A new survey from the Newspaper Association of America and Nielsen finds that newspaper readers are highly engaged. But they have to do more on mobile, particularly as ad revenue plunges. Read more »
People still buy a lot of music downloads, and most of them use iTunes to do so. That’s why Apple is now building its own streaming service. Read more »
Looking for a job in digital media? Each week we highlight some of the most interesting positions posted to paidContent’s jobs board. Check out the latest gigs at media companies across the country. Read more »
In this podcast, we talk with Joey Coleman, a blogger and journalist who decided that there wasn’t enough coverage of his home town in the traditional media — so he crowdfunded his own hyper-local news operation. Read more »
Flattr’s Twitter micropayments venture, where people could leave tips for ‘favorited’ tweets, is over. But as that tie-in got shut down, Flattr enabled tips for YouTube videos. The system also works on Instagram and SoundCloud. Read more »
In the aftermath of events like the Boston Marathon bombings, Twitter is often criticized for the way it indiscriminately distributes lies as well as facts — but as chaotic as that process is, we are better off for having it. Read more »
A new version of Bloomberg’s iPad app reflects a shift to mobile and tablet usage among financial professionals. The pattern mirrors what’s taking place in the consumer realm. Read more »
Kobo is launching a higher-end e-reader, the $169 Aura HD, aimed at users who read several ebooks a week. While the Aura is more expensive than the competition, Kobo says its market research supports customers’ desire for such a device. Read more »
Looking to purchase a Nook? Soon customers will be able to start checking out Pinterest on the tablets, as Pinterest looks to expand its business and external partnerships. Read more at GigaOM »
As sites like Facebook work with data companies and advertisers to collect more of our personal information, tools like Disconnect may be our best hope of preserving privacy. The company just put out a major update that stops the data flow and lets you see what companies are tracking you. Read more at GigaOM »
Comcast is getting ready to encrypt its basic cable channels. Consumers affected by the change need to get another box to keep watching. Read more »
Simon & Schuster will finally make its ebooks available to libraries, through a one-year trial with New York City’s public libraries. The publisher is making all of its titles available in the trial, but would not comment on how much it is charging libraries for them. Read more »
Ganxy, a startup that helps publishers sell and market ebooks online, is adding tools that will let them give away ebooks for free through targeted promotional campaigns. Read more »
“Watch the Show, Play the Game, Change the World” is how “Defiance” bills itself, but the combination of video game and television could be a game-changer in its own right. Read more »
The details of a long-awaited deal between Google and the EU are finally out. The agreement requires Google to list three competitors in certain types of search listings, and to agree to other, wide-ranging conditions. Read more at GigaOM »
Ad.ly is a social media ad agency that provides brands with celebrity endorsements. To come up with a more steady revenue stream, it’s turned to offering analytics. Read more »
Newspapers and other media entities have gotten used to thinking of themselves as the most important part of the equation — but why not focus on helping individual brands engage with their audiences and then share in the revenue? Read more »
ReelSurfer set out to build a tool for people who don’t shoot their own videos. Then Reuters started using it. Read more »
In a letter accompanying Amazon’s 2012 annual report, CEO Jeff Bezos focuses on the things that Amazon does because it wants to, not because it has to. Among them: Paying authors royalties more frequently, and spending “millions of dollars” to add Harry Potter to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Read more »
Publishers and record labels are experimenting with serialized ebooks and EPs, which they sell at a discount to entice customers. But what happens when the full-length version goes on sale? Read more »
Major League Baseball is using new data tools to create more detailed profiles of people who visit team and league websites. MLB plans to use the extra data to create profiles of affluent customers, and to let brands target those profiles on private ad exchanges. Read more »
The U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than $40 billion in ad revenue in the past decade — over half of that in the last four years alone — and Google’s ad revenues are now more than twice what the industry pulls in. Read more »
Digg is working on a Google Reader replacement. Its survey of about 8,000 current Google Reader users suggests that many of them are sticking with it until the bitter end; so far, among alternatives, Feedly is in the lead. Read more »
Netflix streamed more than four billion hours of movies and TV shows to its members in the first quarter of this year. Read more »
Google has a useful new tool to manage your “digital afterlife.” The feature sends passwords to trusted contacts if you have been inactive, and provides a way to send on many aspects of your digital life — except for any media you bought. Read more at GigaOM »
Teamwork just got easier for YouTube creators: The site now allows up to 50 people to administer a YouTube channel together. Read more »
Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however, and triple-digit growth is likely a thing of the past. Read more »
Google’s Susan Wojcicki says the viral success of a Pepsi prank video shows how online ad viewing is becoming a voluntary experience where marketers strive to produce content viewers want to watch. Read more »
Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more »
BajaLibros, a large Spanish-language digital bookstore headquartered in Argentina, announced its launch in the United States Wednesday. But the company may have trouble breaking through because Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple have all also launched Spanish-language bookstores in the U.S. Read more »
Read Petite, an e-singles subscription site, will launch in the U.K. this fall. Waterstones founder Tim Waterstone is chairman. The site was founded by literary agent Peter Cox and consultant Martyn Daniels. Read more »
Viki secured a bunch of new content for its global TV platform, including Japanese TV shows that have never been available in other countries. Read more »
Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read more »
People wondered why Google sold Frommer’s Travel barely nine months after acquiring it in the first place. The answer is that it’s keeping a huge number social media followers from sites like Facebook. Read more »
There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more »
Boxee TV is dead, long live Boxee Cloud DVR: Boxee’s recently-launched consumer electronics device has been rebranded, and the company introduced a free service tier. Read more »
AOL announced Marketplace, an effort to consolidate the stack of tools publishers use to serve ads. AOL is competing with Google in the ad tech field as it tries to diversify its revenues Read more »
Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won’t become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren’t waiting around. Read more »
Commenting and conversations on Branch have always aimed to make things simple. But the company is announcing some updates on Tuesday that will make it even easier to start discussions. Read more at GigaOM »
Nonprofit Worldreader says that its e-reading app, which is aimed at users in the developing world on 2G networks, is now installed on over 5 million feature phones worldwide. The platform counts 500,000 active readers a month. Read more »
