

Georgi Kantchev / New York Times:

Sorted Food, a Cooking Channel, Is a YouTube Hit — LONDON — When Jamie Spafford, a 27-year-old Briton, passed through airport passport control during a visit to New York a few months ago, the immigration agent seemed skeptical about Mr. Spafford's stated occupation.

Discussion: @pakman