Mediagazer: ESPN is planning to introduce a campaign that seeks to burnish … (Stuart Elliott/Media Decoder)

3:55 AM ET, July 10, 2010

Top News:

Darren Rovell / CNBC:

Reporter Jim Gray Paid By LeBron Entity, Not ESPN — As Jim Gray has told it, it was his idea to make LeBron James' free agent plan an hour special. He took the idea to James' marketing agent Maverick Carter of LRMR, who then worked with William Morris Endeavor to put the package together in front of ESPN executives.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, New York Observer, Deadline.com, New York Times, Show Tracker, NY Daily News, USA Today, New York Magazine, The Wire, Moraes on TV, SBNation.com and Soup

John D. Sutter / CNN:

Cavs owner's letter mocked for Comic Sans font — Editor's note: NBA.com and CNN.com share the same parent company, Turner Broadcasting Services Inc. — (CNN) — Dear computer users: If you're ever going to write a fuming letter, think twice before setting the font to the oh-so-mockable Comic Sans.

Discussion: The Daily Fix, New York Times, McSweeney's, Geekosystem, Best Week Ever, TechCrunch and PopWatch, more at Techmeme »

Sports Illustrated:
ESPN's LeBron circus good for TV ratings, bad for sports media

Discussion: Vanity Fair, Romenesko and Wall Street Journal

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Journalists Worried About Content Farms Are Missing The Point: The Web Has Always Been Filled With Crap — There's been a lot of fretting lately in the journalism field about the rise of so-called “content farms.” These are operations like Demand Media or Associated Content …

Discussion: E-Media Tidbits

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

YouTube Starts $5 Million Fund to Finance Original Videos — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In a cautious move into the original content business, search titan Google announced that its YouTube property has created a $5 million fund to help finance more original videos.

Discussion: YouTube Blog, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Erictric, paidContent, NewTeeVee, Hollywood Rewired, VentureBeat, All Things Digital and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Globe and Mail:

Lisa LaFlamme to replace Lloyd Robertson at CTV — Lisa LaFlamme will replace Lloyd Robertson as anchor of CTV National News, the network announced on Friday. — Ms. LaFlamme, who began her broadcast career at a Kitchener-Waterloo affiliate in 1988, is currently national affairs correspondent for CTV News.

Discussion: TVNewser

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo Media Chief Jimmy Pitaro Talks About the Upshot of Content's Future — Whilst in Santa Monica, Calif., this week, BoomTown stopped in at the YahooPlex for a quick chat with the Internet giant's Jimmy Pitaro, who is VP of media. — The focus was a high-profile blog called The Upshot …

Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:

Newspaper Wants Readers to Pay to Comment — Earlier this year, the Sun Chronicle, a small Massachusetts-based newspaper, closed down comments on its website after discussions in the paper's comment section got out of hand. Now, in order to “encourage intelligent and meaningful conversation …

Discussion: Techdirt and NetNewsCheck Latest

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

ESPN is planning to introduce a campaign that seeks to burnish the cable channel's brand rather than to encourage viewers to watch specific programs. — The campaign, scheduled to get under way on Monday, carries the theme “It's not crazy. It's sports.” The campaign takes …

Discussion: AdAge, Romenesko, USA Today, Tower Ticker and MediaPost

Mark Carter / ArkansasBusiness.com:

Four KARK Employees Fired In Video Aftermath; Nexstar VP Apologizes — Three KARK on-air employees and a photographer have been fired in the aftermath of two profanity-laden spoof videos posted to video-sharing website YouTube, ArkansasBusiness.com has learned.

Discussion: Romenesko

MediaShift:

Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age — Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

David Brooks / New York Times:

The Medium Is the Medium — Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years. — Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington …

Discussion: The New Republic

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

New Apple TV Will Push 99 Cent Streaming TV Rentals — Apple is about to get a lot more serious about its “hobby” with the next release of its Apple TV set-top box, as sources say that the software company will look to push a new streaming rental service that will offer up individual TV episodes for 99 cents.

Discussion: Ars Technica, MediaPost, Mashable!, PC World, Fast Company, CrunchGear and Gizmodo

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Rewired:

Google woos studios, guilds in Sun Valley — Attention movie studios: Google's YouTube is open for business with you and other content partners. — That was a key message from the Google top management team here Thursday as chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt (pictured) and co-founders Larry Page …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal