Mediagazer: Rdio beats Spotify to US market (Emma Barnett/Telegraph)

6:40 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: Press Gazette, FishbowlNY, Don Surber, CJR, paidContent, Strupp, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, washpostco.com, On Media's Blog, Balloon Juice, Folio, Slate, Guardian, Newsweek, MediaPost and Media Matters for America

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

Zeke Turner / New York Observer:
Sidney Harman Talks to the ‘Newsweek’ Staff

Discussion: The Politico and Yahoo! News

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

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

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

Discussion: New York Post and The Wire

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, FishbowlNY, Runnin' Scared, The Huffington Post, Styleite, New York Observer, The Wire, Scocca, Metropolis, Gothamist, New York Magazine, Gawker and Curbed NY

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

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: Nieman Journalism Lab, 24/7 Wall St., DailyFinance, Law Blog and NYConvergence

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: the Econsultancy blog, Kindle Review and theBookseller.com

Benjamin Pimentel / MarketWatch:
Connecticut probing Apple, Amazon over e-book deals

Discussion: Poynter Online

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: Multichannel, Gawker, Company Town and Jon Slattery

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:
Murdoch: Tablets are the future

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Shaping the Future …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM: Hey, Newspaper Paywall Fans: News is Not Like HBO or Talk Radio

Matt Zoller Seitz / Salon:

Why I like vicious, anonymous online comments — As news outlets push back against trolls, we may be losing something: A glimpse of the real America — Three months ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a couple who'd had trouble conceiving a child finally succeeded, and announced the impending arrival …

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.

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: MediaMemo, Ars Technica, Stowe Boyd, TUAW, Fast Company, Techland, The Next Web, NewTeeVee, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, Engadget and L.A. Times Tech Blog, more at Techmeme »

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

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.

Jared Keller / The Atlantic Wire:

MEDIA DIET: What I Read: Jay Rosen — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various friends and colleagues who seem well-informed to describe their media diets.

Emma Barnett / Telegraph:

Rdio beats Spotify to US market — Rdio, a new music streaming service created by the European founders of Skype, has gone live in the US, beating Spotify to a stateside launch. — The new streaming service offers unlimited music streaming for $9.99 a month, with mobile access, and $4.95 a month for listening on the desktop only.

Discussion: New York Observer, Ars Technica, Variety and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

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

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, The Demotix Blog and Journalism.co.uk

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

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, Techland, Company Town, Media Buyer Planner, Los Angeles Times and The Consumerist

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: New York Observer, The Wire and FishbowlNY

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

Kevin Allocca / TVNewser:

The Process Behind Fox News' Briefing Room Move — TIME magazine's Michael Scherer, who's on the WHCA board, spoke with the Columbia Journalism Review about the process his colleagues went through in filling Helen Thomas' briefing room seat. Scherer says there was “little controversy …

Discussion: WebNewser, whca.net and CJR

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 »