Mediagazer: Plastic Logic cancels Que e-reader (Ina Fried/CNET News)

1:45 AM ET, August 11, 2010

Top News:

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Meet the Prankster Brothers Behind “Jenny,” the Whiteboard-Using, Farmville-Exposing, HPOA Girl — Yesterday, everyone on the Internet loved Steve Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who quit his job by cursing out his passengers and bolting out of his plane using the emergency slide.

Ryan Tate / Gawker:

The Quitting Tale That Suckered the Whole Internet — Photos of an aspiring broker purportedly telling off her boss garnered widespread news coverage and more than 105,000 Facebook “likes” Tuesday. Too bad the story was published by two guys who have pranked the media before.

James Ledbetter / Slate:

What Happened to Demand Media's Audience? — Something strange has happened on the way to Demand Media's IPO. For the last several years, Demand Media has been like a tornado ripping through traditional media. The company's model is to produce hundreds of thousands of evergreen pieces …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Demand Media Is Afraid That Google is Going to Compete With It

Discussion: PE Hub Blog and eMedia Vitals

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

Discussion: MediaMemo

Janko Roettgers / NewTeeVee:

Did Netflix Pay Too Much for Epix Content? — The news that Netflix is teaming up with Epix to bolster its online catalog has generally gotten good reception today, with Netflix stock up 8 percent and analysts like J.P. Morgan's Imran Khan giving the deal a thumbs up.

Discussion: Moneywood, Company Town, Multichannel and Variety, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent: Disney's Iger: Getting Aggressive On ‘Premium’ DVD Rental Window, Pricing

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
It's Official: Epix, Netflix Announce “Multi-Year” Deal for Streaming Movies

Discussion: Company Town, Cinematical, Light Reading, The Wrap, Fast Company, Ars Technica, MediaPost, paidContent and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:

Former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller Dishes On His Forthcoming Food Website — We just got off the phone with Jim Spanfeller, the former Forbes.com CEO whose Spanfeller Media Group announced today it has closed an initial funding round to launch a food website, “the first in a series …

Joe Pompeo / Silicon Alley Insider:
Former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller Raises Money For Content Startup

Discussion: WebNewser, Romenesko, VentureBeat, paidContent and Eater National

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: Crikey, WebNewser, The Awl, Romenesko, New York Magazine, Fast Company, The Wire and eMedia Vitals

Julia Boorstin / Media Money with Julia Boorstin:

Media Industry to Grow Faster than US Economy — A new report out today from Veronis Suhler Stevenson forecasts spending on media and communications will outpace economic growth as consumers invest in mobile and web access and companies pay to reach them there.

Discussion: Business Wire, rbr.com and MediaPost

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

To click or not to click: Could tiered data plans water down advertising possibilities for news publishers? — In the good old days (of three months ago) you could surf the web on your iPhone with abandon. Do I want to watch this video? Sure! Do I want to download this huge attachment?

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Ustream Goes Hollywood With New Office And Hires — Back in June, I sat down with Ustream CEO John Ham, who talked about the site's rapid growth and its plans to expand. At the time, Ham told me that one of Ustream's key strategies was to foster its relationship with the entertainment industry.

Discussion: The Wrap

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Cablers Cover Alaska Plane Crash — Around 10:30amET, the cable news networks began continuing coverage of a small plane crash in Alaska which occurred Monday night. Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe were believed to be onboard the plane which carried nine people.

Discussion: Multichannel, New York Times, KTUU-TV, The Daily Beast, Broadcasting & Cable and Fox News

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

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Newsweek's Evan Thomas leaving the magazine — Veteran journalist Evan Thomas is leaving Newsweek after nearly a quarter-century with the magazine. — Thomas told The Upshot that he is departing to concentrate on teaching journalism at Princeton and writing books.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Gawker, The Wrap, New York Observer and New York Magazine

Ina Fried / CNET News:

Plastic Logic cancels Que e-reader — In a move that will probably surprise few, Plastic Logic announced Tuesday that it's canceling plans for its pricey Que e-reader. — Plastic Logic had already delayed the Que several times after showing early versions of the product for years.

Discussion: TeleRead, Kindle Review and Between the Lines Blog, more at Techmeme »

Tanzina Vega / New York Times:

A Weekly Magazine Meant for Mobile — A small group of former magazine journalists and editors, including the former president of Newsweek, plan to launch a weekly digital magazine this fall that they hope will capitalize on the idea of creating content specifically for mobile technology.

Kevin Rawlinson / The Independent:

Rupert Murdoch claims to own the ‘Sky’ in ‘Skype’ — Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB is fighting a legal battle with the internet telecommunications pioneer Skype, claiming that it owns the “Sky” in “Skype”. — Skype yesterday announced that it plans to float on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.

Vadim Lavrusik / Mashable!:

How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream — In honor of Mashable's five-year anniversary, this series is supported by IDG. Join social conversations to market your brand with IDG's social advertising platform, IDG Amplify. Learn more about how it works here.

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Location services to ‘devastate local media’ — As rumored for what feels like the last decade, Facebook will launch its geolocation feature “within weeks,” according to a CNET report: … If you work in local media — or run a neighborhood blog — what does this mean?

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, The Social and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Wall Street Journal:

H-P Board Surprised Hurd Didn't Go Quietly — Hewlett-Packard Co.'s board got caught off guard by the public relations campaign waged on behalf of its ousted chief executive, Mark Hurd, to defend his reputation in the wake of his departure. — H-P's directors “hoped he would move on,” …

Rick Edmonds / The Biz Blog:

Can Newspapers Create New Revenue Stream with ‘Digital Malls’? — Newspaper consultant Jim Chisholm has looked five years into the future and sees the industry's best bet for vitality in digital shopping. — Updating a futures report he did 18 months ago for the Newspaper Association of America …