Mediagazer: News Corp. Shifts Executives' Pay to Performance Bonuses After Stock Flags (Sarah Rabil/Bloomberg)

4:20 PM ET, August 3, 2010

Top News:

How Newsweek Blew It — Ninety-one-year-old audio tycoon Sidney Harman's purchase of Newsweek yesterday was greeted with internal cheers. But a look inside the magazine's financial records, leaked to The Daily Beast, reveals its new crisis. — Yesterday's purchase of a 77-year-old magazine …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, CJR, paidContent, Strupp, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, washpostco.com, Guardian, Folio, On Media's Blog, Slate and MediaPost

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

Nine Questions on Newsweek's Future: Beltway Blues, Semi-Wonkiness and ‘What Would Arianna Do’? — It's official, the news of midsummer. Newsweek is sold, for the price many of us anticipated, a buck — plus those nasty ongoing losses ($30 million in 2009) and liabilities.

Discussion: CJR, Swampland, Washington Post, The Politico and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:
Panic And Relief At Newsweek As Layoffs Loom

Discussion: New York Times, Paste Magazine, This Just In and Media Decoder

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:
Newsweek's Finances Were Even Worse Than Many Thought

Discussion: New York Post

Washington Post:
Dr. Sidney Harman to Purchase Newsweek from The Washington Post Company

Discussion: NY Post, Newsweek, Romenesko, Media Decoder, Boing Boing, Deal Journal and AdAge

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:
Newsweek's Meacham prepares to leave the magazine

Discussion: The Politico, Romenesko, The Wire, New York Observer, The Wrap and Wall Street Journal

Nick Bilton / Bits:

No E-Books Allowed in This Establishment — A few weeks ago I decided to mosey over to a local Manhattan coffee shop for an afternoon cappuccino. — After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle. — I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading …

Discussion: TechFlash, Between the Lines Blog, Jacket Copy, TeleRead and Eater National

David Carnoy / CNET News:

Amazon: We have 70-80 percent of e-book market — Recently, I sat down with Ian Freed, an Amazon vice president in charge of the Kindle, to get a sneak peek at the new Kindles and discuss e-books and the Kindle business in general. Naturally, a good portion of the conversation centered …

Discussion: Kindle Review, the Econsultancy blog and theBookseller.com

Wall Street Journal:

E-Book Prices in Question — Just when publishers and sellers of digital books had made peace over how to price electronic titles, the market is attracting antitrust scrutiny. — On Tuesday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal disclosed a preliminary review …

Discussion: DailyFinance, 24/7 Wall St., Law Blog and NYConvergence

Charles V. Bagli / New York Times:

Condé Nast to Move to Skyscraper at Ground Zero — Condé Nast, the publishing giant, has signed a tentative deal to move its stable of chic magazines to ground zero, where it will anchor the skyscraper now under construction, according to two real estate executives who have been briefed on the negotiations.

Discussion: Romenesko, Runnin' Scared, New York Observer, The Wire, Metropolis, Scocca, Gawker, Gothamist, New York Magazine and Curbed NY

Wall Street Journal:

Early Doubts on Tribune Deal — Investment Bank in 2007 Declined to Endorse the Buyout, Which Later Soured — An investment bank declined to give Tribune Co. a clean bill of financial health in 2007 that would have cleared the way for Sam Zell's $8.2 billion leveraged buyout of the media conglomerate …

Discussion: Reuters, Romenesko and DealBook

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Apple's plan for Lala cloudier than ever — SAN FRANCISCO—A speedy launch of an iTunes cloud-music service hasn't materialized the way many at the large record companies expected. — The thinking among some music insiders was that once Apple acquired the proper music licenses …

Discussion: Ars Technica, MediaMemo, NewTeeVee, Fast Company, Techland, The Next Web, Engadget, Gizmodo and Silicon Alley Insider, more at Techmeme »

Lara Sinclair / TheAustralian:

New online business model will succeed, says Rupert Murdoch — NEWS Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said Apple would sell more than 40 million iPads by 2012 as he flagged plans to put content on more tablet devices. — Appearing by video at a new media breakfast and panel debate hosted by Media …

Discussion: Guardian, Multichannel, Shaping the Future …, Gawker, Company Town and Jon Slattery

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Another Magazine App? Yep. But This One's For the Ladies: Condé Nast Brings Glamour to the iPad. — It's getting increasingly difficult to justify writing about a new iPad magazine app, but what the heck: Condé Nast has new iPad magazine app!

Discussion: FishbowlNY, New York Observer, The Wire and Poynter Online

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Hey, Newspaper Paywall Fans: News is Not Like HBO or Talk Radio — Fans of newspaper paywalls like to roll out a number of defences for their position, including the fact that some publications — such as the Wall Street Journal and the Economist — charge for their content, and therefore, every newspaper should be able to.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Vanity Fair:

Lady Gaga On Sex, Fame, Drugs, and Her Fans — Photograph by Nick Knight. Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy—"I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they're …

Discussion: Speakeasy, ANIMAL, Ministry of Gossip, Billboard.com The Feed, Gothamist, EW.com, MTV Buzzworthy Blog, Styleite and PAPERMAG

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

A New Scheme to Get Web Surfers To Stay Put: Photos — Thanks for visiting! Hey! Where are you going! — That's a common refrain for most Web publishers, who see readers stop by their sites for a very brief looksee, then bounce away, drawn by a new link.

Discussion: AdAge

Steve Outing:

One city's blossoming digital media landscape — Over on the website of the Digital Media Test Kitchen (I'm director of that program at CU-Boulder), I've posted an update on one of our projects, called “Slices of Boulder,” which we're working on with a technology partner, Toronto-based Eqentia …

Discussion: The Digital Media Test Kitchen

Mark S. Luckie / 10,000 Words:

The Journalists' Guide to Analytics — Analytics, or the analysis of a website's traffic, is important for every journalist to understand. Analytics tools can identify how many people visited a website, page, or article, how they found the site, and how popular the content on a site is.

Scott Karp / Publish2 Blog:

Demotix Partners with Publish2 News Exchange on Independent News Photo Marketplace — We're excited to announce that Demotix, the award-winning open photo agency for independent journalists, will begin offering content via Publish2 News Exchange when we launch photo support later this summer.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Journalism.co.uk and The Demotix Blog

Jennifer Saba / Reuters:

CBS in talks to bring TV shows to Hulu: CEO — (Reuters) - CBS Corp, the No.1 U.S. broadcaster, is in talks to bring some of its TV shows to popular Web video service Hulu, CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves said in an interview on Monday. — Moonves said talks were with Hulu Plus …

Discussion: New York Times, WebNewser, Company Town, Techland, Los Angeles Times, Media Buyer Planner and The Consumerist

Holly Yeager / CJR:

The Peterson Dilemma — A funded fellow wrestles with a funder's influence — A story in The Fiscal Times recently caught my eye. But even before I could decide whether to write about it, I bumped into couple of stubborn facts. Neither counts as news.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Inside Higher Ed:

Sex, Journalism and Censorship — Student sex journalism is one of those topics that tend to arise in the context of controversy — the sort that begins when a student publication offends a reader or readers; grows with a tussle between editors and administrators (as well as, often …

Discussion: Romenesko, Gawker and New York Observer

Sarah Rabil / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Shifts Executives' Pay to Performance Bonuses After Stock Flags — News Corp., owner of the Wall Street Journal, shifted compensation for top executives including Chairman Rupert Murdoch to more performance-based bonuses after its stock trailed the market in the past five years.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Megan Taylor / Poynter Online:

How Journalists Can Incorporate Computational Thinking into Their Work — Over the last few years, the journalism community has discussed mindset, skillset, journalist-programmers, and other ideas aimed not just at “saving journalism,” but making journalism better.

Media Week:

Virgin Media in regulatory challenge to Project Canvas — Virgin Media has submitted a formal complaint to Ofcom, asking the regulator to investigate the internet-connected digital TV service Project Canvas on the grounds that it is anti-competitive and restricts consumer choice.

Discussion: Guardian, paidContent:UK and Variety

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Pulse adds Posterous integration — The briefly banned-by-NYT iPad app Pulse, which turns RSS feeds into a digital magazine format, has launched a new ‘My Pulse’ feature that lets you publish your feeds to a Posterous ‘lite blogging’ account. … Add a story to your favourites inside Pulse and …

Discussion: Mashable! and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

ITV unveils pay-TV push — Five-year strategy to cut dependence on advertising begins with deal to put three high-definition channels on Sky — ITV today made its first move back into pay-TV for nearly a decade with a deal to put three high-definition channels behind BSkyB's subscription wall …

Discussion: Variety and paidContent:UK