Mediagazer: Experts Weigh Pros and Cons of Social Media (MediaShift)

3:30 AM ET, August 17, 2010

Top News:

Janko Roettgers / NewTeeVee:

ComScore: Four Out of Five Videos on Hulu Are Ads — Hulu has been taking a dive in comScore's monthly video metrics since the market research company recalibrated the way it is measuring online video last month. However, comScore's new reporting methodology reveals that Hulu reigns supreme in ad viewing …

comScore, Inc.:

comScore Releases July 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings — Facebook.com Climbs to Third in Online Video Content Ranking with 46 Million Viewers — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released July 2010 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing …

Discussion: TechCrunch, msnbc.com, Dow Jones Newswires and Beet.TV, more at Techmeme »

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name to Escape His Permanent Record — Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a great way of making public statements that are at once frank, unorthodox, thought provoking - and a little frightening. This weekend The Wall St. Journal ran an interview with Schmidt …

Discussion: broadstuff and Asa Dotzler, more at Techmeme »

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr / Wall Street Journal:
Google and the Search for the Future

Discussion: danah boyd, Gawker, The Register, Google Watch, Preston Gralla's blog, TechCrunch, Digital Daily, MarketingVOX, The Atlantic Wire, Google Operating System, CJR, The Next Web, ResourceShelf, Kirk LaPointe's …, AdExchanger.com and Future Tense

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Gawker's Next Redesign Thinks Big-Like Big-Screen TV — For better or worse, Nick Denton's Gawker Media leads the way for a lot of online media. So it's worth checking out what he has up his sleeve, which happens to be in plain view: A super-sized redesign of his nine-blog network.

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Observer

Sarah Rabil / Bloomberg:

AOL CEO Armstrong Aims for 500 News Websites in Local-Ad Bet — Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — AOL Inc. is betting on the success of Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong's vision for community news and advertising as it plans to start 400 more local-news websites by the end of the year.

Discussion: MediaMemo, Reuters and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
AOL's Patch Aims To Quintuple In Size By Year-End

Discussion: Morristown Patch, Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow Patch, Springfield Patch, Merrick Patch, Wellesley Patch, Chatham Patch, Fairfield Patch, Port Washington Patch and Garden City Patch

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

News outlets split in describing mosque — There is no mosque being built on the site of Ground Zero. It's a simple fact, but one that news consumers can be forgiven for missing as they her hourly cable news updates and scan the headlines about a growing—and increasingly heated …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Salon, Gawker, Gothamist and TPMDC

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Rumored $99 iTV Could Pave Way for $2,000 Apple-Connected Television — “The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set-top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Mercury News, NewTeeVee and parislemon, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Guardian launches governmental pledge-tracking tool — Since it came to office nearly 100 days ago, Britain's coalition government — a team-up between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats that had the potential to be awkward and ineffective, but has instead (if The Economist's current cover story …

Discussion: Fast Company

Patrick / Clicker Blog:

It's SHOWTIME (Literally) on Clicker.com!! — In celebration of tonight's premiere of The Big C, starring Laura Linney, and the new Season 6 of Weeds, Showtime has teamed up with Clicker to offer some EXCLUSIVE awards for fans who tune in and check-in, either directly on Clicker.com or using our new Clicker Mobile on Android devices.

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

Four ways to use Fast Follow — The mobile team here at Twitter has rolled out a new feature called Fast Follow, and its genius lies in its simplicity: text “follow [account]” to 40404 (Twitter's U.S. shortcode) and you'll immediately start getting that account's tweets via SMS—without ever signing up for Twitter.

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Ambinder, Madhani to lead National Journal's White House team — Marc Ambinder and Aamer Madhani to Lead New National Journal W.H. Team — Washington, D.C. (August 16, 2010) — National Journal Group announced today that two of Washington's fastest-rising journalistic talents are joining together …

Discussion: MinOnline, FishbowlNY and On Media's Blog

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

The Washington Post Worries About New Rules for Kaplan — The Washington Post Company said on Monday that its reliable profit center, the Kaplan Higher Education division, may come under serious pressure if new federal rules meant to rein in the for-profit college business go into effect.

Discussion: Washington Post, Associated Press, On Media's Blog, Romenesko and Scocca

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Who's Going to Sell Hulu to Wall Street? — Can Hulu really go public? — Yes, say sources talking to the New York Times who imagine the video site launching an IPO “as soon as this fall.” — And it's not the first time we've heard the idea: Some of Hulu's network owners have been murmuring privately about an IPO for a while.

Discussion: MediaPost, Guardian, TechCrunch, MediaPost, PE Hub Blog and PC Magazine

Gregory Ferenstein / CNN:

How web journalism can make people seem hateful — Editor's note: Gregory Ferenstein is an author and educator who writes about the intersections of technology, business and politics. He is a fellow at the University of California Center for the Study of Democracy.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Google Hires BBC News Exec To Woo Publishers — Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is hiring BBC News' head of development and rights, Madhav Chinnappa, to its partnerships team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, it tells paidContent:UK, “with a specific focus on helping publishers get the most out of Google News”.

Tracy Wilkinson / Los Angeles Times:

Under threat from Mexican drug cartels, reporters go silent — Journalists know drug traffickers can easily kidnap or kill them — and get away with it. — Placards with pictures of slain journalists are seen this month at a Mexico City rally by journalists protesting the violence they face.

Discussion: Romenesko, Gawker, New York Observer, The Daily Dish and Journalism and the World

Terry Ann Knopf / CJR:

The O'Reilly Factor — How the Fox host used raw corporate power to crush a critic … It was a balmy Saturday—a perfect night for champagne toasts. Some 450 people from the local television industry gathered in the Grand Ballroom at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, many of the men in tuxedos, the women in strapless gowns.

Discussion: TVNewser and On Media's Blog

Andrew Alderson / Telegraph:

Soccer star gags tabloid story — A leading Premier League footballer has won a High Court injunction to prevent the publication of claims about his private life, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. — He was successful on Friday in blocking disclosures in a tabloid Sunday newspaper.

Discussion: Jon Slattery and The Independent

MediaShift:

Experts Weigh Pros and Cons of Social Media — OurBlook.com has been conducting an ongoing interview series on the current and future role of journalism and social media. In previous posts for PBS MediaShift, I shared some of the insights we've gathered about the future of journalism …

Media Week:

Times loses 1.2m readers — The Times has lost 1.2 million UK readers across its daily and Sunday websites and almost halved the amount of time people spend on its sites in the past three months, according data released by ComScore. — In May, the free-to-access website Timesonline.co.uk …

Discussion: The Wire and The Huffington Post

Joe Flint / Company Town:

David Madden tapped to head Fox Television Studios — David Madden, the top creative executive at Fox Television Studios — the News Corp.-owned production company responsible for some of the cable industry's highest-rated dramas — has been tapped as president of the unit.

Discussion: Variety, B&C, MediaPost, The Wrap and Broadcasting & Cable

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Why iPad Magazines Won't Be a (Really) Big Business for a While-and Why Prices Won't Come Down, Either — Will tablets save the magazine business? Nope. But if the industry's hopes for the iPad and its ilk pan out, digital editions could give the industry a billion-dollar boost in a few years.

Discussion: MediaPost, Folio, eMedia Vitals, New York Observer, Publishing Executive News and paidContent