Mediagazer: 5 Staffers Flee Newsweek, Hedge-Funder Phil Falcone May Be Trying To Buy It (WPO) (Joe Pompeo/The Wire)

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Diller says paywalls at NYT, other media will eventually work — Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, spoke with Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu about the outlook for readers paying for online content. Diller said that, like the music business, paid content online will eventually succeed.

Discussion: The Wrap

Diller Says Valuations Kept IAC From Buying Companies — Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said recent acquisitions his company considered fell apart over valuations. — IAC, which operates the Ask.com search site and the Match.com dating site …

Discussion: New York Observer and Company Town

Neil Swidey / Boston Globe:

Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster — These users comment on everything from today's news to hotel rooms. Many are harmless. But some are ruthless. Who are they exactly, and why do they do what they do? — On Monday, May 17, at 2 p.m., a breaking news article headlined …

Discussion: Romenesko and Universal Hub

Tony Ortega / Runnin' Scared:

Deal Between Gothamist and Rainbow Media is Officially Dead — We don't know whether Knicks and Cablevision owner James Dolan will be writing a new blues song about this, but we've learned here at the Voice that what was earlier just a rumor is now definitely true …

Discussion: Gawker, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine, NYConvergence, DealBook and New York Observer

Choire / The Awl:

The Strange, True Story of Gothamist and Jimmy Dolan — Gothamist, a metro website company, founded in 2003, now has 13 city-specific websites, which reach 2.7 million unique readers a month, according to Quantcast. For a long time, in my opinion, Gothamist was stubborn about growing as a business.

Discussion: Mediaite

Jon Bershad / Mediaite: How The Most Expensive Penis Joke Ever Killed Gothamist - Rainbow Deal

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

YouTube's Secret “News Experiment” Explained! (Warning: Not Really That Secret) — Is YouTube getting into the local news business? No, not really. — But! SF Weekly has a weird, confusing tale about YouTube's sort of secretive effort to launch a “local news experiment” in San Francisco.

Discussion: Lost Remote and NewTeeVee, more at Techmeme »

Discussion: MediaPost and HyperlocalBlogger

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

5 Staffers Flee Newsweek, Hedge-Funder Phil Falcone May Be Trying To Buy It (WPO) — All's been quiet on the Newsweek front recently, but here are a few interesting developments. — By our count, five staffers have left Newsweek since The Washington Post Co. announced on May 5 that it was putting …

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Q&A: Knight News Challenge winner Retha Hill discusses her local platform CitySeed — Former journalist Retha Hill was one of the 12 winners of this year's Knight News Challenge. Her winning concept, which was awarded £90,000, is CitySeed: an online platform where local people can propose topics for local news media attention.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Newspaper Death Watch, The Walter Cronkite School … and The Windy Citizen Full Feed

Discussion: NewTeeVee

Gawker:

Wired, Wikileaks and the Hacker-Journalist Complex — On June 6th, Wired.com published a report that military intelligence analyst Bradley Manning had been arrested for allegedly leaking the famous 2007 Apache helicopter attack video to Wikileaks. Now Wikileaks and others are questioning Wired's involvement in the story.

Discussion: CJR

Prescott Shibles / eMedia Vitals:

Should publishers trust Google's new paywall initiative? — Google is currently recruiting publishers for a new paid content system that will launch by the end of the year, according to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. While Google has positioned this move as a means of helping newspapers …

Discussion: paidContent:UK, Kirk LaPointe's … and Search Engine Land

Nielsen Wire:

Web Users Alter Surfing Habits Very Little While Watching TV — While new devices like the iPad continue to drive simultaneous usage (people watching TV while they are also online) there appears to be very little difference between people's online usage habits when they're watching TV and when they are not.

Discussion: NewTeeVee, Nieman Journalism Lab and TVbytheNumbers

Zeke Turner / New York Observer:

Jim Frederick Named Online Managing Editor of Time — John Huey and Rick Stengel named Jim Frederick online managing editor of Time.com and the executive editor of Time magazine in an announcment to Time Inc. staff this morning. — “In addition to running TIME.com, Jim will continue …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and New York Magazine

Laura McClure / Mother Jones:

I Can Haz Media Empire? — He's allergic to cats. He's got surprisingly good grammar. Meet Ben Huh, the meme maestro behind LOLcats and FAIL Blog. — Post Comment — People usually don't know quite what to make of the Cheezburger Network, and CEO Ben Huh wishes more of them would just ask.

Discussion: Breaking Media and Romenesko

Guardian:

Sky Sports News to go behind paywall in battle with Freeview — Subscription model seen as best bet over long term, while analysts say Sky may load rival with poor content — News Corporation is to put another of its services behind a paywall as it emerged yesterday that Sky Sports News is to be pulled from Freeview.

Discussion: Shaping the Future … and Media Week

Evelyn Rusli / TechCrunch:

Does The iPad Change Everything? Publishers Chime In — We've fiercely debated the merits of the iPad (here and here and here and here) and whether Apple's “magical” device will transform the mass market. The question, of course, is not whether the iPad is the leader in the tablet market …

Discussion: DailyFinance, Poynter Online, Garcia Media, paidContent and 9 to 5 Mac

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

Big problems at L.A. Times this morning ** — Many problems with the Los Angeles Times presses last night and early this morning — with numerous breakages of the pressroom web — and some papers are still just being delivered. Advertisers and readers are reportedly livid all over the place …

Discussion: Romenesko and L.A. NOW

Joe Ciarallo / PRNewser:

NBC Combines Marketing, Promo and PR Departments — NBC News said today that it will be combining its communications, marketing and promotion arms into one department, NBC News Marketing and Communications. — Lauren Kapp, who has been with NBC since 2002, most recently as VP NBC News Communications …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

Advertising: Known Faces Displace Amateurs in Online Videos — Just as the unknowns who showed up on screen in the early days of television gave way to radio and movie stars like Jack Benny and Bob Hope, more famous faces are supplanting everyday people in Web series, particularly when the video clips are sponsored by advertisers.

Discussion: iMediaConnection Blog

Michael Shain / New York Post:

Hooked up — CNN matches Spitzer with columnist. Eliot Spitzer has found a new woman. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is the “leading candidate” to share a new 8 p.m. show on CNN with the former governor, according to sources close to the talks. Parker, 58, is probably best known …

Discussion: Mediaite and Inside Cable News

Mike Reynolds / Multichannel News:

Multiplatform Usage Soars Around World Cup: ESPN XP Research — Those Watching TV, Using Three Other Platforms, Spent Over 5 Hours Daily WIth FIFA Tourney — Futbol fans are cottoning to ESPN's myriad platforms presenting 2010 World Cup matches and fare.

Discussion: Crain's New York Business, SocialTimes.com, paidContent:UK, NewTeeVee and MediaMemo

William Wei / Silicon Alley Insider:

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? “Numa Numa Guy” Is Creating The Next CollegeHumor — Gary Brolsma had just graduated from high school and started working at “Expert PC” in Saddlebrook, NJ when he made his infamous “Numa Numa Dance” video. — “I didn't plan to make the video,” Brolsma told us over a series of phone calls and emails.