Mediagazer: The Internet Weakens Authority (Terry Heaton/Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog)

6:00 PM ET, July 12, 2010

Top News:

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: Mediaite, ReadWriteWeb, Tumblr Staff, FishbowlNY, New York Observer and Vaccinium & Co.

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:

Newsweek's Excellent Tumblr Editor Is Leaving For ... Tumblr! — Newsweek is still shedding staffers. — Mark Coatney, an online editor who's gained recognition recently for building up the magazine's Tumblr blog, announced today on his own Tumblr blog that he's leaving Newsweek to go and work for, well, Tumblr!

Discussion: Romenesko

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: Rethink, Technologizer, MediaPost, Alexia Tsotsis, Global Nerdy, The Next Web, 1938, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Beet.TV, 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, Mediaite, Guardian, NYConvergence, The Wire and New York Magazine

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: Globe and Mail, The Wire and tag me with a spoon

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

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

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:
Penthouse Owner to Compete With Hefner for Playboy Control

Discussion: Financial Times

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Waging war on Wordpress: Posterous prepares the switch — 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 …

Discussion: The Next Web, more at Techmeme »

James Temple / Bloomberg:

Yahoo and Google in high-tech news war — Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are redefining the online news experience, but in diverging ways that underscore the evolving identities of the search giants. — Last week, Yahoo unveiled the Upshot, a blog created by the Sunnyvale portal's growing staff …

Discussion: MEDIA BEESWAX and Romenesko

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: The Wire, WebNewser, The Huffington Post, paidContent and Digital Daily

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

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Social Networks Sink Online-Ad Pricing — Facebook and Its Ilk Might Be Reducing Overall Pricing of CPMs — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Social networks and their endlessly growing page views have dominated every sphere of the web — from audiences to ad impressions.

Discussion: paidContent, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Social Media at Work and Digital Media 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: Gawker, The Huffington Post, TVWeek.com, Mediaite, Think Progress, Company Town, TVNewser, New York Magazine, Chickaboomer, Romenesko and Inside Cable News

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.

Bill Mitchell / Newspay:

Lancaster Paper Charges to View Obits in First Use of Journalism Online — Monday morning, the website for a midsized paper in southeastern Pennsylvania became the first to go public with the paid content system of Journalism Online, the startup engineered by Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and others.

Discussion: Recovering Journalist, CJR, Romenesko, Journalism.co.uk, paidContent, BrauBlog, mediabistro.com and Fitz & Jen

Edward Kosner / Wall Street Journal:

Too Good To Check — How journalists create myths and legends, not least about themselves. — Hello, city desk, get me rewrite. Here's the lead: Many of the landmark moments in American journalism are carefully nurtured myths—or, worse, outright fabrications.

John Koblin / New York Observer:

William Li Leaving Conde Nast — William Li, the former publisher of Men's Vogue and Portfolio, and the current associate publisher of Conde Nast Traveler, is leaving Conde Nast and the magazine industry altogether to become an executive for Ralph Lauren Home.

CNN:

Pentagon memo outlines military, media interaction in Afghanistan — Washington (CNN) — A Defense Department memo obtained by CNN Monday outlines “consensus recommendations” on how the U.S. military should interact with members of the media in relation to the war in Afghanistan.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

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, VideoNuze, Media Buyer Planner and WebNewser

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog:

The Internet Weakens Authority — In 2004, I delivered an academic presentation to J-school students in Tennessee that examined what would happen to culture as postmodernism's mantra of “I experience or participate, therefore I understand” became the norm. I've given this presentation …

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Renowned Journalist Johnnie Roberts Joins TheWrap — I'm delighted to bring you the news this morning that Johnnie L. Roberts, an award-winning journalist well-known in Hollywood and media circles and a veteran of Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, has joined TheWrap as an editor-at-large.

Discussion: Talking Biz News and Romenesko

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: Romenesko, Chickaboomer and TVNewser

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

WSJ Opinion Highlights The Problems Of ‘Permission Culture’ — A bunch of folks have been sending in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece by author Tony Woodlief, where he aptly demonstrates the problems with the “permission culture” we've built up around copyright today.

Steve Safran / Lost Remote:

Detroit newspapers join forces to start aggregator — The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are teaming up to launch Michigan.com, an aggregation site the hope will compete with MLive.com. — “Michigan.com will aggregate news, weather, sports, traffic, entertainment and recreation content …