Mediagazer: From Samizdat to Twitter: How Technology Is Making Censorship Irrelevant (Peter Kirwan/Epicenter)

3:40 AM ET, August 2, 2010

Top News:

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Fox News gets front row White House seat — The White House Correspondents Association has decided to move Fox News up to the front row in the briefing room, according to sources familiar with the process. — Since veteran journalist Helen Thomas retired, three news organizations—Fox News …

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org …, Mediaite, Romenesko, Multichannel, TVNewser, New York Magazine and Balloon Juice

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Facebook and Twitter's New Rival — 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?

Discussion: DealBook and Soup

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: Multichannel and Speakeasy

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.

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Inside the New York Times' Paywall Brain — The New York Times (NYT) has announced that it will be putting up an online paywall by the end of the year. And that the paywall will allow users to visit for free a certain number of times per month. And that the paywall will be expensive to build.

Discussion: Churbuck.com

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 …

Magda Abu-Fadil / The Huffington Post:

Funding Journalism in the Digital Age — Finding money to pay for news is an obsession haunting media executives worldwide, a constant in journalism-related conferences, and it's not likely to disappear any time soon. — That's because the very essence of journalism is going through metamorphoses causing …

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Norwegian Newspaper Taps Into Web's Efficiencies — PARIS — Last summer, as the crisis in the newspaper business worsened, executives at Edda, a publisher in Norway, met to discuss the Internet. As managers fiddled with their iPhones, someone suggested a novel approach …

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Editor's Impact Begins With a Capital O — Susan Casey's publishing résumé reflects what one would expect from someone who has chased great white sharks in California, stalked elk in Colorado and tramped the oil-slicked marshlands of Louisiana. Editor of Sports Illustrated Women?

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.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

AdMeld Raises $15 Million Round; Time Warner Among New Backers — Ad inventory optimizer AdMeld has raised a $15 million third round as it expects to attract more publishers making the move to online ad exchanges. With this round, AdMeld has raised a total of $30 million since opening its doors almost three years ago.

Peter Funt / Wall Street Journal:

Customers Will Pay for Online Content — Until Home Box Office emerged in the mid-'70s, the notion that people would pay to watch a television show was unheard of. — Major media companies have finally learned something about whether consumers will pay for content on the Internet …