Mediagazer: Seattle's Questionland builds Q&A community around popular alt.weekly The Stranger (Paul Boutin/VentureBeat)

9:45 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. …

Discussion: TechCrunch, All Shook Down and VatorNews

Michael Cieply / Media Decoder:

Variety Lets Go of 2 of Its Top Critics — Neil Stiles, the president of Variety, said the entertainment industry trade paper was cutting from its staff two of its most prominent writers — the film reviewer Todd McCarthy and the theater critic David Rooney.

Discussion: Thompson on Hollywood, 24 Frames, The Hot Blog, BroadwayWorld.com, LA Observed, Cheat Sheet and New York Magazine

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Variety editor: 'It doesn't make economic sense to have full-time reviewers' — Subject: internal memo, for Variety editorial staff only — Change is always scary, and at Variety, we have had a lot of changes in the past few years. But change is not always bad. — We are making further changes in the newsroom.

Discussion: paidContent

LAT Blogs / The Big Picture: Variety lays an egg: Is firing its critics really ‘economic reality’?

Josh Dickey / The Wrap:
Variety Drops Chief Film and Theater Critics

Discussion: New York Times, Variety, LA Observed and Movieline

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: TVNewser, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, PopEater, MTV Movies Blog, MTV Buzzworthy Blog, /Film, Hollywood Reporter, Movieline, The Awl, Speakeasy, The Stranger …, New York Magazine, ArtsBeat, Jezebel, The Big Lead and Gawker

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 Big Picture, The Huffington Post, Multichannel, Media on HuffingtonPost.com, The New Yorker Blog, MediaFreak, Broadcasting & Cable, Moraes on TV and The Wire

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

Discussion: Thompson on Hollywood, The Live Feed | THR, Broadcasting & Cable, Media Life Magazine and Movieline

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, Romenesko, Gawker and Epicenter

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

Discussion: btobonline.com

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: Poynter

Ryan Tate / Gawker:

Inside the Low-Paying Cheezburger Empire — Ben Huh's media startup is focused on LOLcats and other internet animal memes. Things are less cute behind the scenes, where underpaid and overworked humans lurk, according to several company veterans who answered our recent request for information.

Discussion: TechFlash and broadstuff

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites — Every so often we hear about a random blog or website that freaks out and claims that ad blockers are “stealing” or somehow damaging websites. But it's quite a surprise to see a similar argument from a site like Ars Technica …

Discussion: PlagiarismToday, Digits and the Econsultancy blog

Stan Schroeder / Mashable!:

Tumblr Hits Major Milestones, Plans to Start Generating Revenue — Tumblr, one of the simplest blogging platforms around, is doing really well. Situated between WordPress, which requires a bit more effort to create and organize content, and Twitter, which requires almost no effort …

Discussion: VatorNews

Nicholas White / Style Watch:

Betty White Confirms She'll Appear on Saturday Night Live — Betty White fans, your prayers have been answered. The former Golden Girl will appear on Saturday Night Live in the near future, she confirmed to PEOPLE at Elton John's annual Oscars viewing party on Sunday night.

Discussion: Mashable!, WebNewser, Runnin' Scared, Ministry of Gossip, TVWeek.com, Movieline, PopEater, TV Squad and All Facebook

Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:

The Real Reason AOL Can't Spend More Than $100 Million On An Acquisition (AOL) — AOL CFO Artie Minson and CEO Tim Armstrong keep telling analysts there will be no Bebo-esque, “hail mary” acquisitions in the company's near future. — Now we know the real reason why: AOL's creditors won't allow it.

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

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.

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 and Journalism.co.uk

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

Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:

Seattle's Questionland builds Q&A community around popular alt.weekly The Stranger — Yahoo Answers can be a helpful resource, but its questions and answers are by definition generalized to the entire Internet. Localized Q&A can focus questions and answers on geographic areas …

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).