Mediagazer: Harman Signs Deal to Buy Newsweek From Washington Post Co. (Nat Ives/AdAge)

3:40 PM ET, August 2, 2010

Top News:

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr — By now, plenty of traditional media companies have hopped on the social media bandwagon, pumping out news updates on Facebook and Twitter. — But do those companies have the time and resources to work yet another Web outlet into their daily routine?

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:
Newsweek.com's Managing Editor Is Bailing For MSN

Discussion: The Wrap and Romenesko

Max Read / Gawker: A Guide to Old Media Tumblrs

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Harman Signs Deal to Buy Newsweek From Washington Post Co. — It's Official: Audio Tycoon to Take Control of Storied Newsweekly — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It's official: Sidney Harman, the businessman who made his fortune selling stereo equipment, has secured a deal to buy Newsweek …

Discussion: paidContent, The Huffington Post, MediaPost, Media Matters for America, Crain's New York Business, Media Decoder, Romenesko, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, The Wire, Wonkette, Runnin' Scared, New York Observer and On Media's Blog

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post: Newsweek editor Meacham expected to leave after sale

Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy — The online habits of most people who use the world's dominant Web browser are an open book to advertisers. That wasn't the plan at first. — In early 2008, Microsoft Corp.'s product planners for the Internet Explorer 8. browser intended …

Discussion: AdAge, MSDN Blogs, Online NewsHour, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, Fast Company, Stephen Baker, THINQ.co.uk, Gizmodo, Digits, The BLT, eMedia Vitals and Consumer Reports …, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:
Ad Tracking Is Getting More Detailed - But Is That A Problem For Consumers?

Discussion: iMediaConnection Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest and LOTAME

Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:
You are not an eyeball: Why tracking is the ad biz's last gasp

Discussion: CJR, cyber.law.harvard.edu and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Nat Ives / AdAge:

New York Times Offers IPhone, IPad App Platform to Other Publishers — Dallas Morning News, U.K.'s Telegraph Sign Up to License Times Code — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The New York Times is offering a platform that other publishers can use to produce their own apps for devices starting with the iPad and iPhone.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The New York Times Company, TechCrunch, Journalism.co.uk, paidContent, The Wire, Poynter Online, Fast Company and NetNewsCheck Latest

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

Wired to Produce Short Films For iPad — Wired, the magazine about the intersection of tech and culture, launched its iPad edition in June with a buffet of multimedia, including videos, audio and interactive graphics. — With its August issue, it's going one step further …

Discussion: SteveOuting.com, Media Buyer Planner and eMedia Vitals

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

Free Content Isn't a Right, Nor Is His Job, CEO Says — As NBC Universal prepares for a planned takeover by cable giant Comcast Corp., its chief executive, Jeff Zucker , may be auditioning for a big job: his own. — After years of slashing costs at NBC and saying broadcast television is broken, Mr. Zucker sees a brighter outlook.

Discussion: NewTeeVee, Deal Journal and BLTv

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

New Site Aims to Connect Reporters and Publicists — There are few professional relationships that seesaw between love and hate more than those of public relations people and journalists. While they provide valuable help to each other at times, they rarely need the same things at the same time.

Discussion: Romenesko, NetNewsCheck Latest and Talking Biz News

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

The Facebook Gravitational Effect — Over the next twelve months, the media industry is likely to be split between those who master the Facebook system and those who don't. A decade or so ago, for a print publication, going on the internet was seen as the best way to rejuvenate its audience …

Discussion: Nielsen Wire, MediaFile and suzanne yada, more at Techmeme »

Richard Gray / Telegraph:

Minority Report-style advertising billboards to target consumers — Advertising billboards similar to those seen in the film Minority Report, which can recognise passers-by, target them with customised adverts and even use their names, are being developed by computer engineers.

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Following up on the need for follow-up — Matt Thompson, currently of NPR and always of Snarkmarket, left a comment on my post from Friday about the need for follow-up journalism — including a link to a Snarkmarket post he'd written back in 2007. After reading that entry …

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of membership, part 2 — [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] — New news organizations have embraced the membership model …

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post:

In journalism's crossfire culture, everyone gets wounded — The nastiness index keeps on rising, and all of us are getting sullied in the process. — Media outlets, which once merely chronicled this era of hyper-partisanship, now seem to be both the purveyors and often the targets of ugly attacks.

Discussion: FishbowlDC and On Media's Blog

James Hibberd / The Hollywood Reporter:

Steve Levitan: Take ‘Modern Family’ offline — If it was up to Steve Levitan, his ABC hit “Modern Family” wouldn't be available online. — During an ABC-sponsored coffee break at TCA, Levitan said he's unsuccessfully lobbied Disney-ABC TV Group president Anne Sweeney to remove online versions of his hit show.

Discussion: NewTeeVee, MediaMemo, PopWatch and TV Tattle

David Carr / New York Times:

The Media Equation: Buzz Bissinger's Full Conversion to Digital — Two years ago, Buzz Bissinger took a stand against digital culture. — A specialist in long-form magazine journalism and the author of “Friday Night Lights,” considered by some to be the best sports book ever written …

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Observer

Editorial Photographers UK:

“For God's sake, somebody call it!” — Has the time come to take photojournalism off life-support? After nearly 25 years in the business, agency director Neil Burgess steps forward to make the call. — For the last thirty-odd years, I've been listening to people talk about, or predict the death of photojournalism.

Discussion: Guardian

Brian Steinberg / AdAge:

Why ‘Mad Men’ Has So Little to Do With Advertising — Ratings, Ad Revenue Small, So Focus Is on Overseas Sales, Digital and — Maybe — a Song-and-Dance Revue — ‘Mad Men’ characters Roger Sterling and Don Draper. — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — On cable's “Mad Men,” characters such as Don Draper …

Discussion: Gawker, The Awl, The Atlantic Online, New York Observer, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel, Speakeasy and New York Magazine

Glynnis MacNicol / Mediaite:

Christiane Amanpour's This Week Debut: Different Host, Exact Same Show — Christiane Amanpour made her much-anticipated debut as host of This Week this morning. Other than her presence it was difficult to find anything else about the show that was different.

Discussion: Washington Post, Media Matters for America, Romenesko, The Huffington Post, On Media's Blog, TVNewser, CJR, New York Times, Show Tracker, New York Magazine, Jezebel and The Politico

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Crystal Ball for Couric Is Clouded by CNN's Moves — For years, whenever television fortune-tellers forecast Larry King's eventual replacement, Katie Couric's name was the first to be mentioned: one of the best interviewing jobs on television, and one of the best-known interviewers on television.

Discussion: TVNewser, TVWeek.com, On Media's Blog, Thompson on Hollywood, Media Buyer Planner, Company Town and The Wire

David Kaplan / paidContent:

‘Bravo Now’ iPad App Launched To Promote Season Finale Of ‘Bethenny’ — Just in time for the season finale of the Real Housewives of New York City-spinoff, Bethenny Getting Married?, Bravo is introducing an iPad app that it hopes will have users promoting the show as it airs.

Discussion: MediaPost

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

Limelight Gets Into Video Management With Delve Networks Purchase — Limelight Networks is adding video management and syndication to its suite of offerings for media and enterprise customers, with the acquisition of Delve Networks for an undisclosed mix of cash and stock.

Discussion: Yahoo! Finance, The Business Of Online Video and paidContent

Keach Hagey / The Politico:

The Hotline that's now lukewarm — There was a day, not that long ago, when the most influential political news in Washington was sent by fax. — Howard Mortman, a former columnist and editor at The Hotline, remembers the first time he saw the process — a blinking frenzy of subscribers dialing …

Discussion: Romenesko and Politics Daily

Bill Mitchell / Newspay:

GlobalPost to Test ‘Soft Meter’ with Journalism Online — Phil Balboni believes in his bones that consumers will eventually pay for online news. — But the runway he envisions — maybe 10 or 15 years — is too long to count on, even for the well-financed GlobalPost venture he founded 19 months ago in Boston.

Ken Doctor / Nieman Reports:

A Message for Journalists: It's Time to Flex Old Muscles in New Ways — 'We'll learn by trying new ways of doing what we've done with news, by putting ourselves visibly in the social media mix, and by using the emerging tools of daily communication in all aspects of our work.'

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Did the Web kill journalism, and will the iPad bring it back? — At the Summit at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn, moderates a discussion about the state of journalism in the Digital Age with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Quentin Hardy of Forbes, and Robert Scoble of Scobelizer.