Mediagazer: Cable Bombast and Ratings Lead CNN Anchor to Quit (Brian Stelter/New York Times)

12:35 PM ET, May 19, 2010

Top News:

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: The Wire, Mediaite, Wonkette, Media Decoder and PopEater

Steve Krakauer / Mediaite:

Campbell Brown Leaving CNN After Network Grants Release From Contract (UPDATE) — Mediaite has learned CNN has granted anchor Campbell Brown's request to be let out early from her contract. — She has agreed to stay on and anchor the 8pmET hour until a replacement is found. Updated with statements.

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: Mediaite, Make Work Meaningful, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, The Snitch and Romenesko

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, Beehive City, Guardian, Editors Weblog 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: bbc.co.uk, Lost Remote, The Huffington Post and Jon Slattery

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

Yahoo's Buy of Associated Content Makes It a Publisher, Syndicator, Wire, Ad Rep...and More — So what indeed is Yahoo? CEO Carol Bartz has been trying to paint the new picture of it not being in Google's space, but being different. Not a search company, to be sure, a media company of some sort …

Discussion: The Praized Blog, Romenesko, Kirk LaPointe's … and Silicon Alley Insider

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Yahoo Buys Associated Content for $100 Million — Deal Will Shore Up Portal's Content Offerings, Help Produce Low-Cost Media — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Yahoo has acquired startup Associated Content for slightly more than $100 million in a deal the at gives the portal new technology and a new strategy for producing low-cost media.

Yodel Anecdotal:
Welcoming Associated Content to the Yahoo! Family

Discussion: WebNewser, BoomTown, Gawker, Epicenter, Trends in the Living Networks, DealBook and Beet.TV

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: eMedia Vitals and Free Press

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.

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: Romenesko and Collective Talent

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

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Google: we want to work with publishers — Google's plans to help prop up the flagging newspaper publishing industry include building paywall and subscription management tools, co-founder Larry Page has explained. — Speaking at Zeitgeist Europe, Page said that the newspaper and magazine industries …

John Gapper / John Gapper's Business Blog:
Google is agnostic about charging for news

Discussion: Marketing News and Financial Times

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: mediabistro.com and Gawker

Matthew Belloni / Hollywood Reporter:

NIKKI FINKE IN TALKS FOR HBO PAYDAY — EXCLUSIVE: HBO is trying to make a deal with litigious showbiz blogger Nikki Finke. The network is negotiating an arrangement with Finke to bless “Tilda,” its planned comedy about a Hollywood blogger very much like Finke.

Discussion: Romenesko, Gawker, LA Observed and New York Magazine

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: MediaMemo, TechCrunch, paidContent and PE Hub Blog

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Zuckerman considers making Newsweek bid — With the first-round deadline less than two weeks away, real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman, owner of the Daily News and US News & World Report, is now said to be considering a bid for Newsweek. — While Zuckerman has converted US News to a monthly from a weekly …

Discussion: The Wire and New York Magazine

New York Times:

Advertising: Fall Lineups Are Escapist but Not Oblivious — FOR more than two years, the state of the economy has been Topic A on television, from morning shows like “Today” to talk shows like “Oprah” to news shows like “60 Minutes.” But there is one time period from which discussions of the recession …

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 …

Mike Fleming / Deadline.com:

Docu On Jimmy Breslin & NYC Newspapers — UPDATE: Former flackmeister Dan Klores has spent the last decade making documentaries on New York-centric subjects. So, natch, he'll next focus his camera on Gotham's Jimmy Breslin. Klores will begin work in September on Breslin: The Great One …

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: Silicon Alley Insider and New York Observer

BBC:

300 years of papers go online — The British Library has announced a 10-year project to make 40m pages from its newspaper archive available online. — The record of more than 300 years of journalism, including coverage of the Crimean and Boer Wars, will be put on the web by the publisher BrightSolid.

Discussion: bl.uk, ResourceShelf, Press Gazette, Associated Press and Guardian

Richard Siklos / New York Observer:

Hollyworld: High-Low Split for Media Pay — Lately, media pay has become something of an extreme sport. — Last we checked, this was an industry in the midst of a recession and a scary transition. And yet Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently ranked the 10 most overpaid CEOs in America last year …

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:

Users' trust of online news rises in UK — British web surfers say they now trust online news sources more than television bulletins and newspapers, a survey by the UK media regulator Ofcom has found

Discussion: Tabloid Watch, Ofcom, The Wire and Kirk LaPointe's …