Mediagazer: Bill Gates is guest-editing The Verge in February (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

11:50 AM ET, January 22, 2015

Top News:

Why White House used Medium for State of the Union: “We're trying to find audiences where they are” — Medium editor on SOTU coup: ‘People are already here’ — Newish publishing platform Medium scored a coup yesterday evening when the White House published President Obama's prepared State …

Discussion: Gigaom, Poynter, @jayrosen_nyu, @andybechtel, @kreissdaniel, @dangillmor, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, @lisenstromberg, @pfeiffer44, @ryan, OnPolitics, iMore, VatorNews, CNN and ABC News

Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal:
State of the Union Drew Lowest TV Audience in 15 Years

Discussion: CNNMoney.com, Nielsen, TVNewser, Politico and Broadcasting & Cable

Nathaniel Lubin / White House Blog:
State of the Union online: over 1.2M views of White House live stream, 400K views of transcript on Medium

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, @whitehouse, White House.gov Blog, @jtsthehill, Washington Post and CNNMoney.com

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Bill Gates is guest-editing The Verge in February — Technology will build a better, safer, healthier world by 2030 — I'm very excited to announce that Bill Gates will be The Verge's first ever guest editor in February. This is a new type of collaboration for us, but there's no one better …

Discussion: Forbes, Poynter, FishbowlNY, UK Blog on The Huffington Post, @jyarow and @jasonkirksbn

Antoni Slodkowski / Reuters:

Japanese reporter's bid to save friend led to Islamic State abduction — (Reuters) - It is an unlikely friendship that ties the fates of war correspondent Kenji Goto and troubled loner Haruna Yukawa, the two Japanese hostages for which Islamic State militants demanded a $200 million ransom this week.

Discussion: The Independent and TIME

Martin Fackler / New York Times:
Japan Says Efforts to Contact Islamic State About Hostages Have Failed

Discussion: NY Daily News, Telegraph, International Business Times, New York Times, @nytimesworld, News24, NBC News and NBC News

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Super Bowl Ads: NBC Turns to Tumblr to Post Spots After They Air on TV — NBC Sports has launched a new Super Bowl page on Yahoo's Tumblr that the programmer will use to feature Super Bowl XLIX's TV ads immediately after they air on NBC on Sunday, Feb. 1. — The new NBC Sports Tumblr page …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Multichannel News, AdAge, Wall Street Journal, Broadcasting & Cable, Forbes, WWD and AgencySpy

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Facebook enabling advertisers to target people posting on Super Bowl topics in near real time — Facebook Packages Own Super Bowl Audience for Ad Dollars — Company Will Track Status Updates for Game-Related Keywords — 2015 Marketing Fact Pack — Facebook is creating …

Discussion: Forbes, TVSpy, Poynter, AdExchanger, AdAge and Radio & Television …

Paul Rosania / The Twitter Blog:

Twitter rolls out “While you were away” feature to iOS users, coming soon to Android and web — While you were away... Today we're introducing something new to your home timeline: a recap of some of the top Tweets you might have missed from accounts you follow.

Discussion: SocialTimes, Wall Street Journal, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch, New York Times, Re/code, @jayrosen_nyu, Ubergizmo, App Advice, Mashable, The Next Web, GeekWire, The Verge, VentureBeat, MacStories, MacRumors, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, Engadget and iMore

Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:

Garrett Graff named editor of Politico Mag — Garrett Graff, the former editor-in-chief of the Washingtonian, will be editor of Politico Magazine, Politico editor Susan Glasser announced in a staff memo Thursday. — Graff, who succeeded Glasser as acting editor when she became editor …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Capital New York

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Amazon launches Kindle Textbook Creator to help schools turn PDFs into digital books — Amazon has unveiled a new program designed to help educational establishments and authors produce ebooks for students. — With KDP EDU and the Kindle Textbook Creator, Amazon is expanding its Kindle Direct Publishing …

Discussion: Amazon.com, TechCrunch, Gigaom, GalleyCat and The Next Web

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:

Icahn to Seek 2 Seats on Gannett's Board — Carl C. Icahn is not one to relax for long. — Fresh off signing a truce with eBay, the activist investor disclosed on Thursday that he planned to seek two seats on the board of Gannett, as well as to make proposals to prevent the media company …

Discussion: Business Wire and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Four Sun journalists accused of making corrupt payments face retrial — Jury discharged after failing to reach verdict on charges against Chris Pharo, Ben O'Driscoll, Jamie Pyatt and Graham Dudman — Four Sun journalists accused of making corrupt payments to public officials face a retrial …

Discussion: BBC, The Independent and @lisaocarroll

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Journalism site success means uniquely defining beats and a different mission than industry standard — A brief sketch of the “full stack” (intellectually speaking...) news and information company. — Meaning: it has its own way of doing things, its own ideas about what is worth doing, and it implements them from end to end.

Discussion: Andreessen Horowitz

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Rdio Teams Up With Caribbean Operator Digicel To Expand Into 24 New Countries — A week after entering India, Rdio has expanded into 24 additional markets in the Caribbean and Central America region to take its streaming service to 85 countries worldwide. None of the new countries have anything …

Discussion: VentureBeat, hypebot and The Next Web

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Saavn, 'India's Spotify', Reveals It Has 11M Monthly Users And Hires Ex-Google Exec — It's looking like 2015 will be a big year for India's music streaming space. A week after Rdio's arrival in the country, Saavn — a New York/India startup that was among the first to cater to India …

Discussion: www.gizbot.com/, Music Business Worldwide and Music Week

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC News executives discuss pitfalls of broadcasting Islamic State video — Democracy Day live stream of morning editorial meeting provides insight into judgments taken on stories including the Sun ending topless Page 3 models and airing of Isis videos — Senior BBC News executives including …

Benhuh / Medium:

Facebook Hoaxsters and Satirists, Bring Your A-Game to Cheezburger — In defense of having fun at the expense of the ignorant. — On the surface, Facebook's anti-hoax campaign seems like a good thing. I can't remember the number of times I facepalmed at watching genuine outrage …

Discussion: @somecody, @randfish, @benhuh and NPR