Mediagazer: Will Lewis leaves Telegraph (Guardian)

6:10 AM ET, May 6, 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: Media News, The Biz Blog, FishbowlNY, New York Times, The Wire, Newsonomics, Romenesko, The Daily Beast, AdAge, Publishing Executive News, MediaPost, Wonkette, On Media's Blog, Media Money … and Gawker

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:

Can Jon Meacham Save Newsweek Now? — The news from this morning's Washington Post Company board meeting that Newsweek is being put up for sale is a public acknowledgment of a fact that has become increasingly apparent to everyone: The magazine is broken. Under Jon Meacham …

Discussion: Guardian

Joe Pompeo / The Wire: Jon Meacham On ‘The Daily Show’: It's Time To Flip The Switch From Print To Digital

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent: Don Graham On Newsweek: 'We'll Get A Buyer'

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

Discussion: The Wire

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

Discussion: Seth's Blog, Economy Watch, FishbowlNY, Romenesko and Mediaite

Guardian:

Will Lewis leaves Telegraph — Editor-in-chief and digital managing director understood to have departed after disagreement with chief executive — Greenslade: Why Lewis really fell out with MacLennan — Will Lewis has been pushed out of the Telegraph Media Group after a disagreement …

Discussion: Financial Times, Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk, Beehive City, paidContent, Media Week, Editors Weblog and Jon Slattery

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 …, Romenesko, rbr.com, FishbowlNY, Crain's New York Business, Broadcasting & Cable, Guardian, New York Observer and eMedia Vitals

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Ad Recovery At Time Inc., Turner Helps Time Warner Beat Street

Discussion: MediaPost

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: FishbowlNY, Shane Richmond, Silicon Alley Insider, Soup, MediaPost and DailyFinance

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Variety 2.0: Save the Good Stuff For Print — Variety appears to have settled on a strategy to change its declining fortunes, and all indications have been that in the age of online the trade is betting on print. — New evidence of this from Variety.com editor Chris Krewson's blog (which …

Discussion: Chris Krewson

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Craig Kilborn to Return With a New Syndicated Show — Craig Kilborn, the original host of “The Daily Show” and then a late-night host for CBS in its 12:35 a.m. “Late Late Show” is about to return to television in a prospective syndicated show for 20 TV, the syndication arm of Fox's television stations.

Discussion: Show Tracker, Variety, rbr.com, Broadcasting & Cable and PopWatch

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Irony Alert: Slate Group Claims Q1 Ad Revs Rose More Than 50 Percent — Not all of the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) Company's publications are seeing a long list of declines: On the same day that its parent announced plans to sell struggling print Newsweek and Newsweek.com …

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

Effort to Integrate Madison Avenue Turns to Super Sunday — A long-running attempt to bring more racial diversity to the advertising industry is shining a spotlight on the biggest day of the year for advertising — Super Bowl Sunday — in an effort to bring its arguments to life.

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Launches New Ad Blitz — Campaign Promoting Site as One-Stop Web Destination Makes a Jab at Google — On the heels of a disappointing ad campaign, Yahoo is hoping to increase traffic to its home page and win back share in the Internet-search market with a new ad blitz that takes a shot at larger rival Google.

Discussion: BoomTown, Mashable! and paidContent

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Media mogul launches Saban Brands — Media mogul Haim Saban wants to become a brand mogul, too. — Saban, who first earned a fortune with “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and now is chairman and chief executive of Saban Capital Group, which counts the powerful Spanish-language broadcast …

Discussion: Media Decoder

Joanne McNeil / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Tracking memes on their native turf: Viral anthropology at ROFLcon — If ROFLcon isn't the world's largest gathering of Internet celebrities, it at least appears to have the highest concentration. In the audience was Matt Harding, who danced around the world in his series of videos, Where the Hell is Matt?

Discussion: Tomorrow Museum

Jack Loechner / MediaPost:

... Yet Without Information, We Are Nothing — A new study, conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) and students at the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, “24 Hours: Unplugged,” asked 200 students at the College Park campus to give up all media for 24 hours.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

CBS Interactive Display Revs Rise 19 Percent — As CBS and the other broadcast nets head into the heart of the upfront season, the ad recovery appears to be gaining momentum. The company's revenues and profits were up by healthy amounts. But one of the clearest signs of a turnaround …

Discussion: rbr.com and Broadcasting & Cable

Bill Mitchell / Newspay:

Freelance Group Hopes to Become an “a la Carte News Service” — If you're freelancing these days by choice or by circumstance, there's a matchmaker looking for you in L.A. — The Journalism Shop, launched last summer by two former L.A. Times staffers as a service for former colleagues at the paper …

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.”

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Janet Malcolm on Journalism's Long Con … In the current issue of The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm takes on what she sees as a broken system of criminal justice in a story about the trial of a Queens doctor convicted of killing her husband, but as is often the case in her work, there is a baked-in critique of the craft of journalism.

Discussion: Mind Matters