Mediagazer: Turner Chases ESPN With New Web Game Face (Shira Ovide/Wall Street Journal)

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

Techmeme Offers Tech News at Internet Speed — SAN FRANCISCO — News lovers in Washington can't live without Mike Allen at Politico. Hollywood squabbles over the relative merits of Sharon Waxman's TheWrap versus Nikki Finke's Deadline. The newspaper industry reads the news collected by Jim Romenesko.

Discussion: MediaPost, Alexia Tsotsis, The Next Web, Global Nerdy, Beet.TV, 1938, Media Access Project and blackrimglasses

Jennifer Mascia / New York Times:

A Web Site That's Not Afraid to Pick a Fight — When Jon Stewart announced on the June 29 episode of “The Daily Show” that “Jezebel thinks I'm a sexist,” some viewers may have been wondering: who exactly is Jezebel? — At least a million and a half people can answer that question …

Discussion: New York Observer, The Wire, New York Magazine and Politics Daily

TheAustralian:

Students' iPad app catches the eye of media bosses — TWO graduate students from Stanford University have sold 100,000 of the iPad news app they developed. — TWO graduate students from San Francisco's Stanford University who developed an iPad application that aggregates news from multiple sources …

Discussion: TeleRead

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

Turner Chases ESPN With New Web Game Face — Time Warner Inc.'s Turner cable-television networks have forked over billions of dollars to air big-time sporting events, but they haven't matched the stature of ESPN. Now Turner is roping a corporate sibling into the chase.

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, WebNewser, paidContent and Digital Daily

Rich Thomaselli / AdAge:

How LeBron's Entourage Got His ‘Decision’ on ESPN — NBA Free Agent Hooked Up With Uber-Agent  Ari Emanuel for Show Touted as Ad ‘Paradigm’ — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — By now you've heard the offense against basketball star LeBron James' one-hour TV special to announce his team choice …

Discussion: mediabistro.com and The Wire

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post:

Fox News's Bill Hemmer melds middle-of-the-road persona with conservative guest list — Bill Hemmer, a middle-of-the-road guy from the middle of the country, sees himself as the straightest of straight arrows when it comes to news. — “The opinion-makers on our channel have enormous talent …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Mediaite, New York Magazine, CJR, Company Town, Chickaboomer and Inside Cable News

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Waging war on Wordpress — Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad ruled the blogging roost for years, but a combination of Twitter, social networking and the rise of lite blogging have been eating away at long-form blog platforms. — Twitter has played a significant role in the demise of ‘full’ blogging …

David Mitchell / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch may be evil, but that doesn't mean his paywall is — The media mogul has been dismissed for introducing his Times paywall, but what if it actually works? — Rupert Murdoch is a pretty uncontroversial figure among people I know. Everyone agrees that he's a monstrous arsehole who wants to ruin everything for everyone.

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

Tech Firms Tout New Online-Ad Formats — Media Companies Are Urged to Think More Creatively About Digital Businesses — SUN VALLEY, Idaho—As media companies voice doubts about whether they can build their digital businesses on advertising alone, technology companies are trying hard to persuade them to think more creatively.

Discussion: Search Engine Land and Silicon Alley Insider, more at Techmeme »

Still Not Going To Do This Every Day:

Exit — Always lead with the news: I've decided to leave my position at Newsweek and accept a job at Tumblr. Though this is cliche, it is indeed true that this has been a difficult decision for me. I have been and continue to be a loud and persistent defender of Newsweek, and this is not …

Discussion: Vaccinium & Co.

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

Condé Nast Shifts to Reverse — Nabs multi-title Samsung buy with Web edits' help — Condé Nast is diving into reverse publishing, courtesy of Samsung. The electronics giant is taking out a six-page insert that will run across six of the publishing house's titles and their associated Web sites over eight months.

Discussion: paidContent, WebNewser, Media Buyer Planner, eMedia Vitals and VideoNuze

Adrian Chen / Gawker:

Conde Nast's Largest Web Property Literally Begging Users for Money — Conde Nast's print properties aren't the only ones slowly dying, apparently. Now, popular user-driven news site Reddit, which Conde Nast bought in 2006, is asking users to donate money so the website can hire more staff.

Discussion: Breaking Media, the Econsultancy blog, Switched, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and reddit

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Oil Spill Makes Celebrities Out of Reporters — On Friday, Day 80 of the oil spill, much of the Gulf of Mexico still looked bruised and battered, just as it did the week before, and the month before that. So for a different perspective, CNN went scuba diving.

Discussion: Chickaboomer

PR Newswire:

Playboy Enterprises, Inc. Announces Receipt of ‘Going Private’ Proposal at $5.50 Per Share — Playboy Enterprises, Inc. ("PEI") (NYSE: PLA, PLAA) today announced that its board of directors has received a proposal from Hugh M. Hefner ("Hefner") to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Class …

Discussion: paidContent, DealBook, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Multichannel, MinOnline, rbr.com, The Wire, New York Observer and Globe and Mail