Mediagazer: New Contest Aims to Create Easier Online Access to Government and Community Services (Knight Foundation News Releases)

10:50 AM ET, March 9, 2010

Top News:

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: Guardian, State of the Fourth Estate, Roger Ebert's Journal, The Hot Blog, MinOnline and LA Observed

Thompson on Hollywood:
Variety Cuts Its Life's Blood: Critics McCarthy and Rooney

Discussion: 24 Frames, paidContent, LA Observed and Movieline

Michael Cieply / New York Times:
Variety Lays Off Two Critics in an Overhaul

Discussion: The Wire and Cheat Sheet

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap: McCarthy Fired After 31 Years at Variety: 'It's the End of Something'

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

Discussion: 24 Frames, Media Decoder and New York Magazine

Variety:
Wilder promoted at Variety

Discussion: Folio

Damon Kiesow / Mobile Media:

New York Times to spin off Book Review for e-readers — The New York Times is planning to offer its Book Review as a separate digital e-reader product, disaggregated from the rest of the Times content on the mobile devices, according to James Dunn, director of marketing for The New York Times.

Discussion: The Business Insider, New York Observer, Fitz & Jen, News & Tech, TeleRead, Editors Weblog, paidContent and Guardian

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

GateHouse fires subpoenaed Kansas reporter for comments about legal representation — Claire O'Brien told other reporters that GateHouse refused to pay for her legal representation and scuttled her efforts to find legal help after being ordered to testify about a jailhouse interview with a murder suspect.

Discussion: Associated Press

Editor and Publisher: ‘Dodge City Daily Globe’ Reporter Who Testified in Murder Case Gets Fired

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

Google Tests TV Search Service — Google Inc. is testing a new television programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. — The service—which runs on TV set-top boxes using elements of Google's Android operating system …

Discussion: Shelly Palmer, Gizmodo, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Fast Company, PC Magazine, DailyFinance, Crikey, Epicenter, Silicon Alley Insider, Electronista, Between the Lines, Engadget, Mashable!, paidContent and All Things Digital

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Google Testing TV Search Service With Dish Network

Discussion: comScore, Inc.

Knight Foundation News Releases:

New Contest Aims to Create Easier Online Access to Government and Community Services — Knight Foundation partners with FCC; — Contest offers cash prizes to software developers nationwide — A contest to develop online applications that would tap the power of broadband to help communities …

Discussion: KnightBlog

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Print's advertising problem - tying one hand behind its back — Last week Karl Schneider, Reed Business Information's Editorial Director, spent an hour chatting with students in my Online Journalism class. Most of it is available on video here, but of particular interest to me was a point Karl …

Phil Rosenthal / Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Tribune to produce pages for sister paper in Virginia — Tribune Co.'s Virginia newspaper plans to outsource the editing and designing of much of its content to the newsroom of its corporate flagship, the Chicago Tribune, in a bid to reduce costs and focus resources on local coverage.

Robert Eisenhart / Editors Weblog:

Facebook: A place to share articles on the weekend — A recent survey of Facebook user habits by DanZarrella found that users are more likely to share articles with friends over the weekend than the week, even though less news is typically published during this time.

Discussion: Dan Zarrella

Paul Bond / Hollywood Reporter:

News Corp. plays harder to get — Chase Carey says Fox ‘not just another channel’ — If affiliates want to maintain access to “American Idol,” “24,” NFL games and the World Series, it could cost them a bit more cash, News Corp. COO Chase Carey suggested Monday.

Jane Martinson / Guardian:

Murdoch: Gulf states should open up to foreign media — News Corporation chief says region should cut regulation and end censorship, and promotes idea of paying for content — Read the full text of Rupert Murdoch's speech (pdf) — Rupert Murdoch called on Gulf states to open up their markets …

Discussion: paidContent

Jim O'Neill / Online Video News:

Hulu scores deal with the NFL Network for online video — Think Hulu's going to suffer because it lost The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? Maybe, but it gained a whole new audience by adding more than 600 clips of NFL content—more than 400 hours worth—to its site this week.

Discussion: Portfolio

Kieran Crowley / New York Post:

Lindsay Lohan wants $100M over E-Trade ad — The world revolves around Lindsay. — Lindsay Lohan is suing the financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, “milkaholic” baby in its latest commercial — who happens to be named Lindsay — was modeled after her.

Discussion: AdFreak, The Wire, AgencySpy, PopEater, Perez Hilton and Gawker

hrc.utexas.edu:

David Foster Wallace Archive Acquired by Harry Ransom Center — AUSTIN, Texas—The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has acquired the archive of writer David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), author of “Infinite Jest” (1996) …

Discussion: GalleyCat, kottke.org, Cultural Compass and New York Observer

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 …

Michael Calore / Webmonkey:

Amazon Is Building a Better Browser for Kindle — Browsing the web on one of Amazon's Kindle e-readers is like taking a step backwards in time. It's clunky and has only limited support for web standards and bare-bones JavaScript capabilities. — But now Amazon may be looking …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Mashable!, Fast Company and jkOnTheRun

Eric Deggans / blogs.tampabay.com:

Jimmy Fallon hosts live performance of Lazy Sunday — It seems almost quaint to think about it now. But there was a time when TV networks were so freaked out about people circulating their best moments on YouTube, they actually tried to stop it from happening.

Discussion: Mediaite