Mediagazer: The economics of non-profit newspapers (Felix Salmon)

Felix Salmon:

The economics of non-profit newspapers — Alan Mutter is a genuine expert on newspaper economics, which is one reason why his bizarre blog entry today on the economics of non-profit newspapers is so puzzling. This has to be one of the most innumerate things he's ever written:

Discussion: Kindle Review, The Wire and Romenesko

Non-profits can't possibly save the news — An amazing number of smart and sophisticated people continue to harbor the fantasy that philanthropic contributions can take over funding journalism from the media companies that traditionally have supported the press.

Discussion: Editors Weblog, Media on HuffingtonPost.com, Kirk LaPointe's … and Romenesko

Stop / Twitter Blog:

Tweaking the Twitter homepage — Twitter's homepage is a work-in-progress. Today, we're testing a new design that bubbles up more of the information flowing through Twitter. This builds on a series of changes starting last year when we redesigned the homepage to make search and trending topics …

Discussion: GigaOM, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, 901am, WebNewser, Social Media Today, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, paidContent and Silicon Alley Insider

Dansabbagh / Beehive City:

Alan Rusbridger's fair analysis of The Times, The Indy and the world — A memo from Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the The Guardian, went out to all staff. It starts with a nicely aggressive analysis of The Times's financials, followed by a good swipe at The Indy and then a lot more stuff …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, paidContent and Press Gazette

Discussion: themediablog.typepad.com

Motoko Rich / New York Times:

In E-Book Era, You Can't Even Judge a Cover — Bindu Wiles was on a Q train in Brooklyn this month when she spotted a woman reading a book whose cover had an arresting black silhouette of a girl's head set against a bright orange background. — Ms. Wiles noticed that the woman looked about her age …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Kindle Review, Silicon Alley Insider and MediaMemo

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

The FT promotes its Twitter feed as alternative to newspaper — Hear first and act fast with Twitter feeds. Get the news you need as it happens, with FT Twitter feeds. Delivering breaking FT news, features, blogs, and multimedia, they'll alert you to the developments that matter.

Discussion: paidContent, Journalism.co.uk and George Dearing

Discussion: Romenesko, Newsbroke, Talking Biz News and Silicon Alley Insider

Foster Kamer / Runnin' Scared:

Blodget and Salmon on Blodget vs. Salmon: The Last Word — Last week, a war of words broke out between two fairly notable New York media presences. It was started after an editor was fired last week, the news of which we broke here. And we thought we'd try to end it here, too, by speaking with both about the spat.

Discussion: Vanity Fair

Discussion: bookforum.com

Oliver Luft / Press Gazette:

Johnston Press halts paywall experiment — Johnston Press is to drop the paywalls it implemented on a number of its local newspapers from next week, Press Gazette understands — The regional publisher erected barriers on two of its Scottish and four of its English weekly newspaper websites …

Miguel Helft / New York Times:

With Hirings, Yahoo Steps Up News Coverage — SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo has recruited nearly a dozen journalists from traditional and online media outlets and opened a bureau in Washington to push into original content and increase the popularity of its online news site.

Discussion: Prof Chris Daly's Blog

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post:

White House swamped with authors looking for the inside story — The White House has practically been overrun by journalists pumping top officials for behind-the-scenes details for a growing roster of behind-the-scenes books. — The blitz has created complications for presidential aides …

Discussion: Michael Calderone's Blog

Anita Chang / Associated Press:

Journalists in China say Yahoo accounts hacked — All four affected are professionally focused on China and related issues — BEIJING - Yahoo e-mail accounts belonging to foreign journalists appeared to have been hacked and Google's Chinese search engine was intermittently blocked Tuesday …

Discussion: New York Times, The Firewall, DailyFinance, ReadWriteWeb and msnbc.com

Richard Siklos / New York Observer:

The Price of Free — For the past few years, media buffs have been waiting for the elusive answer to a simple question: When is what's on TV going to really start acting more like what's on the Web? It's a two-part question, really, and the answer isn't nearly as clear as you might think.

Discussion: conky

MediaShift:

Portability, Participation Rule for New Media Consumer — We're spoiled by technology. Today, we expect more from our media than we can get from print, radio or linear TV. — If you're like me — and, increasingly, evidence shows people are — you crave portability, fungibility …

Kevin Marsh / The BBC College of Journalism Blog:

Paying for quality? — Of all the arguments in favour of newspaper paywalls, one is utter tosh. It is that we - the readers - must pay online to preserve what one tabloid editor once called “the best newspapers in the world”. It's a description that's reared its head again this week.

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

YouTube's Original Sin — The video site danced with the devil to get a massive traffic boost. Now it might pay the price. — Google CEO Eric Schmidt regularly uses about 30 different computers at work. Although his company has made it easy for people to organize their e-mail across different computers …

Discussion: Gawker

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A “reader affection” formula: Gawker creates a metric for branded traffic — Influence, engagement, impact: For goals that are, in journalism, kind of the whole point, they're notoriously difficult to quantify. How do you measure, measure a year, and so on.

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Silicon Alley Insider and Soup

Chromium Blog:

Bringing improved support for Adobe Flash Player to Google Chrome — Adobe Flash Player is the most widely used web browser plug-in. It enables a wide range of applications and content on the Internet, from games, to video, to enterprise apps. — The traditional browser plug-in model …

Discussion: Adobe Flash Player Team Blog, TechCrunch, NewTeeVee, Velocity, Engadget, PC Magazine, Steven J. Vaughan …, Gizmodo, CNET News, Lifehacker, MacRumors, Mashable!, Beet.TV and Between the Lines

Dan / College Media Matters:

Exclusive: UWIRE Set to Relaunch After Six-Month Hiatus — UWIRE is back. The predominant, temporarily dormant student press content sharing service will once again be live online- most likely later this week or early next week. According to Tom Orr, UWIRE overseer and general manager …

Sree Sreenivasan / DNAinfo.com:

Lessons from A Week Without Newspapers — For all the time I spend talking about Twitter, Facebook and other digital journalism tools, I am a newspaper and magazine guy at heart. I believe there's still something magical about print. — My most productive mornings are when I get up early enough …

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

“Follow, Then Filter”: from information stream to delta — A year or two ago, as Twitter and FriendFeed in turn made headlines, much was made of how we were increasingly consuming information as a stream. Last January I blogged along those lines on why and how I followed 2,500 people on Twitter - why?

Gillian Reagan / The Business Insider:

NBC Poaches AOL's Ad Exec Cate Carley For iVillage (AOL, GE) — AOL's regional sales director Cate Carley is leaving for iVillage, NBC Universal announced today. Carly has been working for AOL since 2005, joining as sales director for their health network.

John Koblin / New York Observer:

Just Asking... Which Financial Daily Is Jumping Into the Gossip Biz? — Last week, we reported that The Wall Street Journal's New York section was starting—of all odd things—sports beats, with reporters traveling to home and away games of New York teams. — Well, now it appears The Journal's …

Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone's Blog:

Time's Tumulty joins WaPo — Time magazine's Karen Tumulty will soon be joining The Washington Post as the paper's national political correspondent, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO. — Tumulty has spent the past 16 years at Time, writing cover stories and regularly contributing to the magazine's “Swampland” blog.

Discussion: Romenesko and The Wire