Mediagazer: Is the pressure getting to Newsday? (Joe Strupp/Media Matters for America)

5:35 PM ET, March 8, 2010

Top News:

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?

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Yet Another Media Aggregation Site? Yup. And You'll Read It: Techmeme Unveils Mediagazer. — Does the Web need yet another outlet dedicated to media coverage? Nope. How about another aggregation site? Plenty of those to go around too. — So what if you combined the two? Exactly.

Discussion: All Shook Down, TechCrunch and New York Observer

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

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: Mobile Marketing Watch, Gawker and Romenesko

Greg Bensinger / Bloomberg:
Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print in U.S. This Year

Discussion: btobonline.com

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: Media on HuffingtonPost.com, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, The New Yorker Blog, MediaFreak, The Wire and Moraes on TV

Adalian / The Wrap:
Ratings: Oscars Most-Watched Since 2005

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Broadcasting & Cable, NewTeeVee, The Live Feed | THR and Movieline

Michael Cieply / Media Decoder:

Variety Lets Two of Its Top Critics Go — Neil Stiles, the president of Variety, said the entertainment industry trade paper is cutting from its staff two of its most prominent writers — film reviewer Todd McCarthy and theater critic David Rooney. — In a telephone interview …

Discussion: The Wrap, 24 Frames, Romenesko and New York Magazine

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: Journalism.co.uk, Media Decoder and FishBowlNY

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: Variety, Mediaweek, Faster Forward, DailyFinance, MediaFreak, Multichannel, Media Money …, Broadcasting & Cable, paidContent, NYConvergence and BuzzMachine

New York Times:
At the Last Minute, a Disney-Cablevision Truce

Discussion: USA Today, A VC, New York Times, MediaMemo, Media Decoder, Company Town, VideoNuze, The Wire, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and NewTeeVee

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.

Martin Langeveld / News after Newspapers:

iPad strategies for publishers — This is a white paper based on and expanded from my earlier post on the same topic, prepared for the Digital Publishing Alliance meeting at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri on March 7-9, 2010

Discussion: Online

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.

Discussion: TVNewser

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 …

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

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

How Pandora Slipped Past the Junkyard — OAKLAND, Calif. — Tim Westergren recently sat in a Las Vegas penthouse suite, a glass of red wine in one hand and a truffle-infused Kobe beef burger in the other, courtesy of the investment bankers who were throwing a party to court him.

Discussion: Bits, PSFK, the Econsultancy blog, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable!, Silicon Alley Insider and Gizmodo

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 (below), 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 to the right of the woman in a white dress (click to enlarge).

Discussion: MediaFile, VentureBeat, MacRumors, Brainstorm Tech, GMSV, Gadget Lab and Engadget

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Google Testing TV Search Service With Dish — According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new TV programming search service with Dish Network: … According to the article the test has been in a kind of very private beta since last year. As internet content moves onto TV …

Discussion: paidContent, Wall Street Journal, Between the Lines and Silicon Alley Insider

The Official Google Blog:

Statistics for a changing world: Google Public Data Explorer in Labs — Last year, we released a public data search feature that enables people to quickly find useful statistics in search. More recently, we expanded this service to include information from the World Bank, such as population data for every region in the world.

Discussion: Mashable!, VentureBeat, ResourceShelf, ReadWriteWeb, Top of the Ticket and Silicon Alley Insider

Toni Fitzgerald / Media Life Magazine:

With Games, NBC wins February sweeps — Network averages a 4.7 rating in adults 18-49 — The last time NBC had the Winter Olympics, the network still didn't win the February sweeps. — This year, with much lower-rated competition and higher ratings for the Games themselves, NBC ran away with the title.

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

Joe Strupp / Media Matters for America:

Is the pressure getting to Newsday? — Did Newsday reassign two reporters after receiving complaints from Steve Levy, the county executive of Suffolk County, New York? — Significant evidence suggests that the newspaper — the largest daily on Long Island — did, including Levy's own admission …

Discussion: Romenesko and Michael Calderone's Blog