Mediagazer: March Madness: CBSSports.com Says It Served 3.4 Million Live Hours On Day One (Staci D. Kramer/paidContent)

2:00 PM ET, March 20, 2010

Top News:

Stat Rant: Does Facebook Trump Google For News & Can't We Measure Twitter Correctly? — Earlier this week, Hitwise put out stats suggesting that Facebook is beating Google and Twitter when it comes to driving traffic to news sites. I dug a little deeper, and I beg to differ.

Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Facebook Visitors Come Back Again and Again

Discussion: MediaPost, Search Engine Watch, WebNewser and ReadWriteWeb

Chris Pendleton / Bing Maps Blog:

Bing Maps for Broadcast is now Free! — A couple months ago we changed the Bing Maps Terms of Use in a post called Bing Maps Terms of Use Changes; Benefit Educators, Not-for-Profits and Developers. Well, we've gone a done it again. This time all you TV anchors are going to look so much hotter …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

March Madness: CBSSports.com Says It Served 3.4 Million Live Hours On Day One — Initial stats are in for NCAA March Madness on Demand and it looks like CBSSports.com will be able to declare victory again (unlike fans of Georgetown or Vanderbilt). Unlike NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) …

Discussion: Multichannel

Rick Edmonds / The Biz Blog:

Circulation Losses May Seem to Stop as Calculations Change in the Future — A cynic might say that the newspaper industry has found an ingenious way to stop the discouraging news every six months of continuing deep circulation losses — change how total circulation is calculated.

Mac Slocum / O'Reilly Radar:

Trapping content on the iPad won't work, even if it's pretty — Wired is one of the few magazines I read cover to cover. It consistently exposes me to new ideas and topics. For that, I'm grateful (and a longtime subscriber). — But when it comes to the iPad, I really don't understand what the Wired crew is doing.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and Business Week

John Koblin / New York Observer:

It's War! Kate Taylor Quits The Journal to Join The Times — Arts reporter Kate Taylor quit The Wall Street Journal today and is joing The New York Times. — Ms. Taylor, a veteran of the Sun, joined The Wall Street Journal's New York section only six weeks ago.

Discussion: FishBowlNY, Gothamist and The Wire

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Amanpour's Note to CNN Colleagues: ‘So Why am I Leaving? In My Heart I am Not’ — CNN's Christiane Amanpour sent a note to her colleagues today telling them she is “stunned and humbled by all your words and thoughts and good wishes.” Amanpour announced yesterday she would be leaving CNN for ABC News to moderate “This Week.”

Discussion: The Wire and Michael Calderone's Blog

Newsdesk / Tower Ticker:

Playboy.com takes off top editor — Scott Smith is out after a year at Playboy.com, the last seven months as its editor. — Playboy Enterprises, through a spokeswoman, cited “creative differences” and said Smith's responsibilities will be split by Sam Jemielity, the Web site's executive editor …

Discussion: Romenesko

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:

Ana Marie Cox: Nick Denton a ‘Completely Unrepentant, Unethical Person’ — Ana Marie Cox. — Ana Marie Cox's review in Bookforum of Emily Gould's new book, And the Heart Says ... Whatever, says a lot about Gould and what the former Wonkette editor thinks of her writing.

Discussion: bookforum.com and Gawker

Stephen Lowman / Washington Post:

The future of children's book publishing — Jeff Kinney has worked full-time for a decade designing popular kid-friendly Web games. He also writes stories, but his best-selling series, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” was originally published online, not in a book. This free online version regularly gets 70,000 hits a day.

Media & Culture:

The Pentagon's Stringers — Ex-CNN exec Eason Jordan and author Robert Pelton say their Afghan reporting project was hijacked by a rogue DoD official. But had their unorthodox operation already crossed a line? — Post Comment — Need entrée to Afghan warlords and powerbrokers?

Discussion: MySanAntonio.com and Michael Calderone's Blog