Mediagazer: Little Paper, Big News (Jxpaton/Digital First)

9:55 AM ET, June 21, 2010

Top News:

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Le Monde on The Brink — Within two weeks, the French newspaper Le Monde will run out of cash. By this Monday at noon, candidates to the takeover of the most prestigious French daily will have disclosed their offers. By June 28, the staff will vote and make the final decision for the fate of the 66 years-old paper.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg

Reuters:

France Telecom approves bid for Le Monde stake: source — (Reuters) - France Telecom's (FTE.PA) supervisory board has approved the firm's participation in a joint bid with two other investors for a stake in Le Monde, a source close to the matter said on Sunday.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and DealBook

Martin Fackler / New York Times:

Ink Gushes in Japan's Media Landscape — TOKYO — For years, the online newspaper JanJan News mounted a scrappy challenge to Japan's blandly conformist press, offering articles written by readers who took on taboo subjects like whaling and the media's collusion with the government.

Discussion: Guardian

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post:

Increasingly, nonprofits fill a need for investigative reporting — In a seventh-floor conference room festooned with framed articles and journalism awards, Managing Editor Gordon Witkin leads the morning discussion of stories his staff is pursuing. — Their latest scoop …

Discussion: Romenesko

Roy Greenslade / Guardian: The Times's paywall song - will you still read me when I'm free no more

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Google's Newspass: Is the King of Free About to Help News Providers Get Paid? — On Thursday, word seemed to quietly leak out, in Italian no less, that Google would soon unveil a one-click payment system for content called “Newspass.” — According to the newspaper La Repubblica, Google …

Discussion: Pursuing the Complete …, The Money Shot, Press Gazette, Search Engine Watch and Guardian

Adriano Farano:

Newspass, Is Google Murdoch's best friend? — Find the original French version of this article on OWNI, digital journalism magazine. — Murdoch dreamed of it? Google has just made it. In its June 17 edition, the website of the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica said the giant …

Discussion: MediaPost

David Carr / New York Times:

Larry King's Endgame at CNN — At the beginning of June, CNN's Larry King celebrated 25 years in the same slot on the same network — a remarkable achievement in a come-and-go business — and was joined over a week by Bill Gates, LeBron James and the leader of the free world to mark the occasion.

Discussion: Romenesko, Beehive City, Inside Cable News and New York Magazine

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

What's Murdoch's Aim With Latest Deal? — PARIS — What is Rupert Murdoch up to? That question comes up anytime the chief executive of News Corp. makes an acquisition, no matter how small. So last week, as the company proposed its biggest deal yet, the possibilities, for Murdoch-watchers, were particularly intriguing.

Discussion: The Wire

Steven Johnson / New York Times:

Yes, People Still Read, but Now It's Social — “THE point of books is to combat loneliness,” David Foster Wallace observes near the beginning of “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” David Lipsky's recently published, book-length interview with him.

Discussion: /Message and Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Nicholas Carr / San Francisco Chronicle: As technology advances, deep reading suffers

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

On Web Video, Captions Are Coming Slowly — The actress Marlee Matlin shimmied her way onto “Dancing With the Stars” two years ago, memorably using sign language to tell viewers to “read my hips.” But when Ms. Matlin, who is deaf, went to ABC.com to watch a replay of the show …

Jxpaton / Digital First:

Little Paper, Big News — From Flip Cams for all reporters to our ideaLab (http://bit.ly/ch0ew2) to our Ben Franklin Project ( http://bit.ly/apHRbA ), the employees of Journal Register Company are leading the way in exploring how a tired old newspaper company can become a fast acting and faster thinking news company.

Discussion: Guardian

Purva Patel / blogs.chron.com:

Matt Mullenweg talks about blogging's future, WordPress and Houston technology — Houston native turned San Francisco resident Matt Mullenweg is often touted as a local success story by the city's Web-technology enthusiasts. The 26-year old dropped out of the University of Houston in 2004 to work for CNET Networks.

Andrew Alexander / Washington Post:

Too hard to reach, too slow to fix — If a modern day Deep Throat phones The Post with a hot news tip, will the message get through? — Last month, a reader called to complain that he had been unable to alert the newsroom to a killing in Southeast. He'd telephoned The Post's main number …

Discussion: Regret the Error