Mediagazer: KOTA anchorman temporarily sidelined after tea party appearance (Kevin Woster/Rapid City Journal)

Phila. Newspapers sold to lenders — NEW YORK - Brian P. Tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C., announced Wednesday afternoon that the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News has been sold to its senior lenders for $135 million.

Discussion: Romenesko, National Media, The Wire, Media Decoder, Fitz & Jen, rbr.com, Poynter Online and Strupp

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:

Yahoo! News Hires Newsweek's Former White House Correspondent Holly Bailey (YHOO) — Yahoo! News has recruited yet another high profile journalist. — We hear that Holly Bailey, a former Newsweek White House correspondent, has taken a job as senior politics writer for Yahoo's politics, national affairs and media blog, The Newsroom .

Discussion: New York Observer

Felix Gillette / New York Observer:

Jamie Mottram, Sportif Yahoo Bloglord, Pushes ‘Portal Power’ — On April 1, Gawker chief Nick Denton passed on some surprising news via Twitter. “Damn!” Mr. Denton wrote. “Gawker's awesome John Cook is about to disappear into the maw of Yahoo. Someone else—WSJ?—should save him. We tried.”

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Romenesko and Silicon Alley Insider

Matea Gold / Company Town:

ABC News concludes wrenching round of cuts with fewer involuntary layoffs than expected — A brutal round of cuts at ABC News came to a close this week when executives laid off 22 employees Tuesday, a far smaller number than they had expected. — The final tally was less than anticipated …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Mediaite, TVNewser, Romenesko, The Wire and New York Magazine

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

More Publishers Trying Outsourced Journalism — Established News Shops Running Articles From Pool of Freelancers for as Little as $5 a Story — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — More major media companies are looking for ways to find cheap content. Thomson Reuters, Cox Newspapers and Hachette Filipacchi …

Gillian Reagan / The Wire:

Arthur Sulzberger Jr.: NYT's Metered Paywall Is About Building ‘Emotional Connection’ With Readers (NYT) — The New York Times (NYT) is building its metered model for NYTimes.com in 2011 for many reasons, as chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. pointed out during the Times' annual meeting of stockholders yesterday.

Discussion: The New York Times Company, Romenesko and The Daily Beast

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Conan O'Brien Will Appear on ‘60 Minutes’ on Sunday — Conan O'Brien will break his post-NBC silence Sunday night when he gives his first interview about his departure from “The Tonight Show” to CBS's “60 Minutes.” — In the deal he signed that settled his contract with NBC …

Discussion: rbr.com, Gothamist, Speakeasy, PopWatch, TVWeek.com, The Wire, The Huffington Post, Moraes on TV and New York Magazine

Reuters:

Why reporters are down on Obama — One of the enduring storylines of Barack Obama's presidency, dating back to the earliest days of his candidacy, is that the press loves him. — “Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me,” Obama joked last year at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Discussion: Salon, Mediaite, Media Matters for America, Gawker, Strupp, Romenesko, Ben Smith's Blog and Chickaboomer

David Kaplan / paidContent:

AOL Sells IM Service ICQ To Russia's DST For $187.5 Million — As expected, Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies says it has reached an agreement with AOL (NYSE: AOL) to buy its instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million. DST, which has investment in Facebook and Zynga …

Discussion: Business Wire, MediaPost, Media Week, TechCrunch and MediaMemo

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Tremor Media Rounds Up Another $40 Million For Web Video Ads — Remember when the pre-roll — ads that run before Web video clips — was supposed to be on its way out? Somebody forgot to tell Tremor Media. — The video ad network, which makes most of its money selling pre-rolls …

Discussion: MediaPost, Business Wire, Silicon Alley Insider, Media on HuffingtonPost.com, NewTeeVee, paidContent and Online Video News

Kevin Woster / Rapid City Journal:

KOTA anchorman temporarily sidelined after tea party appearance — KOTA TV newsman Shad Olson will be back on the air soon, following a disciplinary suspension from his news anchor duties in the Rapid City coverage area because of his speech at a tea party rally.

Discussion: Hot Air and Romenesko

Tom Grasty / Online Journalism Review:

Is the future of digital news collaborative? — By Tom Grasty: We all know the problems inherent in creating digital news packages: reporting from disparate geographic locations not only bloats budgets but hampers the ability to make timely decisions; slow uploads and incompatible file conversions often lead …

Media Maverick:

Gizmodo considers suing police after iPhone raid — A lawyer for Gizmodo says that the gadget blog could sue the San Mateo County sheriff's office for raiding an editor's home last Friday as part of a probe into an errant iPhone prototype. — The option of a lawsuit “is available …

Discussion: New York Times, Slate, CNET News, Salon and bizjournals

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Washington Post Launches Its Politico Killer: PostPolitics.com — The Washington Post launched its new politics website today, PostPolitics.com. — Chris Cillizza, who writes The Post's political blog, The Fix, has been named managing editor of the site, and a slew of the paper's writers and columnists will be contributing.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Strupp, Washington Post, Nieman Journalism Lab, Romenesko, New York Magazine and Wonkette

Judith Townend / Journalism.co.uk:

New site comment system hoping to diversify the views around news — Start-up Ameritocracy has designed a new commenting system in beta, which brings in comments from around the whole web. — In brief, the Insight App is a commentary layer which sits over any website - see it working on its own site …

Meg James / Company Town:

Fox likes its Fuel after all — Fox is hanging on to its Fuel. — Late last year, media conglomerate News Corp. tried to sell its tiny Fuel TV cable channel to Viacom Inc. The rationale was that the extreme sports channel geared toward young guys between 13 and 34 might make a better fit within Viacom's youth-centric MTV universe.

Discussion: TVWeek.com

cyber.law.harvard.edu:

A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right — Authored by Yochai Benkler, Aaron Shaw, Victoria Stodden — Abstract — Discussions of the political effects of the Internet and networked discourse tend to presume consistent patterns of technological adoption and use within a given society.

Discussion: Berkman Center and ResourceShelf

Glynnis MacNicol / Mediaite:

ABC's @JakeTapper Rebuts @ABCWorldNews Over False SCOTUS Nominee Tweet (UPDATED) — Wow. Looking for an example of how fast news flies and how journalists are one man operations these days? Look no further. Check out this fascinating exchange, on Twitter, between ABC News' Jake Tapper and the ABC World News Twitter feed.

Discussion: TVNewser

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

'09 Music Sales Shed $1 Billion; U.S. Downloads Stagnant — Global recorded music sales shrank by 7.2 percent, from $18.3 billion to $17 billion, through 2009 - meaning the industry has scored fewer sales each year since 1999. — Digital sales grew 9.2 percent and now make up over a quarter of all music income...

Discussion: George Dearing

Alissa Krinsky / TVNewser:

Craig Crawford On Life After MSNBC — Almost two months after announcing his departure as an MSNBC political analyst, CQPolitics.com Trail Mix blogger Craig Crawford talks with WebNewser about the power of online video content. — “Punditry for pay on cable is a declining market,” Crawford says.

Discussion: WebNewser

Natalie Zmuda / AdAge:

Ann Taylor Investigation Shows FTC Keeping Close Eye on Blogging — Commission's Scrutiny of Retailer for Rewarding Posts About Collection Is a Warning to Marketers — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The Federal Trade Commission has made public its first investigation into a company's relationship with bloggers …

Lauren Hatch / The Wire:

Forbes Collaborates With Daylife For Cheaper Content — Forbes.com just announced a new vendor relationship with Daylife, a start-up which supplies online publishing tools to media companies. — Daylife will augment Forbes.com's popular billionaires feature with topic pages …

Discussion: Daylife Blog

Editor and Publisher:

Honolulu Joining Ranks of One-Paper City As ‘Star-Bulletin’ Get Antitrust OK to Buy ‘Advertiser’ — CHICAGO Nobody will buy the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, whose owner was given U.S. Justice Department approval to buy its rival Honolulu Advertiser from Gannett Co.

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org … and National Media