Mediagazer: Newspaper chains slap Colorado political blog with cease-and-desist order (Jim Romenesko/Romenesko)

7:15 PM ET, July 7, 2010

Top News:

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Time Inc.'s Web Paywall, Explained — Quick follow up to the Time magazine paywall story. Here's Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges explaining the publisher's policy-it will be title by title, but you'll be seeing more walls in the future: … So there you go. — Two quick notes:

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Romenesko, New York Magazine and DailyFinance

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Time Magazine Walls Off Its Web Site: Will You Pay Up? — Want to read the cover story of this week's Time magazine? Whip out your wallet: You can only get all of Steve Brill's piece on lobbying and financial reform via Time's print edition or its new iPad app.

Discussion: MediaPost, Felix Salmon, Poynter Online, Mother Jones, paidContent, The Wrap, Audience Development, The Wire, Media Buyer Planner, Techdirt, Guardian, Nieman Journalism Lab and Time, more at Techmeme »

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Content ‘Farms’: Killing Journalism — While Making a Killing — If you ask most working journalists what they think about Associated Content, Demand Media or AOL's Seed, you may hear a scoffing sound. — After all, these sites, while providing some people with work, produce high-volume …

Discussion: Romenesko, Thompson on Hollywood, Reinventing the Newsroom, Media Gleaner, Editors Weblog, Gannett Blog, eMedia Vitals and New York Times

Caroline McCarthy / The Social:

Will blog posts get stamps of quality? — Walk through the produce aisles of any grocery store and on the outsides of avocados, pomegranates, mushrooms, and just about everything else you'll see an astonishing number of stickers and labels advertising various kinds of quality standards …

Discussion: MarketingVOX

Mike Shields / Mediaweek: Council to Counter Web Content Generators' Growing Clout?

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap: Jay Rosen on Content Farms: Demand Media Not Evil, But Still Demonic

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Huffington Post Buys Pollster — The Huffington Post is venturing into the wonky but increasingly popular territory of opinion poll analysis, purchasing Pollster.com, a widely respected aggregator of poll data that has been a major draw for the website of the National Journal.

Discussion: Romenesko, paidContent, The Wrap and Pollster.com All Content

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Digital journalism: More work, more pressure but more opportunity — Longer hours, more pressure, decreasing quality and less enjoyable work. Old media is a dark, dark place for journalism - at least that's the mood of many of the journalists who were interviewed for the annual Oriella digital journalism study.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, Editors Weblog and Kirk LaPointe's …

Matt Creamer / Breaking Media:
A Sign That Online Video News Is Dying — And That's Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

Discussion: The Onion

Brian Steinberg / AdAge:

To Get LeBron, ESPN Cedes Control Over Ads, News — James Tells Sports Network Which Reporter Can Ask Him to Reveal ‘The Decision’ — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Did ESPN just get “mediajacked”? — Normally, an event as important and interesting as basketball wunderkind LeBron James announcing …

Discussion: SportsMoney and Romenesko

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

‘The Decision,’ Brought to You By ... Madison Avenue will show up on Thursday night when the basketball star LeBron James reveals on ESPN his decision about where he will play next season and beyond. — The hourlong live special, scheduled for 9 p.m., will be sponsored, ESPN said on Wednesday …

Discussion: The Wrap, MediaPost, ESPN, rbr.com and Broadcasting & Cable

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Allen & Co. summer camp mogulfest gets underway — For most people, going to the same place every summer for almost 30 years would get a little boring. — But moguls are not most people and once again the industry's top executives are gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho for investment bank …

Discussion: MediaFile, Romenesko, All Things Digital, The Huffington Post and Silicon Alley Insider

Bloomberg:
Moguls' Sun Valley Summer Camp to Focus on Web, Not Mega-Deals

Discussion: Digits, Idaho Mountain Express …, Khan Manka, Jr. and DealBook

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

The Wall Street Journal Is Clobbering The New York Times (And Everyone Else) In E-Reader Subscriptions (NWS) — The Wall Street Journal has by far the highest e-reader circulation of any newspaper in the U.S., according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data cited in a recent report by the World Association of Newspapers.

Discussion: Romenesko, Gannett Blog and BrauBlog

Steve Krakauer / Mediaite:

CNN's Octavia Nasr Leaving Network After Controversial Hezbollah Tweet — In the latest case of new media (or oversharing) gone wrong, CNN's Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs Octavia Nasr is leaving the company following the controversy caused by her tweet in praise of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Discussion: Media Decoder, The Wrap, The Huffington Post, Gawker, Talking Points Memo, Romenesko, Join Simon Wiesenthal Center …, Hot Air, Big Journalism, Chickaboomer, Inside Cable News, Runnin' Scared, CNN, This Just In, TVNewser, Global Voices in English and Jerusalem Post

Tim Partridge / YouTube Blog:

Life in a Day — Every day, 6.7 billion people view the world through their own unique lens. Imagine if there was a way to collect all of these perspectives, to aggregate and mold them into the cohesive story of a single day on earth. — Today, we're excited to announce the launch of …

Sarah Boesveld / Globe and Mail:
YouTube, Ridley Scott embark on global film experiment

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, Speakeasy, MTV Movies Blog, NEWS.com.au and National Post

Laura Oliver / Journalism.co.uk:

'We're helping to rebuild a profession': Hyperlocal network founder aims for 3,000 sites — Last week the New York Times withdrew from its hyperlocal news experiment in New Jersey. The title handed over the audience for its New Jersey branch of the Local to established …

Mark S. Luckie / 10,000 Words:

No resources? No problem: How a local Russian paper took on the New York Times — A large number of the ambitious or innovative digital journalism stories featured on 10,000 Words are produced by larger newsrooms with more resources to devote to more elaborate projects.

Jim / Gannett Blog:

Gannett confirms comment moderation switch — The company started outsourcing a key part of online comment moderation late last week, the Hattiesburg American disclosed today, confirming a Gannett Blog reader's report two weeks ago. — The Mississippi newspaper's note to readers follows …

Discussion: Romenesko

Steve Rosenbaum / The Wire:

Interview: Rex Sorgatz Infuses Blog Thinking Into Big Media Brands — There are a lot of great things happening with web content right now. The connection of content and data. The ability to bake social tools into sites. The emergence of a relationship between data and editorial.

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Newspaper chains slap Colorado political blog with cease-and-desist order — MediaNews Group, Freedom Communications, and Swift Communications accuse ColoradoPols.com of “flagrant and persistent theft of intellectual property.” The blog's proprietors respond: “Not only are we posting …

Discussion: ColoradoPols.com, Techdirt, TeleRead and Mediaite

DigiDave:

Five Lessons to Learn from NewsTilt — Note: This is the second attempt at this post on a sleepless Saturday night. The first and better draft was lost. Alas, this one may be less robust. — I've always wanted to see a Crunchbase for journalism startups.

Ellie Behling / eMedia Vitals:

‘Atlantic’ hits new highs for web traffic, revenue — TheAtlantic.com offers hope for publishers who believe improving editorial quality isn't an outdated digital strategy. The publisher announced that its website set new traffic and revenue records in the first half of 2010, and Jay Lauf …

Discussion: Canadian Magazines

Mark Twain / Online NewsHour:

Exclusive: Newly Published Mark Twain Essay, ‘Concerning the Interview’ — Thanks to the Mark Twain Foundation and its trustees, the PBS NewsHour brings you for the first known time in print an essay by the American literary giant on a topic dear to our hearts — the journalistic interview.

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

‘A very terrifying business’: Tom Whitwell on the Times' great paywall experiment — Taking the path into paid content was “a very terrifying business”, but essential to staying away from commodified news, the Times' assistant editor and head of online told an audience of online publishers today.

Discussion: ukaop.org.uk

Drew / Fark.com:

Why the wisdom of crowds is bunk and what Web 3.0 really is. Also, some of Fark's favorite Headlines of the Week for 6/27 - 7/3 — The “wisdom of crowds” is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. — Yeah I said it. — Crowds are not wise. There is wisdom in crowds but you have to search to find it.

Discussion: The Awl

Nilay Patel / Engadget:

Amazon Kindle dual-screen e-reader patent granted, Barnes & Noble Nook potentially in trouble — Looks like the battle for e-reader dominance between Amazon and Barnes & Noble could soon expand beyond the recent spate of price drops and into the courtroom as well: the USPTO just granted …

Discussion: DailyFinance, paidContent, Kindle Review, theBookseller.com and Silicon Alley Insider

Bernard Golden / CIO.com:

How the Cloud Changed World's Oldest Newspaper — Take a look at the all-in cloud strategy of the Telegraph Media Group. It's an instructive lesson in how rapidly the business world is changing and why IT must take an approach that supports it.