Mediagazer: Tony Verna, Who Started Instant Replay and Remade Sports Television, Dies at 81 (Bruce Weber/New York Times)

1:25 PM 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, @anildash, @sulliview, @andybechtel, @jayrosen_nyu, @kreissdaniel, @dangillmor, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, @lisenstromberg, @pfeiffer44, OnPolitics, @ryan, iMore, VatorNews, CNN, Guardian 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, White House.gov Blog, @whitehouse, Washington Post, @jtsthehill 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, @urbanstrata, FishbowlNY, UK Blog on The Huffington Post, @caseynewton, @jyarow, @jasonkirksbn and @adrjeffries

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: TIME and The Independent

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

Discussion: NBC News, @nytimes, NY Daily News, Telegraph, International Business Times, BelfastTelegraph.co.uk, @nytimesworld, News24, New York Times and NBC News

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

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: Multichannel News, NetNewsCheck Latest, 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

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

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, GeekWire 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: RAIN News, www.gizbot.com/, Music Business Worldwide and Music Week

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: The Independent, BBC 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

Economist Group:

Zanny Minton Beddoes appointed new editor of The Economist — The Economist Group announced today (January 22nd) that Zanny Minton Beddoes has been named as the 17th editor of The Economist. — She succeeds John Micklethwait, the editor for the past nine years, during which time the circulation grew from 1.1 million to 1.6 million.

Discussion: Politico

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, Gigaom, The Next Web and hypebot

Bruce Weber / New York Times:

Tony Verna, Who Started Instant Replay and Remade Sports Television, Dies at 81 — The Army-Navy game of 1963 was an important one in that season's college football landscape. With a Heisman Trophy winner and future pro star at quarterback, Roger Staubach, Navy, the No. 2 team in the nation …

Gregory Ferenstein / VentureBeat:

Netflix says piracy is still a major competitor, cites Popcorn Time's rise in the Netherlands — Netflix CEO shows why piracy is a major threat again (in 3 charts) — Netflix had thought it beat back the threat of piracy. Back in 2011, when it popularized movie streaming …

Discussion: Cult of Mac, Businessweek, The Verge and TorrentFreak

Jessica Davies / The Drum:

AOP in talks with UK publishers to pool inventory for private marketplace launch — The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) is in talks with publishers over the feasibility of pooling inventory to create an aggregated private marketplace - a first for the UK.

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