Mediagazer: Full-fledged CNN, CBS News merger would be difficult to consummate (Jim Romenesko/Romenesko)

4:40 PM ET, May 5, 2010

Top News:

Washington Post Co. to Sell Newsweek — Chairman Donald E. Graham cites multi-year losses. ‘We are exploring all options to fix that problem,’ he said. — Newsweek Web Exclusive — The Washington Post Co. announced today that it has retained Allen & Company to explore the possible sale of NEWSWEEK magazine.

John Koblin / New York Observer:

Meacham on Buying Newsweek: 'I'm Going to Take a Look at This' … Newsweek is up for sale, and Jon Meacham is going to explore the possibility of rounding up some bidders to buy the magazine himself. — “I believe this is an important American institution,” he said in an interview. “I just do.

Discussion: New York Times, Romenesko, The Wire, Gawker, Newsonomics, The Awl and Media Decoder

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance: ‘Newsweek’ Is For Sale, But Buyer Will Be Hard to Find

Rafat Ali / paidContent: Newsweek by Some-Really-Crazy Numbers

Juli Weiner / Vanity Fair:
Washington Post Co. to Sell Newsweek; “Mood's Not Bad Here, Surprisingly!”

Discussion: Romenesko, Media Week, Economy Watch, Bloomberg, FOXBusiness.com, CBC News and This Just In

Choire / The Awl:
Jon Meacham Putting Together Bid for ‘Newsweek’

Discussion: Romenesko, The Wire, Media Money …, Crain's New York Business, National Media, Guardian, GalleyCat, paidContent and FishbowlNY

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Time Inc. Publishes Good News: Ad Dollars, Subscription Revenue Up — Maybe the magazine business really did touch bottom last year. At least at Time Warner's giant Time Inc. unit: The publisher says ad revenue and subscription dollars actually increased in the first three months of 2010.

Discussion: Multichannel, Media Money …, rbr.com, Broadcasting & Cable, FishbowlNY, Guardian, Crain's New York Business, eMedia Vitals and New York Observer

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Ad Recovery At Time Inc., Turner Helps Time Warner Beat Street — Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) handily beat revenue and earnings estimates for the first quarter of 2010, with a profit increase of nearly 10 percent boosted by the ad recovery, higher affiliate fees and a strong film slate.

Discussion: MediaPost

Matthew Shaer / Christian Science Monitor:

Faisal Shahzad Facebook mixup highlights hazards of Web journalism — Earlier today, bloggers at the Huffington Post published a photo from Faisal Shahzad's Facebook page. One problem: They got the wrong Faisal Shahzad. — It was a testament to the hazards of reporting in the digital age.

Discussion: WebNewser, Gawker and The Huffington Post

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Full-fledged CNN, CBS News merger would be difficult to consummate — There would be problems involving union contracts — CBS's news division is unionized, and CNN's is not — and contracts for on-the-air employees would also probably have to be renegotiated, reports Bill Carter.

Discussion: Crain's New York Business, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, paidContent, rbr.com and Media Network

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:
CBS News and CNN Are Back in Partnership Negotiations

Discussion: New York Times, TVNewser, Media Decoder, DailyFinance, Company Town, TVWeek.com, B&C, Mediaite, MediaPost, New York Observer, The Wire, Tuned In, LocalNewser and Lost Remote

Daniel Lyons / Newsweek Blogs:

Apple vs. the Web: The Case for Staying Out of Steve Jobs's Walled Garden — Long before Apple even announced its new iPad, media companies were going nuts about the device, for two reasons. First, they believed they would be able to create apps that would be gorgeous and stunning …

Discussion: The Wire, Soup, MediaPost, DailyFinance, Gawker and VentureBeat

Felix Gillette / New York Observer:

High Tide at ‘The Atlantic’ — In the winter of 2009, David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic Media Company, and Justin Smith, one of his top executives, met for a late-night dinner at Kinkead's restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue to plot the opening gambits in a Beltway media war.

Discussion: Editors Weblog and Romenesko

Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:

Newsy raises $2M for honest-to-God mobile video journalism — Newsy, a startup formed in 2008 and based in Columbia, Missouri, announced this morning that the company has raised $2 million from undisclosed angel investors. The money, president Jim Spencer wrote in a prepared statement …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Newsy Blog, LocalNewser, NewTeeVee, paidContent and WebProNews

Peter Krasilovsky / BIA/Kelsey Local Media Watch:

NY-Area's ‘Main Street Connect’ Takes Aim at Hyperlocal (Too) — When it comes to hyperlocal, the problem may just be that the local reporting doesn't reasonate with the community as much as the old community papers did. That's the feeling behind Main Street Connect, a new company launched …

Discussion: Lost Remote, The Wire and the Econsultancy blog

Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:

News Websites Discuss Life Without Google — The Web 2.0 Expo kicked off in San Francisco on Tuesday with a discussion that would be unthinkable without social media: How Web publishers can be successful without Google. — The panel, moderated by the Journal's Jessica Vascellaro …

Steve Busfield / Guardian:

Simon Waldman to join LoveFilm — Guardian Media Group digital strategy chief to become group product director for DVD rental subscription service — The Guardian Media Group group director of digital strategy and development, Simon Waldman, is to join LoveFilm.

Discussion: Creative Disruption, Media Week, TechCrunch Europe, paidContent and Journalism.co.uk

CNET News:

Media ask for Gizmodo court records in iPhone probe — The justifications police gave for searching the home of a Gizmodo editor in the criminal investigation of an iPhone prototype should be public, CNET News is preparing to tell a judge this week. — A group that also includes …

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: Multichannel, paidContent, Variety, Company Town, Press Gazette, Strupp, MediaPost, Media Money …, CJR, Crain's New York Business, Broadcasting & Cable, The Huffington Post, paidContent and Media Matters for America

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:
Murdoch: ‘Any Idea About Us Spending $30 Million On A [Newspaper] War Is B.S.’ (NWS)

Discussion: Company Town, Associated Press and The Wire

Jonathan Stray / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Drawing out the audience: Inside BBC's User-Generated Content Hub — The BBC's User-Generated Content Hub is responsible for connecting with the huge organization's audience for news-gathering purposes, and they're good enough at it to have won a Royal Television Society award for their coverage of the 2007 UK floods.

Steve Myers / Poynter Online:

PolitiFact Takes Lesson from Fast-Food Industry as it Franchises Fact Checking — When PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair went to Austin to train the people who would run PolitiFact Texas, the first state-level PolitiFact operation, he handed out the “Texas Truth-O-Meter Owner's Manual.”

Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:

Fending Off Microsoft, Google Invests In TV Ad Startup Invidi (GOOG, MSFT) — Update: Invidi just put out a press release confirming the news: — INVIDI Technologies Corporation, the leader in advanced addressable advertising solutions for television, announced today it has secured …

Discussion: MediaMemo, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, NewTeeVee and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

MediaShift:

OurBlook Roundup: Journalism Will Survive in Digital Age — OurBlook.com is a website that gathers opinions from today's top leaders in the hopes of collaboratively finding tomorrow's solutions. It is funded by Paul Mongerson, a retired CEO who has a long history of philanthropy in the journalism world.

David Johns / Open:

Introducing Version 3 of the Times Newswire API — More than a year ago, we opened a veritable floodgate of information by releasing the Times Newswire API. Now, we've added new functionality to help you channel that flood. Version 3 of the Newswire API allows filtering by sections and sources …

Mark Cuban / NewTeeVee:

The Future of TV: Why NewTeeVee Is Wrong — Editor's note: Mark Cuban published a post on his blog yesterday titled The Future of TV is......TV in which he proclaimed that consumers don't want over-the-top video, but instead want to watch cable TV and VOD on their new, shiny HDTVs.

Discussion: blog maverick