Mediagazer: Iran steps up pressure on journalists (Saeed Kamali Dehghan/Guardian)

12:10 PM ET, March 8, 2010

Top News:

At the Last Minute, a Disney-Cablevision Truce — The Oscar statuette became a pawn in a public brawl between the Walt Disney Company and Cablevision on Sunday, a dispute that prevented more than three million viewers from watching the beginning of the Academy Awards show until …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, The Wire, Company Town, VideoNuze, NewTeeVee, Media Decoder, Wall Street Journal and paidContent

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Disney's deal with Cablevision is good news for broadcasters [Updated] — And the Oscar for biggest gamble goes to ... Walt Disney Co.'s ABC. — Risking political backlash and hits to its ratings, advertising revenue and public goodwill, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger drew a line in the sand …

Discussion: Multichannel, Variety, Media Money …, Broadcasting & Cable, paidContent, BuzzMachine, The Live Feed | THR and NYConvergence

Alessandra Stanley / New York Times:
Supersizing the Show (Austerity Is So 2009)

Discussion: USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, ArtsBeat, Chickaboomer, Wall Street Journal and The Wrap

Fred / A VC:
Monopolies, Retransmission Fees, and Screwing Customers

Discussion: MediaMemo and John Battelle's Searchblog

Dirk Smillie / Forbes:

Digital Lift-Off — Web ads to get a 10% boost in 2010. For the first time advertisers will spend more on digital than print. — We've been waiting for this: A study by Outsell, to be released Monday, reveals that U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print.

Discussion: Romenesko

Kerry Lauerman / Salon:

The story behind Oscar's “Kanye moment” — We talk to the two filmmakers whose personal fight became one of the ceremony's weirdest moments … People are already saying you “pulled a Kanye.” What happened? — BURKETT: What happened was the director and I had a bad difference …

Discussion: /Film, The Awl, Speakeasy, Movieline, MTV Movies Blog, Mediaite, PopEater, New York Magazine, ArtsBeat, Jezebel, The Big Lead and The Washington Independent

David Carr / New York Times:

Breaking the Story That Isn't — Reporters have always kept an eye on other reporters. For a journalist, the only thing more interesting than what you are working on is what your competitor is working on. — But what if watching your competitor becomes your whole story?

Discussion: Media Decoder and FishBowlNY

Felix Salmon:

Link-phobic bloggers at the NYT and WSJ — Clark Hoyt, the NYT's public editor, has a good post-mortem on l'affaire Zachary Kouwe, and asks whether “the culture of DealBook, the hyper-competitive news blog on which Kouwe worked” was partly to blame for his plagiarism.

Discussion: Mediaite

Clark Hoyt / New York Times:
Journalistic Shoplifting — ZACHERY KOUWE, a Times business reporter …

Discussion: The Awl, Romenesko, The Public Editor's Journal, Lisa Gold, Journalism.co.uk, The Other McCain, Y-rd, Media Law Prof Blog and Silicon Alley Insider

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post:

In lean times, TV reporters must be jacks of all trades — Scott Broom turns his tripod toward the wall of gray mailboxes, adjusts the camera, walks into the shot and delivers his spiel. — “Here's how bad it is for the U.S. Postal Service,” the WUSA reporter says as a handful of customers at the Garrett Park post office look on.

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Bullish — Taking sharp aim at its rivals, Bloomberg BusinessWeek is prepping for a relaunch April 23 that it boasts will “reinvent” the category, with shorter stories, 20 percent more editorial pages and three more issues for a total of 50. — The moves come as others are retrenching.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

“OMG It's Steve Jobs! I'm the Only One Yelling at Him!” — That's the most excellent caption for this photo, posted Sunday night by blogger Wayne Sutton. — Squint and you can see the Apple (AAPL) co-founder and CEO in the middle of shot, standing next to the woman in the white dress (click to enlarge).

Discussion: VentureBeat, GMSV, WayneSutton.net, Gadget Lab, The Social and The Huffington Post

Nilay Patel / Engadget:
First iPad ad premieres during the Oscars

Discussion: MacRumors, Online, TUAW, Brainstorm Tech, VIRALBLOG.COM and Silicon Alley Insider

Megan McCarthy / Mediagazer News:

Introducing Mediagazer — Mediagazer presents the day's must read media news on a single page. — The media business is in tumult: from the production side to the distribution side, new technologies are upending the industry. What do news organizations need to do to survive? Will books become extinct?

Discussion: MediaMemo, PaidContent, Techmeme News, All Shook Down, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch and The Next Web

Chris / cdixon.org:

News is a lousy business for Google too — There is a widespread myth that search engines have taken profits away from news websites. A few months ago, Rupert Murdoch said: “Google has devised a brilliant business model that avoids paying for news gathering yet profits off the search ads sold around that content.”

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …

Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:

The New York Times is hiring 12 techies and a social media whiz — While pundits climb over each other to predict the death of The New York Times Company, the NYT is looking to hire at least a dozen full-time software engineers and Web designers, plus one social media marketing manager.

Laura Oliver / Journalism.co.uk:

FT video could move behind paywall — The Financial Times could move its video content behind its paywall, Stephen Pinches, lead product manager, told an industry gathering today. — The FT's videos, which include individual series such as long-form interview programme View From the Top …

Steve Pond / The Wrap:

Analysis: How ‘Hurt Locker’ Became the $21M Movie That Could — It wasn't an Oscars for the unexpected. It was an Oscars for the unprecedented. — In the end, “The Hurt Locker” shrugged off the barrage of last-minute criticism and came out of awards season in exactly the same …

Discussion: The Wire, The New Yorker Blog and MediaFreak

Saeed Kamali Dehghan / Guardian:

Iran steps up pressure on journalists — Iranians who work for foreign media come under threat — Etemaad, Iran's most prominent reformist daily paper, was closed along with two weekly publications, Irandokht and Sina, a week ago today. Since the disputed election in June …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Barnes & Noble Gets a Time Inc. Vet to Run Its Newsstand — Barnes & Noble wants to catch up to Amazon (AMZN)-and, suddenly, Apple (AAPL)-in the e-reader race. That means it will it need its own digital newsstand, too. — So the bookseller has nabbed a magazine guy to run it.

Discussion: Associated Press and Gizmodo