Mediagazer: NBCU Digital Studio To Launch ‘Fact Checkers Unit’ (Andrea Domanick/Multichannel News)

2:10 PM ET, August 10, 2010

Top News:

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

It's Official: Epix, Netflix Announce “Multi-Year” Deal for Streaming Movies — Epix and Netflix, mum yesterday, are now happy to talk. The two companies have confirmed a big, expensive deal that gives Netflix the ability to show the pay-TV service's movies on its streaming video offering.

Discussion: Company Town, Beet.TV, VentureBeat and NewTeeVee, more at Techmeme »

Claudia Eller / Company Town:

Netflix and Epix working on major digital partnership to shake up pay TV landscape — In a deal that could transform the landscape for digital movie distribution, start-up pay-TV channel Epix is in serious negotiations to give Netflix exclusive online rights to films from its three equity partners …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Ars Technica, MediaPost, NewTeeVee, Media Decoder, Multichannel, TVWeek.com, paidContent, Online Video News, Fast Company, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, CrunchGear, The Consumerist, MediaMemo, Gizmodo and labusinessjournal.com

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Demand Media Is Afraid That Google is Going to Compete With It — In the “risk factors” section of its IPO filing on Friday, content-creation company Demand Media raises an interesting possibility: that Google — which Demand said it relies on for about a quarter of its revenue …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and MarketingVOX

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Lesson of Demand Media (And AOL): The Online Content Business …

Discussion: MediaMemo and psmith, journalist

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead — A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. “vision statement” shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities?

Discussion: Gawker, Engadget, Venture Capital Dispatch, Company Town, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Gizmodo, ReadWriteWeb, John Battelle's Searchblog, Silicon Alley Insider and Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, more at Techmeme »

Mike Taylor / FishbowlNY:

ProPublica's Top-Paid Employees All Made Six Figures in 2009 — Add a fat paycheck (by the standards of today's struggling journalism market, anyway) to the list of reasons why it's awesome to work for ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit investigative outfit.

Discussion: Gawker, Romenesko, eMedia Vitals, The Awl, WebNewser and The Wire

Big Think:

Carl Bernstein: The “Golden Age” of Investigative Journalism Never Existed — Legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein says that he's not as concerned about the state of investigative journalism as some of his contemporaries are—in fact, he thinks that newspapers like the New York Times …

Discussion: Guardian

Boston Globe:

Back off, critics — TV news benefits from fresher voices — THERE ARE signs of more intelligent life in TV news, but critics, channeling what Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair called “the inside-baseball television-news diaspora,” are trying hard to snuff it out.

Discussion: Mediaite, Romenesko, TVNewser, On Media's Blog, CJR, National Review and NewsBusters.org

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

BoomTown Checks In at the Online-Only Seattle Post-Intelligencer — A little more than a week ago, while I was in the Pacific Northwest for a Microsoft (MSFT) event, I decided to pay a visit on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. — Or, as its brand is known now: seattlepi.com.

Discussion: Romenesko

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

More Money for iPhone Ads: Medialets Raises $6 Million — We don't know how the mobile ad business will look like and how big it will be. But it's a pretty safe bet to assume it's going to be a lot bigger than it is now. Which makes investors quite happy to throw money at it.

Discussion: TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller Raises Money For Content Startup — We haven't heard much about Jim Spanfeller since he resigned from his post as CEO of Forbes.com last July to launch his own media management company. — But Spanfeller Media Group announced today that it has closed …

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

Times Puts Some Ads Outside The Wall And On iPad As Web Display Reduces — Though they are often cast as distinct business models, advertising and paid content are not necessarily mutually exclusive - or are they? — Observations from Times Newspapers' digital properties point to two different answers...

Discussion: Poynter Online and nicommercial.com

Slate:

Welcome to Slate Labs — Today we're kicking off an exciting new project at Slate called “Slate Labs,” which you've apparently already located if you're reading this. See that “labs” in the URL, where it should say “www”? That means you're officially off the reservation.

Discussion: Brooks in Beta and Romenesko

David Folkenflik / NPR:

Bloggers And Cable Pundits: The New Newsmakers … This summer's lurching news cycle has served up fresh evidence that the legacy media have less say than ever in determining what stories to consider newsworthy — and which not to. — Instead, as new media players drive much of the news agenda …

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Twitter Hires Sales Force From Yelp, Facebook — Meanwhile, Virgin America Uses Automated Tool to Buy Tweets — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Want to buy an ad on Twitter? Now there's someone to call. — The micro-blog service, which still classifies itself as “pre-revenue,” …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, The Wall Blog and Local Media Watch, more at Techmeme »

Alex Alvarez / FishbowlNY:

Desiree Rogers Named CEO Of Johnson Publishing — Back in February of this year, Desiree Rogers stepped down from her position as White House Social Secretary. In June, Rogers was tapped to be a consultant for Johnson Publishing Co, parent of Jet and Ebony magazines.

Discussion: Media Decoder and Folio

Andrea Domanick / Multichannel News:

NBCU Digital Studio To Launch ‘Fact Checkers Unit’ — New Digital Series Is A Co-Production With Samsung Electronics — Samsung Electronics and NBC Universal Digital Studio have joined forces on a new original digital series. — Fact Checkers Unit will premiere Aug. 17 and marks …

Discussion: Runnin' Scared

Tricia Duryee / paidContent:

How Two Former Ringtone Giants Are Faring As That Market Crumbles — Ten years ago, three brothers in Germany founded Jamba, jumping head-first into the global fad of selling ringtones, which ultimately grew to be a billion-dollar industry. Since then, the well-known mobile content company has taken a number of twists and turns.

Alex Alvarez / FishbowlNY:

U.S. Magazine Circulation Falls — Well, Food Network Magazine might have cause to celebrate, but, overall, newsstand sales aren't looking so great. The Audit Bureau of Circulations shows that total circulation for 440 magazines dropped 2.3 percent to 313.8 million from this time last year.

Discussion: Publishing Executive News, Bloomberg, AdAge and The Wrap

Robin J Phillips / BusinessJournalism.org …:

Former BusinessWeek.com editor launches b-school site — John A. Byrne, former editor of BusinessWeek.com and the man behind BusinessWeek's influential b-school rankings, launched a new website today. — PoetsandQuants.com, a site devoted to the coverage of graduate business school education …

Newsweek:

Take This Blog and Shove It! — When utopian ideals crash into human nature—sloth triumphs. — In the history of the web, last spring may figure as a tipping point. That's when Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”—a site that grew from 100,000 articles in 2003 …

Discussion: Techdirt

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

All Our Ideas facilitates crowdsourcing — of opinions — What do readers want from the news? — It's a hard question to answer, and not only because we don't often know what we like until we find ourselves liking it. To figure it out, news outlets have traffic patterns on the one hand …