Top News:
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
News Corp.'s Fabled Subscription Plans a Month Away — Remember Rupert Murdoch's plan to convince other media companies to join him behind a pay wall and offer their stuff only via subscription? It's still around, in some form. We'll hear more about it in “three to four weeks” Murdoch said today during News Corp.'s earnings call.
Discussion:
Broadcasting & Cable, paidContent, Crain's New York Business, Company Town, paidContent and Silicon Alley Insider
RELATED:
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
News Corp. Beats Estimates On Profit, Revenue But Digital Losses Increase — Avatar didn't bring home the Oscar for best picture but it helped News Corp (NYSE: NWS) to a win for its FYQ3—revenue up nearly 19 percent to $8.8 billion and a profit of $839 million.
Discussion:
Media Decoder, MarketWatch, Business Wire, MediaMemo, rbr.com, Company Town, Media Money …, Romenesko, CNBC and Variety
Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:
CBS News and CNN Are Back in Partnership Negotiations — CBS News and CNN are in advanced negotiations about signing a news-gathering partnership, according to executives familiar with the discussions. The talks revolve around how the two news divisions can combine operations in a bid to cut costs and expand audiences on both sides.
Discussion:
Mediaite, MediaPost, CJR, Tuned In, LocalNewser, New York Observer, The Wire, Nieman Journalism Lab and Lost Remote
Wall Street Journal:
Google Readies Its E-Book Plan — Google Inc. plans to begin selling digital books in late June or July, a company official said Tuesday, throwing the search giant into a battle that already involves Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. — Google has been discussing its vision …
Choire / The Awl:
Pink Weekly Debuts Cash-for-Traffic Reporter Bonus Jackpot Scheme — At last Wednesday's weekly staff meeting at the New York Observer, an old-fashioned paper memo was distributed; it was not sent out by email. It explained a new trial incentive program for reporters, to begin immediately.
BrauBlog:
Star Tribune CEO Mike Klingensmith talks new paywall, digital re-do — Mike Klingensmith is no rocket scientist, just the son of one. The new Star Tribune publisher/CEO's dad was an aeronautical engineer for Honeywell in Minneapolis during the Apollo era; the son faces a challenge nearly …
David Kaplan / paidContent:
‘Tentative Recovery’ Eases Thomson Reuters' Falling Profits — Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) CEO Tom Glocer pointed to the “tentative recovery” as helping fuel momentum for the company in the past quarter, as the company's profits fell less than analysts anticipated.
Sarah Ellison / Vanity Fair:
The Man Who Tried To Manage Murdoch — As Rupert Murdoch's jaws closed around The Wall Street Journal, managing editor Marcus Brauchli became the latest in a long line of editors who thought they could win over the conquering mogul. Brauchli set about feverishly redesigning the paper …
Joe Pompeo / The Wire:
NYT's Goldman Scoopster, Louise Story, Joins Bloomberg TV As Contributing Editor — Louise Story, one of the two New York Times reporters who broke the news on April 16 about the S.E.C. suing Goldman Sachs for fraud, has joined Bloomberg TV as a contributing editor.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Any Good Live Video on the Web Right Now? Ask Clicker. — For a bunch of reasons, Web video tends to work better when it has already been recorded. But here's one way to make live Web video more palatable: Make it easier to find. — Clicker, the would-be TV Guide for Web video, is now indexing live video streams, too.
Mark Leccese / Gatekeeper:
Tweeting the water story — I've been on Twitter (@mleccese) daily for a couple of months now trying to figure out if there's any useful journalism there. I've learned that nearly every tweet is inane, self-promotional (I'll be self-promoting this blog post on Twitter as soon as I finish it …
Alexandra Jaffe / Editors Weblog:
Living Stories launch for WordPress could mean integration in newspaper sites — In February of this year, Google announced plans to open-source its Living Stories code, offering the program for development for news sources and blogs worldwide. Though there hasn't since been a large influx …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Nielsen Acquires Online Video Analytics Company GlanceGuide — Analytics and audience measurement giant Nielsen has acquired video analytics company GlanceGuide. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. — GlanceGuide's analytics and measurements provide insights into how consumers interact with the video they watch online.
Jonathan Stray / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Why does the BBC want to send its readers away? The value of linking — The BBC aims to double the number outbound clicks from its site by 2013. That's double the number of people sent away from the BBC site — intentionally. In a recent BBC blog post, BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann cites …
Dan Gillmor / Mediactive:
NYT Columnist Sees Some Poisoned Apples, But is He Missing Nearby Ones? — David Carr, media columnist for the New York Times, took critical note this week of arrogant behavior at Apple. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the myopia that pervades his organization about its own dealings with Apple, he missed a crucial part of the story.
Peter Rothberg / The Nation:
The Nation Goes Open Source — Of all the many changes at TheNation.com, the one you won't readily detect is the technology underlying the new site - the open source content management platform “Drupal.” With redesigns, readers naturally focus on the “front-end,” (did the colors change? …
Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:
Cable news most trusted in new opinion survey — President Barack Obama, who in the past has dismissed TV talking heads and horse-race politics as “cable chatter,” revived his career as a bully-pulpit media critic this weekend. Delivering a commencement address to the University …
Discussion:
Gawker, Romenesko, Editors Weblog, mediabistro.com, Runnin' Scared, Fitz & Jen, Mediaite, The Wire and CBS News
The Independent:
‘The first punch came, landing on my nose, sending blood down my face’ — ‘Independent’ reporter Jerome Taylor relives his bloody experience on the trail of voting fraud in east London — When I look back on it now what surprises me is how disarmingly polite my attackers were.
Discussion:
Press Gazette, Guardian, One Man & His Blog, Jon Slattery, FleetStreetBlues and Journalism.co.uk
Joe Pompeo / The Wire:
eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar's $20-Per-Month Hawaii News Site Is Live — Honolulu Civil Beat, the new Hawaii-based online news site and community hub launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, went live this morning. — A little background: Omidyar describes the site as a “civic square for Hawaii …
Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:
‘Conservation group’ quoted by NYT has direct ties to offshore drilling industry — “The sky is not falling,” a Gulf of Mexico Foundation exec told the Times for its front page oil spill story. ProPublica's Marian Wang writes: “The Times doesn't offer any more information about the foundation.
Robert Andrews / paidContent:
Debt-Laden Private Buyouts Are Back - Pearson Sells IDC For $3.4 Billion — Pearson (NYSE: PSO) said back in January it wanted to sell Interactive Data Corporation, its financial market data analytics provider. And now it is - for a pretty sum. — Silver Lake and Warbug Pincus funds …