Mediagazer: Viacom Closes $725 Million Acquisition of U.K.'s Channel 5 (Georg Szalai/Hollywood Reporter)

1:25 PM ET, September 10, 2014

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Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

welcome to Guardian Membership — The Guardian is much more than a business - for almost 200 years we have dedicated our resources to the kind of public service journalism that recently won a Pulitzer prize. By becoming a member you'll help support that ideal and, no doubt, have a great time in doing so

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Ken Doctor / Nieman Lab:

Guardian launching community events and voluntary membership programs from £15-£60 per month — Guardian Space & Guardian Membership, playing the physical/digital continuum — Can it be that the solution to newspaper companies' digital woes lies in the physical world?

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Jeremy Barr / Capital New York:

N.Y.T. reporter: U.S. needs to pressure Europe on journalist ransoms — New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi told a crowd last night that the U.S. should be pressuring European countries to stop paying ransom to terrorist kidnappers. — The U.S. generally refuses to pay ransoms …

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Reuters:
White House doesn't believe slain U.S. journalist was ‘sold’ to Islamic State

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Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Viacom Closes $725 Million Acquisition of U.K.'s Channel 5 — It will start airing “SpongeBob” and the “Turtles” and send contestants of a new show back to the Stone Age — Viacom said Wednesday that it has closed its $725 million (£450 million) acquisition of British broadcaster Channel 5.

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Edmund Lee / Re/code:

MTV, Comedy Central To Show Up on Sony's Internet-TV Service — Sony just got one step closer to selling live television over the Web. — The hardware and entertainment company cut a deal with Viacom to sell 22 of its cable networks over the Internet, the first programmer to come on to Sony's still-theoretical service.

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Jonathan Mahler / New York Times:

Celebrity gossip site TMZ extends reach and earns some credibility with scoops on NFL scandals — TMZ Broke Ray Rice, Donald Sterling and Jameis Winston Stories in 10-Month Span — Last November, TMZ broke the news that the Heisman Trophy candidate Jameis Winston was being investigated …

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Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Hacked Celeb Pics Made Reddit Enough Cash to Run Its Servers for a Month — If you saw Kate Upton or Jennifer Lawrence naked last week, there's a good chance you saw them on the social news site Reddit. The self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet” was one of the main hosts …

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T.C. Sottek / The Verge:
Reddit uses “free speech” to defend the site's unsavory uses while ignoring the victims

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Dan Gillmor / Guardian:

The Internet Slowdown protest for net neutrality needs to target regulators — Websites are loading slowly today to show what a future without net neutrality looks like. But perhaps a targeted slowdown in in order — The point of the protest is to make you angry …

Discussion: Techdirt

Kevin Rawlinson / BBC:
Twitter supports Internet Slowdown campaign along with Netflix, Reddit, Wordpress, Digg, more

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Wall Street Journal:

Google Seeks Views in Europe on Right to be Forgotten — Company Seeking Balance in Handling of “Complicated Issue” — Google Inc. executives embarked Tuesday on a seven-city tour of European capitals to discuss Europe's “right to be forgotten,” one of several fronts in which the U.S. search firm faces …

Aoife White / Bloomberg:
Google Right-to-Be-Forgotten Roadshow Rebuffs Questions

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John Jurgensen / Wall Street Journal:

U2, Apple and the Deal Behind Getting ‘Songs of Innocence’ Free of Charge — A decade after releasing “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” U2 was front and center in a presentation that could have been called “how to hype a new tech product.” — Along with Apple's announcement …

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CNET:
Apple's iTunes scores U2's new album. You score it free.

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Ben Woods / The Next Web:

Grooveshark no longer supports Chromecast following RIAA claim it infringes artists' copyright — Grooveshark's streaming music and radio service no longer supports casting to the big screen via Google's Chromecast dongle. — While support to cast “content licensed from thousands of artists …

Discussion: Complete Music Update, TorrentFreak, Softpedia News, RAIN News and hypebot

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Why Peter Wright should not be sitting on Ipso's complaints body — Is it not truly amazing that Peter Wright, the former Mail on Sunday editor, has been named as a member of the complaints committee at the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso)? — This is the man who …

Discussion: Daily Mail and @stevenjbarnett

Gideon Spanier / London Evening Standard:

Hello! aims to prove print's still in fashion — The glossy fashion magazine is not dead. After the debut of Grazia in 2005, Stylist in 2009 and Porter this year, there is another surprising entrant. — Hello! Fashion Monthly, a spin-off of celebrity weekly Hello! …

Discussion: @gideonspanier

Reuters:

Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner wants to double profits, seeks to buy new assets — Axel Springer CEO aspires to more than double profits — (Reuters) - German publisher Axel Springer's chief executive Mathias Doepfner aspires to more than double the publisher's core profit to 1 billion euros …

Discussion: Poynter