“Virtually every media and tech company — content providers like CBS and Disney, video streaming services like Amazon, Netflix and YouTube, and social media and e-commerce sites — has a major stake in the outcome of the government’s review of the merger. The question these companies now face is whether their interests are better served by speaking out about it, or by keeping any possible complaints to themselves as they try to negotiate the best deals they can with Comcast.

For the time being, almost none are publicly speaking out, partly because they are wary of antagonizing a company with which they do business.

Privately, though, media executives are eager to echo Netflix’s concern about the deal, and to cast themselves as victims of the potential megamerger. They use words like “omnivorous” and “rapacious” to describe Comcast, while expressing skepticism on the prospect of the largest cable company buying the second-largest.”

– http://ift.tt/1kqBM93

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While quizzes are also not new — Slate, for instance, previously offered the Carlos Danger name generator, a reference to the supposed pseudonym used by Anthony Weiner — the trend toward interactivity is only accelerating. Time magazine hired its first digital interactive graphics editor last August. BuzzFeed, the up-and-coming digital news site, installed a quiz template in its system in 2012. The Wire, part of Atlantic Media, has introduced a custom-made bracket competition to coincide with March Madness, the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, where users vote to narrow the field in categories like the best college, the best city, the best seat in a movie theater.

The problem for media organizations is where, if anywhere, to draw the line between amusing content and the mission of reporting the news. Many digital publications have relied on addictively shared content of dubious news value — like quizzes to determine which character of the Downton Abbey television series the user most resembles.

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– http://ift.tt/1hPxpWR

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For many people, the alt weekly as a genre is already passé, rendered irrelevant by the rise of the Internet.

But an alt weekly is connected to a city in the way that a website can never be. In Baltimore, somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the population doesn’t have regular Internet access. The glib techno-utopians who not only foresee a paperless tomorrow, but also lobby for a paperless present, are ready to forget about these people. Alt weeklies might not always reach everyone in the city, but at least, like the dailies, they try to be available and relevant to everyone.

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– http://ift.tt/1g0s7I7

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The web was more like a set of tin cans and a thin wire back then, so news media upstarts had trouble being heard. With high broadband penetration, the web has become a fully realized consumer medium where pages load in a flash and video plays without stuttering. With those pipes now built, we are in a time very similar to the early 1980s, when big cities were finally wired for cable. What followed was an explosion of new channels, many of which have become big businesses today.

The same holds true for digital. Organizations like BuzzFeed, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Vice and Vox, which have huge traffic but are still relatively small in terms of profit, will eventually mature into the legacy media of tomorrow.

More and more, it’s becoming apparent that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies. They can buy their way into it, but their historical advantages are often offset by legacy costs and bureaucracy.

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– http://ift.tt/1eaIkcz