Top News:
Richard Sandomir / New York Times:
Baseball analyst Curt Schilling fired from ESPN one day after posting offensive commentary on Facebook — Curt Schilling Is Fired by ESPN — Curt Schilling, a former All-Star pitcher and one of the highest-profile baseball analysts on ESPN, was fired from the network Wednesday …
Discussion:
38 Pitches, ESPN MediaZone, Outsports, Mediaite, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Big Lead, ThinkProgress, CNNMoney, @meredithshiner, TVLine, Washington Blade, @manuclearbomb, Gothamist, Forbes, @wilcomethat, @michellemalkin, SBNation.com, TheBlaze.com, The Daily Caller, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, Grant Schilling, USA Today, Deadspin, Boston Globe, Variety, Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, Outsports, Deadline, Indianapolis Star, Newser, CBS New York, NPR, The Week, Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine, WTKR-TV and Fortune
David Lieberman / Deadline:
Comcast announces Xfinity TV Partner Program, allowing subscribers to watch without its set-top box, starting with Samsung Smart TVs, Roku boxes later this year — Comcast Introduces Plan To Let TV Subs Watch Without Its Set-Top Box — Comcast is relaxing its grip on the set-top box …
Discussion:
Comcast, Comcast Press Releases, DSLreports, Digital Trends, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, @liamboluk, @briandietz, Engadget and Multichannel News
Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:
Google claims YouTube ads generate better return on investment than TV in 77% of cases after analysis of 56 campaigns across eight countries — Google attacks TV, saying YouTube ads generate a better return on investment most of the time — Google is once again directly targeting TV advertising budgets …
Daniel Alegre / Inside Search:
Google will soon add live TV listings to search results, announces advertisers can buy targeted TV ads with DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion — Building the future of TV, with you — This blog is cross-posted on DoubleClick and Cloud Platform. — The television industry is in the midst of a massive change.
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
AOL acquires VR company RYOT; 25 staffers to form unit under The Huffington Post, working with TechCrunch, Engadget, clients of AOL's branded content division — Verizon's AOL Buys Virtual Reality Video Specialist RYOT — The company will form a new unit under AOL's Huffington Post division
Discussion:
VentureBeat, MediaPost, New York Business Journal, StreamDaily, Yahoo Finance UK, VideoInk, SiliconANGLE, The Huffington Post, Business Wire, ZDNet, The Wrap, TechCrunch, VatorNews, Engadget, The Verge, IR.net, VentureBeat, Editor & Publisher, Fortune, CNET, IR.net, Reuters, FishbowlNY and Variety
Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg:
Tribune Publishing using new comment software that lets readers earn or buy points for prominent comment placement — News Sites Start Charging Readers to Comment on Articles — A startup thinks newspapers can profit by getting people to pay to elevate their rants—or advertisements—to the top of the comments section.
Discussion:
The Wrap
Serri Graslie / Nieman Lab:
NPR social audio experiment on Facebook finds images important, calls-to-action effective, ideal length hard to discern due to lack of data, convoluted workflow — Can audio go viral on Facebook? Here's what happened when NPR ran an experiment for a month — Sharing audio on social media is hard to do.
Discussion:
American Press Institute
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
Accelerated Mobile Pages launches on Google News — Google on Wednesday announced that it's integrating Google News with Accelerated Mobile Pages, the burgeoning web standard that aims to make the mobile web faster. — Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, launched on Google Search earlier …
Rick Edmonds / Poynter:
American Press Institute study examining ethics of giving to nonprofit news organizations finds 6 of 10 funders gave grants for specific stories — An ethical quandary for nonprofit journalism — are funders calling the shots? — The American Press Institute — and an axis …
Discussion:
American Press Institute, @ampress, Current, @poynter and McClatchy
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix Content Obligations Balloon to $12.3 Billion on Global Expansion … Netflix keeps pumping more dollars into global licensing and production deals — and the company has increased its bet that continued subscriber growth will keep pace to pay for its long-term content contracts.
Discussion:
Deadline
Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:
Amazon Wins $30 Million Contract to Sell E-Books to New York City Schools — Panel at nation's largest district votes in favor of three-year agreement — Amazon.com Inc. won a deal worth about $30 million to provide e-books to New York City, the nation's largest school district.
Discussion:
Fortune
Erik Wemple / Washington Post:
Donald Trump using the libel laws he said he'll obliterate, in his defense against lawsuit filed by Cheri Jacobus — The libel laws targeted by Donald Trump are helping him big-time — Back when Donald Trump first broached the republic-endangering idea of “opening up” U.S. libel laws …
Discussion:
@erikwemple and RedState