Mediagazer: Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad Blueprint for a Post-Literate Future (Alexis Madrigal/The Atlantic Online)

10:35 AM ET, August 13, 2010

Top News:

Dawn C. Chmielewski / Los Angeles Times:

News Corp. plans national newspaper for tablet computers and cellphones — It's the latest bid by a major media company to build readership using new devices such as the iPad. The new publication would offer short, snappy stories and operate under the auspices of the New York Post.

Discussion: Romenesko, The Wrap, Guardian, New York Observer, Jon Slattery, On Media's Blog and Tech Trader Daily

Jack Shafer / Slate:

The Tabloidy Goodness of TBD.com … - Donald Duck Groped a Woman? Don't Forget the Bum Sex-Abuse Rap Against Tigger.- The Four Most Common Clichés in Movies About Divorcées- Should I Let My Kid Volunteer at an Animal Shelter? - The Awesome Comic Book That Gave Us Scott Pilgrim …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Romenesko

Colby Hall / Mediaite:

AOL Hypocrisy: When It Comes To Video Curation “Mediaite Has A Better Argument Than AOL” — Today AOL Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici attacked Mediaite for the way we aggregate, curate and publish video clips from various television networks. The piece claimed that Mediaite “test(s) …

Discussion: Inside Cable News

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance:
Dan Abrams's Mediaite.com Tests the Limits of Fair Use

Discussion: Crikey, The Wire, New York Observer, NetNewsCheck Latest, Soup, Inside Cable News, Romenesko and MediaMemo

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

With Off-the-Record Lunch, Obama Extends a Hand — It may seem odd, but the journalists assigned to cover President Obama on a daily basis often have less access to him than the columnists, television personalities and feature writers who cover the president less frequently.

Discussion: Strupp, Yahoo! News, Runnin' Scared, Romenesko, New York Observer, FishbowlNY and New York Times

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

Cable Firms Eye Tablet Space — Comcast, Verizon and Others Plan New Apps; Licensing Content Slows Process — More TV shows and movies may be coming to tablet computers like Apple Inc.'s iPad—for those who pay to watch. — At least seven of the ten largest subscription-TV providers …

New York Times:

Net Neutrality Issue Divides Media Companies — In an emerging battle over regulating Internet access, companies are taking sides. — Facebook, one of the companies that has flourished on the open Internet, indicated Wednesday that it did not support a proposal by Google and Verizon …

Discussion: TorrentFreak, New York Magazine, The Official Google Blog, TIME.com, Mercury News, Post Tech, A VC, Epicenter, Bits, On Media's Blog and Free Press, more at Techmeme »

Rosecrans Baldwin / The Millions:

Writing Is My Peppermint-Flavored Heroin — Five months from today, my first novel, You Lost Me there, is being published. Max from The Millions emailed me today wondering if I'd write something come publication time. I stared at the kitchen table. I drank a delicious Diet Coke.

Discussion: Omnivoracious and The Second Pass

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad Blueprint for a Post-Literate Future — It is hard to tell what the relationship between the iPhone and the collapse of America might be, but I'm sure glad that someone is trying to figure it out. — Gary Shteyngart's new book, Super Sad True Love Story …

Discussion: New York Observer

Bill Krueger / Making Sense of Media:

Did Deadspin Go Too Far in Publishing Story Alleging Brett Favre Sexting? — Deadspin has grown from a scrappy startup website that was playing with the big dogs of ESPN and Sports Illustrated. It gained legitimacy almost immediately as a serious player as it dug up stories other sports sites missed or ignored.

Discussion: The Blotter, Romenesko and Poynter Online

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Marketplace brings a Twittery approach to the explainer — When you listen to Marketplace, American Public Media's finance-focused show, you generally expect to hear expert, and even entertaining, takes on the day's economic news. On Wednesday's show, though, the typical quick-and-dirty met...quick-and-funny.

Discussion: marketplace.publicradio.org

The Huffington Post:

The Problem With Financial Journalism — What's Your Reaction: … The peculiar sport of fox hunting was described by Oscar Wilde as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.” I feel a similar aphorism can be applied to most financial journalism: “The unspeakable perusing the unreadable.”

Jason Stverak / Online Journalism Review:

Watering-down press credentials, or denying citizens news? — By Jason Stverak: Recent articles and opinion pages have lambasted what many are calling the “watering-down of press credentials.” They claim that the more people that obtain press credentials, the less influential press credentials are to the legacy media.

The Huffington Post:

Blogger Beats Mexico Drug War News Blackout — MEXICO CITY — An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere - an inside view of their country's raging drug war. — Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less …

Lev Grossman / Time:

A raft of sea otters are at play in a narrow estuary at Moss Landing, near Santa Cruz, Calif. There are 41 of them, says a guy in a baseball cap. He counted. They dive and surface and float around on their backs with their little paws poking up out of the water, munching sea urchins or thinking about munching sea urchins.

Discussion: The Paris Review, GalleyCat, Jacket Copy, The Book Bench and ArtsBeat

Pete Blackshaw / AdAge:

Do We Still Need Websites? — Given Our Obsession With Social Media, It's a Timely Question — So with all this relentless talk about Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages and cool new apps, I have a serious and timely question. Do brand websites still matter?

Andrew Wallenstein / Hollywood Rewired:

CBS Interactive's TV.com enters social-TV race with Relay (exclusive) — CBS Interactive is giving television the Foursquare treatment. — The digital division is beta-testing TV.com Relay, a service that transplants Foursquare's combination of user check-ins and badge rewards from brick-and-mortar venues to TV shows.

Discussion: MediaPost

Henry K. Lee / San Francisco Chronicle:

Appellate court upholds Bay Guardian damages — A state appeals court upheld a $21 million damage award to the Bay Guardian on Wednesday, saying a rival publication, SF Weekly, had engaged in predatory price-cutting by selling ads below cost. — SF Weekly had asserted that its low-cost ads amounted …

Discussion: Romenesko, Informer and Hit & Run

Andrew M. Harris / Bloomberg:

Zell Can't Be Made to Pay for Tribune Pension Losses — Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) — Sam Zell can't be made to pay for Tribune Co. retirement fund losses, a judge ruled, rebuffing workers who claim the billionaire caused the company's employee stock ownership plan to lose value.

Discussion: MediaPost

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Newsday going on the offensive — Newsday is going on a hiring spree, pledging to add nearly 40 new editorial jobs and dramatically increase the amount of space devoted to local news. — “In a big step forward on boosting our local coverage, during the next six months we will hire 34 …

Discussion: Shaping the Future …, FishbowlNY, Romenesko and The Wire

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:
Newsday doubles down on coverage as Patch arrives

Discussion: NYConvergence

Robin J Phillips / BusinessJournalism.org …:

Newsrooms play big role in launch of “Tweet” button — Twitter a nd Facebook continue in the battle for your news judgment, your network and your willingness to publish stories you like. — Twitter countered Facebook's “like” button today with the launch of a “Tweet” button.

Wall Street Journal:

Barnes & Noble Expected to Announce Burkle Pact — Barnes & Noble Inc. is expected to soon announce the settlement of a lawsuit filed by investor Ronald Burkle, who challenged the legality of a “poison pill” plan that would have prevented him from buying more shares of the company, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Discussion: DailyFinance, Law Blog and GalleyCat