Mediagazer: Time Takes a Step Away From Free Web Content (Jeremy W. Peters/Media Decoder)

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

We Need More Opinion In News, Not Less — I'm dismayed to see journalists continue to be punished, even fired, for expressing their opinions on the things they cover. Yesterday CNN terminated Octavia Nasr over a tweet praising a late Hezbollah leader. Last month Helen Thomas was forced to resign over statements about Israel.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and the nytpicker

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Time Takes a Step Away From Free Web Content — Time has decided to dive head first into an issue that has bedeviled many a news organization before it: how to wean online readers off their addictions to free content. — Time began taking content from its current issue off its Web site this week …

Discussion: Shaping the Future …, Mediaite, Newsweek, Nieman Journalism Lab, Crikey, Guardian and MediaMemo

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Is It Time to Stop Blogging and Start an Email Newsletter? — When entrepreneur Jason Calacanis shut down his blog in 2008 and replaced it with a subscription-only email newsletter, his move seemed to be more of a personal response to abusive reader comments rather than a leading indicator of a trend …

Discussion: Inc.com

Jolie O'Dell / Mashable!:

Pete Cashmore on How He Grew Mashable [VIDEO] — Our CEO and founder Pete Cashmore recently sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Venture to talk about how Mashable has grown as a startup and a small business. — We're a humble outfit, but — in Bloomberg's words — we're also one of the world's most profitable blogs.

Russ Smith / splicetoday.com:

Pass the Gravy, Mom — The Wall Street Journal's signature “a-hed” front-story is thriving, despite predictions that Rupert Murdoch would ditch it. — Two years ago, in a long feature story for The Atlantic about Rupert Murdoch and his takeover of The Wall Street Journal …

Discussion: Romenesko

Mike Melanson / ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Dominates Third-Party Logins For All But News — More and more, we're logging into websites using our credentials from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo. But which one is leading in the battle of the third-party login? What login do we chose when it comes to entertainment sites like MTV?

Discussion: Search Engine Watch, All Facebook, MediaPost and Inside Facebook, more at Techmeme »

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Rob Lowe may join bid for Miramax — The Miramax story took another strange turn yesterday when actor Rob Lowe emerged as a potential player in a bid to acquire the film studio from Walt Disney Co. — Lowe has ties to Tom Barrack's Colony Capital, which five days ago threw its hat …

Discussion: New York Times and DailyFinance

John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:

Is Yahoo Dead? I Don't Think So. Who Else With This Scale Can Be Neutral? — I'm sure you've noticed, but there's a major battle underway for the hearts and minds of what we, in this industry, broadly call “developers.” Often the term is used quite strictly, to mean actual coders …

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:

What Can Our Times Learn From the Launch of the London Times' Pay Wall? — On July 2, the London Times went behind a pay wall, enforcing a £2 a week surcharge to read any and all of its content. It was Rupert Murdoch's decision to make the move, as part of his larger plan to move …

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Comcast promises $20 million for venture capital fund for minority entrepreneurs — Comcast Corp. said it will contribute at least $20 million to a venture capital fund that the cable giant is creating to back minority entrepreneurs in developing new media content and technology.

Discussion: Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable and paidContent

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

An introduction to data scraping with Scraperwiki — Last week I spent a day playing with the screen scraping website Scraperwiki with a class of MA Online Journalism students and a local blogger or two, led by Scraperwiki's own Anna Powell-Smith. I thought I might take the opportunity …

The Barnes & Noble Review:

Clay Shirky — (With additional questions from James Mustich, Editor-in-Chief of the Barnes & Noble Review). — According to media columnist Michael Wolff, the name Clay Shirky is “now uttered in technology circles with the kind of reverence with which left-wingers used to say, ‘Herbert Marcuse’.”

Discussion: Snarkmarket

Vadim Lavrusik / Mashable!:

More Content Creators Cashing in on Blip.tv — Blip.tv is sending out more checks to its content providers than ever. The New York-based independent web shows platform has increased the number of payouts to its content creators by 77% between Q1 to Q2 of this year, Co-founder Dina Kaplan told Mashable in a recent interview.

Discussion: the blip.tv blog

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: The Wire, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, Company Town, New York Observer, Tower Ticker, DailyFinance, New York Times, Gawker, SportsMoney, The Wrap, Romenesko, Strupp and ESPN

Discussion: The Wrap, New York Observer, MediaPost, rbr.com, Company Town and Broadcasting & Cable

Bill Mitchell / Poynter Online:

Financing Final Farewells: Legacy.com and the Business of Death — Newspaper obits have come a long way since the Times of London started publishing its “Death's Doings” column in the mid-19th Century. But the ongoing pressure for newspapers to generate as much revenue as possible is generating …

Fern Siegel / MediaPost:

Lehrer To Expand Bravo Development Duties — >Bravo has upped Eli Lehrer to vice president, development. Lehrer, who had overseen development and production for the East Coast, continues to report to Andy Cohen, the senior vice president, original programming and development.

Discussion: Variety

Matthew Battles / Nieman Journalism Lab:

From prefab paint to the power of typewriters to the Internet: Distrust of the Shallows is nothing new — [Matthew Battles is one of my favorite thinkers about how we read, consume, and learn. He's reading and reacting to Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows.

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

Zeke Turner / New York Observer:

Pow! This 3D Magazine Knocked My Lights Out! — There are things you want to see in 3D in a magazine like Time Out New York and things you don't. But before we can see anything, we have to assemble the glasses. The perforation is hard to manage, forget putting the three parts together.

Discussion: Gizmodo

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

The Facebook Movie Will Not Be Using Facebook to Market the Facebook Movie — You might think a huge target audience and golden marketing opportunity for a high-profile Hollywood movie on Facebook, titled “The Social Network,” would be the 500 million members of Facebook. — Maybe not so much.

Discussion: PC Magazine, Bleeding Cool Comic Book and The Wire

Nick Bilton / Bits:

Don't Look for a TV in Television's Future — I have seen the future of television, and it doesn't involve a television. — Growing up in England, I remember intently following the World Cup soccer matches; we called it football of course. Back then, my viewing and engagement options were slim.