Mediagazer: Google unveils new ads in bid to tap into local merchant market (Alexei Oreskovic/MediaFile)

10:10 AM ET, April 21, 2010

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance:

Why Apple Should Sue Gawker Over ‘Lost’ iPhone Story — How hard must the finder of lost property try to return it to its owner before deciding it's his to keep or sell? The answer to that question could determine whether Monday's iPhone scoop results in millions of dollars in legal damages …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Technovia, NowPublic.com, Doc Searls Weblog, Gizmodo, Edible Apple, PC Magazine, PC World, The Moderate Voice and Oddly Together

Joel Johnson / Gizmodo:
Apple Didn't Leak the iPhone—and Why That Matters

Greg Sandoval / Media Maverick:
Did lost iPhone lead to blog bidding war?

Discussion: eBookNewser and CNET News

Alexandra Fenwick / CJR:

Checking In On “This Week's” Fact Checking — It's been about three weeks since ABC's “This Week” host, Jake Tapper, took up NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen on his challenge to fact check statements made by Sunday morning news show guests. — NBC's “Meet the Press” …

Craig Newmark / The Huffington Post:

Trust, Factchecking, and the News Media Landscape To Come — What's Your Reaction: … Okay, you hear me talking “trust is the new black” and that power and influence will shift dramatically to the people and groups with the best reputations and largest networks.

Discussion: NewsLab

Media Week:

Reuters to overhaul website and hints at charging for content — LONDON - Reuters is set to relaunch its UK website, reuters.co.uk, this week and has hinted at the possibility of charging for elements of its content. — Reuters: overhauls website — The revamp of its website comes as Reuters …

Wayne Friedman / MediaPost:

TV Stations Record Rev Gains In Web Sites, Digital Efforts — TV stations' Web businesses fared better than newspapers' declining digital efforts in 2009, but TV is still behind in overall advertising share of media dollars. — According to new data from the Television Bureau of Advertising …

NetNewsCheck Latest:
Local TV Grew Web Sales Faster Than Papers

Discussion: rbr.com and Broadcasting & Cable

Rafat Ali / paidContent:

Dow Jones Suing Briefing.com For Headlines “Misappropriation” — The news producers are getting antsier against the aggregators day-by-day, and who else but Rupert Murdoch to lead the charge. Dow Jones, part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS). has filed a lawsuit against Briefing.com, the “live” …

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Bloomberg, FishbowlNY, BtoB Magazine, Romenesko, The Wire and News Corp. Blog

Sam Bayard / Citizen Media Law Project:
Breaking News: Dow Jones Files “Hot News” Case Against Briefing.com

Discussion: Business Wire and Fitz & Jen

Carl DiOrio / Hollywood Reporter:

‘Sex and the City 2’ tickets already a hot item — Sales ‘brisk’ even though sequel doesn't open for six weeks — Talk about hot to trot: Tickets to presumed summer sizzler “Sex and the City 2” began selling just over six weeks before the start of Warner Bros.' May 27 opener.

Discussion: /Film, New York Magazine, Gawker and Gothamist

Alexei Oreskovic / MediaFile:

Google unveils new ads in bid to tap into local merchant market — Google is revamping its efforts to court local merchants, as the Internet search giant faces a growing band of rivals aiming for a piece of the lucrative small business market. — On Monday, Google introduced …

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Google Tunes Up Its Pitch For Local Ad Dollars

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Official Google Blog, MediaPost and Lost Remote

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: KCBS ads masquerade as news — TV stations may call it “added value” advertising, but viewers are not the beneficiaries. — You would have to forgive viewers like the one who e-mailed me last month for being a bit confused about a news segment he saw on KCBS Channel 2.

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Late Nights at Disney Over Miramax: At $625M, Deal Close to Done — The Weinstein brothers' five-day negotiating window to try and seal the deal to buy the Miramax library from Disney expires on Wednesday, and it's not done yet. That said, the architecture of a final agreement has come into place …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies — For my money, memes on the Internet don't get any better than the Hitler one. You know, the one in which you take some current event (the more mundane, the better) and shove it into the scene from the German film Downfall …

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:

Gibbs: I Love the Press — Hungry Beast Giving Beast Women in the World — Blogs and Stories — Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs tells Lloyd Grove that he loves, really loves the White House press corps. He also talks about losing weight, keeping a White House diary, and whether he'll ever run for office.

Discussion: Blogs and Stories, Romenesko and The Huffington Post

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Financial Times appoints Caroline Daniel as new editor of FT Weekend — Daniel has been at the FT for 11 years and replaces Andy Davis — The Financial Times has appointed Caroline Daniel as the new editor of FT Weekend. — Daniel, who currently holds the role of assistant editor, takes over on 1 June and will replace Andy Davis.

Discussion: Talking Biz News, The Wire and FishbowlNY

Phil Bronstein / SFGate:

Bill Gates on Journalism and Social Media (and the iPad, too) — Bill Gates strikes me as a guy who rarely says anything other than what he wants to say. And these days he's largely talking about the big, multi-billion dollar philanthropic work of his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Discussion: Social Media Today, The Wire and Kirk LaPointe's …

Tim Carmody / Snarkmarket:

What's the basic unit of reading? — See, we've got this problem. — We've got a bunch of conventions about the ways we read and write which don't have as much to do with how we read and write as we thought they did. — We've got books and newspapers and magazines, and articles and stories …

Mark Redgrave / MediaPost:

Are Buzz Monitoring Companies Racing Towards a Cliff? — The exponential growth in social media has seen a rapid proliferation in buzz monitoring tools and so-called listening platforms. However, what was once a lucrative seller's market is now becoming increasingly commoditized.

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The new-look Independent: a review — Let me begin by making the most obvious declaration of interest. I am writing on The Guardian website about the redesign of The Independent, which is this paper's most obvious rival for a left-of-centre serious audience.

Discussion: Press Gazette, Jon Slattery, Editor's Blog, The Independent, Editors Weblog and FleetStreetBlues

Ojb / Online Journalism Blog:

Telegraph launches powerful election database — The Telegraph have finally launched - in beta - the election database I've been waiting for since the expenses scandal broke. And it's rather lovely. — Starting with the obvious part (skip to the next section for the really interesting bit) …

Discussion: Telegraph and Journalism.co.uk

Editor and Publisher:

Journal Register Papers Sign on With Hyperlocal Complaint Portal SeeClickFix — CHICAGO Journal Register launched SeeClickFix — the portal that allows citizens to report on hyperlocal problems like litter, potholes and even speeding cars — at the Websites of all its 18 daily newspapers Tuesday.

Bill Mitchell / Poynter Online:

Xconomy Detroit Tracks Innovative Ventures with Innovative Journalism — Xconomy is a journalism startup with a look and feel that's part trade pub, part community blog and part old-fashioned news wire. — Focused on coverage of high-tech innovation, the site was launched in Boston in 2007 …

Discussion: Xconomy

Associated Press:

Earnings Preview: Ad slump hangs over NYT Co.'s 1Q — New York Times Co. expected to sustain less severe erosion in first-quarter ad revenue — Related Quotes — NEW YORK (AP) — Newspaper publisher New York Times Co. is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings before the stock market opens Thursday.

Discussion: Romenesko, mediabistro.com and Fitz & Jen

Editor and Publisher:

Unpaid Staff Keeps Caribbean Daily Going After Arrest of Ponzi Scheme Owner — ST JOHN'S, Antigua The staff of a daily newspaper owned by jailed Texas financier Allen Stanford is still putting out the paper despite an announcement that it would close, an editor said Monday.

Discussion: The Wire