Mediagazer: Jill Abramson Temporarily Steps Aside as Managing Editor to Focus on Digital Side (Stephanie Clifford/Media Decoder)

5:40 PM ET, May 19, 2010

Top News:

Stephanie Clifford / Media Decoder:

Jill Abramson Temporarily Steps Aside as Managing Editor to Focus on Digital Side — In an unusual and temporary management shuffle, Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news at The New York Times, will step aside for six months to focus on digital operations and strategy.

Discussion: New York Observer, FishbowlNY, Romenesko, Strupp, paidContent, Gawker and New York Magazine

Jim Romenesko / Poynter Online:

NYT memo re Jill Abramson — Jill's Big Adventure Colleagues: Beginning June 1, Jill is going to take a six-month detour from the traditional Managing Editor role to run the news part of the Website and to fully immerse herself in the digital part of our world.

Discussion: Talking Biz News and LA Observed

David Carr / Media Decoder:

48 HR Magazine Experiment Big Hit, Except for That Part About the Lawyers — It's the kind of story that would warm the cockles of any old MSM hack: Young, talented journalists in San Francisco decide to use all manner of digital technology and the networked wisdom of the crowd powered by social media to produce ... a magazine.

Discussion: Make Work Meaningful, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Mediaite, TVNewser, 48 Hour Magazine, The Snitch and Boing Boing

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Rupert Murdoch Still Needs Allies for His Digital News Crusade — Within the next two weeks or so, we're supposed to hear about Rupert Murdoch's digital news subscription service-the one he has been trying to put together for many months. — One problem: That service is supposed …

Discussion: New York Observer, eMedia Vitals and Free Press

Michael Wolff / Newser:

The Paywall Revolution Could Actually Be a Revolution — Follow him on Twitter @MichaelWolffNYC — Rupert Murdoch puts up a paywall around his Times and Sunday Times in London next week. The New York Times is indicating it will put its wall up in January.

Oliver Luft / Press Gazette:

Witherow: Paywall needed for Times 100m ed costs — John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times, last night admitted the move to restrict access to his newspaper's online content was “a big gamble” but necessary to help meet Times Newspapers' £100m editorial costs.

Discussion: paidContent, Guardian, Editors Weblog, Beehive City and Journalism.co.uk

Media Week:

Guardian editor forecasts ‘vault of darkness’ for The Times — LONDON - Alan Rusbridger and John Witherow sparred over their respective free and paid-for online journalism models last night, but were united in saying their current printing presses will be their last. — Alan Rusbridger: paywalls ‘a vault of darkness’

Discussion: industry.bnet.com, bbc.co.uk and Lost Remote

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Cable Bombast and Ratings Lead CNN Anchor to Quit — Once again, a star anchor is leaving CNN. This time it is Campbell Brown, and she is leaving with an extraordinary amount of candor. — In a heartfelt statement on Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Brown said she was leaving on her own accord …

Discussion: Mediaite, Wonkette, The Wire, TVNewser and PopEater

Steve Krakauer / Mediaite:
Campbell Brown Leaving CNN After Network Grants Release From Contract (UPDATE)

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Bloomberg EIC Winkler clamps down on Twitter posts — TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE — Bloomberg News editor in chief Matt Winkler is not happy with how some of the organization's journalists are phrasing their breaking news posts on Twitter. — In his weekly notes to the staff, Winkler recently slammed some specific Twitter posts.

Discussion: Romenesko and FishbowlNY

Gawker:

A $20 Million Bid to Buy Perez Hilton — Gawker has learned that Avid Life Media, the owner of sites including HotorNot.com and Ashley Madison, has partnered with two prominent gossip bloggers to put in a $20 million bid to acquire PerezHilton.com. — Avid Life's spokesperson, Steph Davis …

Discussion: New York Observer and Deadspin

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Huffington talks convergence, and “monetizeable free” — We wrote Monday about The Washington Post taking a page from The Huffington Post in building blog networks on the content-for-exposure-not-cash model. But the borrowing isn't all going in one direction.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Strupp, Romenesko, FishbowlLA and eMedia Vitals

Felix Gillette / New York Observer:

Three Birds, a Billionaire and the Hyper-Local Future of News — On the morning of Monday, May 17, a Web site called DNAinfo.com published a story about a rooster named Napoleon Bonaparte and two hens, named Lucy and Apple. The story was a classic nugget of neighborhood reporting …

Discussion: Gawker, Romenesko, NetNewsCheck Latest and Collective Talent

Reuters:

Twitter expects hundreds of advertisers — (Reuters) - Twitter, the rapidly expanding microblogging service, plans to have hundreds of advertisers using its new ad system in the fourth quarter as the company ramps up plans to become a self-sustaining, profitable business.

Discussion: Summit Notebook

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Google I/O: The Web Is Killing Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, And TV — Today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google's Vic Gundotra put up an interesting slide early on in his keynote. As you can see in the image above, over the past 5 years, the web is kicking ass.

Discussion: Soup

New York Observer:

Si It Isn't So! Condé Considers Move Downtown — Si Newhouse is intent on finding Condé Nast a new home. — Only 11 years after Condé Nast moved into 4 Times Square, Mr. Newhouse has stepped up a three-year-long real estate search and is setting his sights on, of all places, lower Manhattan.

Discussion: Romenesko

Antonina Jedrzejczak / The Wire:

Here Are All Eight Of The Wall Street Journal's Catty ‘Greater New York’ Ads (NWS) — Ever since The Wall Street Journal debuted “Greater New York” on April 26 and sparked a good old newspaper war with The New York Times, media watchers have been giddily blogging and tweeting out photos …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Strupp, Silicon Alley Insider and New York Observer

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Andrew Keen on why “the Internet is ideology” — Is the Internet technology or ideology? Is our media culture today really more meritocratic than it's been in the past? And when we talk about the web fostering democracy, what kind of democracy, actually, are we talking about? — Worthy questions, I'd say.

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: KNBC-TV's Steve Lange departs abruptly — The station announces the exit of its ‘vice president, content’ while admitting it had not lived up to its ‘journalistic standards.’ — You'd never know it from the serene and smiling faces plastered on the on-air talent …

bizjournals:

Brown Publishing proposes sale — Brown Publishing Co. has proposed to a New York bankruptcy court that its assets be sold to a recently formed company owned by its CEO Roy Brown, general counsel Joel Dempsey, and CFO Joseph Ellingham. — Terms of the proposed sale are outlined …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Blinkx's Growing Income Tethered By Ongoing Expenses — Video search-and-ads firm Blinkx nearly doubled its income last year - but ongoing product costs left it with another significant loss. — Suranga Chandratillake's Blinkx is well-positioned in the fast-growing space …

Discussion: ResourceShelf

Poynter Online:

WP's Vick named Time Jerusalem bureau chief — We're delighted to announce that Karl Vick is our new Jerusalem bureau chief. A gifted writer and reporter, Karl joins us from The Washington Post, where from 1998 to 2007 he covered most every major global conflict — and many minor ones, too.

Tim Elfrink / miaminewtimes.com:

Posner Plagiarizes Again — Disgraced Miami Beach author Gerald Posner is desperate. He apparently whitewashed an account of his serial plagiarism on his Wikipedia page, then threatened Miami New Times with a lawsuit for writing about it. And now he's retained an 83-year-old lawyer infamous …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, mediabistro.com and Gawker

Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Branches Out with Publishing Arm — Amazon.com Inc. said it plans to launch a publishing imprint that will produce English-language translations of foreign-language books. — The imprint, AmazonCrossing, will acquire rights to books and hire writers to translate them into English …

Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:

Blip.TV Raises Another $10 Million For TV Network Of The Future — Web video startup Blip.TV just closed a $10.1 million financing round to build out a sort-of “TV network of the future.” — Canaan Partners, which sold Associated Content to Yahoo yesterday for roughly $100 million, led the round.

Discussion: TechCrunch, MediaMemo, paidContent and PE Hub Blog

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Google: we want to work with publishers — Search giant's bosses say they want to collaborate on paywalls and subscription tools - and have held talks with Rupert Murdoch — Google's plans to help prop up the flagging newspaper publishing industry include building paywall …