Mediagazer: Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk (Jon Stokes/Ars Technica)

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Allbritton On TBD.com: 'You've Got To Have Some Staying Power' — When Robert Allbritton put the money and power of Allbritton Communications behind a new DC political news site in 2007, no one knew what to expect. Sure, he had talent in Washington Post vets John Harris and Jim VandeHei …

Discussion: Soup, Strange Attractor, National Media, Romenesko, rbr.com, Lost Remote, Nieman Journalism Lab, Media Decoder, Broadcasting & Cable, The Solomon Scandals, WebNewser, Zombie Journalism and The Wire, more at Techmeme »

Letter from the editor: TBD is a little less TBD — Welcome to TBD. We're pleased you're here. — This is a brand-new site that covers news and culture in the Washington, D.C. metro region. It has been under construction for nearly a year, a gestation period that has seen a fair amount …

Discussion: New York Observer, GigaOM, Mashable!, E-Media Tidbits, Mediaite, Gawker, Lost Remote, DCist, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, State of the Fourth Estate, The Solomon Scandals, Newsonomics and Washington Post

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

First Look: TBD Wants More From Users But Does It Deliver? — Robert Allbritton may only want zip codes, as he told paidContent in an interview, but the staff at newly launched TBD.com wants a lot more... In order to get personalization, users are required to provide full names, zip code, year of birth and even gender.

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Forbes Bloggers' Compensation Will Be Tied To Web Traffic — Last week, we posed the question of what it means for Forbes' writers that new chief product officer (still not sure what that title is all about!) Lewis D'Vorkin is starting to make some big adjustments to the editorial model.

Inside the radical reinventionof Forbes — New pooh-bah morphs print and website, editorial and marketing — Fecession and the digital transformation have already cost Forbes Media its Fifth Avenue headquarters—sold at a bargain to New York University—and the use of its famed Highlander yacht …

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

The Economist Markets to the Sophisticated — Its fire-engine-red logo peeks out of fashionable handbags and from the back pockets of designer jeans. Bankers read it in first-class seats. Hipsters read it on the subway on their way to work. — It's The Economist.

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Observer

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Renewed Interest in Financing Original Web Shows — LOS ANGELES — When Illeana Douglas, long active in independent film, wanted to make a show about a Hollywood actress who becomes a cog in a blue-collar wheel, she turned to the Web and to an unusual ally, Ikea.

Discussion: PR Newswire, VatorNews, Company Town, The Huffington Post, Online Video News and Mashable!

Will Richmond / VideoNuze:

Is Demand Media's “Factory” Approach the Future of Online Video - or Not? — Friday's $125 million IPO filing by Demand Media, the foremost content “factory” or “farm,” raises the question of whether its low-cost, high-volume content creation model is the future for independent online video …

Discussion: NewTeeVee, VentureBeat and Free Press

David Carr / New York Times:

A Gamble on a Weekly That Paid Off — Let me get this straight: A very rich guy buys a financially and editorially beleaguered weekly magazine, saying he wants to preserve an important journalistic asset. That will never work, right? — I have three words for the haters: New York magazine.

Discussion: MarketWatch, Romenesko, FishbowlNY, New York Observer and On Media's Blog

David Kaplan / paidContent:

E.W. Scripps Online Revs Rise, Despite Downward Pull Of Print Bundling — E.W. Scripps' online advertising revenues continued to rise in Q2, and the company offers a breakdown that shows where the success is and where it's still struggling. For one thing, it shows the drag that tying print …

Discussion: MediaPost, Broadcasting & Cable and rbr.com

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Ex-HBR publisher Cranston named CJR publisher — COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW NAMES CATHRYN CRANSTON AS PUBLISHER — New York, NY (August 9, 2010) The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) announced today that Cathryn Cronin Cranston, former publisher of the Harvard Business Review, has been named its publisher.

Discussion: CJR and FishbowlNY

Johnny Diaz / Boston Globe:

A new read on masculinity — Magazines see a market for stories about parenting, home life — Publisher Lisa Hickey, cofounder Tom Matlack, and editor Benoit Denizet-Lewis of The Good Men Project Magazine, an online venture. (Michele Mcdonald for The Boston Globe)

Discussion: Romenesko

Peter Kirwan / Guardian:

Google and Apple prepare for mobile advertising battle — Google and Apple are gearing up to launch ads on their apps, a strategy which is set to change the advertising landscape for ever — British mobile users will soon find themselves embroiled in the epic confrontation taking shape between Apple …

Discussion: Poynter Online

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

AdGrok Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords — Using Google AdWords for search advertising is necessary for many businesses but choosing the right keywords to bid on can me a challenging task for those who are unfamiliar with the process. There is an art to search engine marketing …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Time Warner Fesses Up: Jack Griffin to Head Time Inc. “At the End of September” — Time Warner has finally sent out a press release announcing last week's news: Meredith (MDP) magazine head Jack Griffin will take over Ann Moore's role as the head of Time Inc. The only news here is the timing …

Discussion: AdAge, Crain's New York Business, paidContent, Folio, Publishing Executive News, New York Observer, FishbowlNY, MinOnline, The Wrap and MediaPost

Jon Stokes / Ars Technica:

Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk — Google's core Internet search technology famously grew out of a grad school project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to index the world's books, and the modern Google Books Project actually touts itself as the part of Google that carries on the founders' original vision.

Discussion: kottke.org and ResourceShelf

Patrick Smith / psmith, journalist:

Demand Media: The $114 million content machine that has nothing to do with news … I've been saying for a long while that Demand Media's digital content model has potential to make it big. And now it's filing for an IPO, claiming the company has stock worth up to $125 million.

Discussion: BoomTown, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Danielle Sacks / Fast Company:

Alex Bogusky Tells All: He Left the World's Hottest Agency to Find His Soul — Alex Bogusky, the Elvis of advertising, has left the business. Is this a New Age midlife crisis or his greatest rebranding campaign? — “The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation …

Discussion: alexbogusky's posterous and AdPulp

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Can Petraeus shift Afghanistan narrative? — Public support for U.S. involement in Afghanistan continues dropping, according to recent polls. And yet confidence in Gen. David Petraeus—the newly installed commander of the Afghan war initiative—remains comparatively high.

Discussion: The Politico and The Huffington Post

Doug Young / Reuters:

News Corp sells controlling stake in China TV channels — (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said on Monday that it will sell control of its three Chinese TV channels to a fund backed by China's No.2 media company, in a pullback from the market after years of difficulty.

Discussion: Guardian and DailyFinance

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Life Hasn't Always Been a Piece of Cake for OK! Magazine — Brit Celeb Title Has Had Plenty of Ups and Downs in U.S. on the Way to Celebrating Its Fifth Birthday — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — When the British media baron Richard Desmond and his company, Northern & Shell …

Discussion: Canadian Magazines

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Digital Imitation Is A Form Of Flattery For Old-Guard Publishers — It was pop-culture philosopher Marshall McLuhan who wrote: “All media come in pairs, with one acting as the ‘content’ of the other.” — That assertion is true once again, now that a range of developers is pushing …

MediaShift:

Gourmet Live, Quilting eMag Rethink Magazines in Digital Form — In an earlier age, we learned new skills as apprentices to master craftspeople, absorbing expertise by working side by side. Today, though, you might be more likely to learn a new craft or skill from a website or through …

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

W Takes a New Direction — W, a magazine best known for ethereal photo spreads with dazed-looking models sporting Versace, Chanel, Prada and Ferragamo, is assuming a new look and editorial tone. It is becoming a place that its new editor, Stefano Tonchi, hopes readers will go to not only …

Discussion: New York Observer