Mediagazer: Bankrupt Playlist.com Owes Labels $28 Million (Robert Andrews/paidContent)

6:35 PM ET, August 25, 2010

Top News:

National Journal Hires Major Garrett From Fox News — Major Garrett, the chief White House correspondent for Fox News, is quitting his job at the cable news channel after eight years. He is joining National Journal as a Congressional correspondent. — Mr. Garrett's surprise departure comes …

Discussion: Mediaite, Washington Post, Romenesko, Vanity Fair, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, Chickaboomer, The Wrap, Inside Cable News, Media Matters for America, Strupp, The Huffington Post and Variety

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Politico Editor Jim VandeHei Sends Best Wishes To The New National Journal Team That's Trying To Kill Him — There's a media war brewing in Washington D.C. — Back in May, Atlantic Media Company owner David Bradley spoke with The New York Observer about how National Journal …

Discussion: FishbowlDC and Inside Cable News

Kelly McBride / Poynter Online:

SEO Makes It Too Late for Truth for ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ — It's not at ground zero and it's not just a mosque. — A number of news outlets have gone to great lengths recently to correct this falsehood. — PolitiFact has made several rulings on the issue.

Discussion: Editors Weblog, MarketWatch, Writing / Editing, Journalism.co.uk and Journalism.org

Brian McDermott / Online Journalism Review:

What the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ flap says about the state of journalism — By Brian McDermott: The Ground Zero mosque does not exist. — There is, of course, the planned Park51 Muslim community center and mosque, which local authorities approved for construction on Park Place in lower Manhattan …

Discussion: Runnin' Scared

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Loses E-Book Deal — A month after jolting the book industry with a deal to give Amazon.com Inc. exclusive digital access to some of the country's best-known literary works, literary agent Andrew Wylie is largely abandoning the agreement. — The Amazon deal was struck after Mr. Wylie failed …

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, New York Observer, DailyFinance, theBookseller.com, NYConvergence, Future Tense, Crain's New York Business and ResourceShelf, more at Techmeme »

Julie Bosman / New York Times:
Random House Wins Battle for E-Book Rights

Discussion: Poynter Online and Electronista

Peter Lauria / The Daily Beast:

Sumner's $1 Million Payoff — The billionaire chairman of Viacom and CBS has settled with a deputy who accused him of loutish behavior. Peter Lauria on the latest of Sumner Redstone's costly antics. — CBS Corp. spared its billionaire chairman Sumner Redstone the potential embarrassment …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Company Town, New York Observer, The Wire and Gawker

Jim Barnett / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Googling serendipity: How does journalism fare in a world where algorithms trump messy chance? — Twelve years ago, when I was reporting on the pending Microsoft antitrust case, I learned that what was really at stake wasn't immediately apparent in the legal briefs.

Wall Street Journal:

Apple Close to Deal With Disney to Rent ABC Shows Via iTunes — Apple Inc. is in discussions with major TV companies to offer 99-cent rentals of television episodes, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company tries to reshape the television business around its devices …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, MediaPost, Broadcasting & Cable, New York Times, Faster Forward, Fortune, Digits, Media Buyer Planner, Reuters and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Wall Street Journal:

The ABCs of E-Reading — New Devices Are Changing Habits. People Are Reading More, Even While in a Kayak — People who buy e-readers tend to spend more time than ever with their nose in a book, preliminary research shows. — A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing …

Discussion: New York Observer and Silicon Alley Insider

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CBS Evening News Ratings Tie 20-Year Low — For any person who believes that the American people should be paying greater attention to the war in Afghanistan, the following statistic might disappoint. — On a week that included the anchor Katie Couric's trip to Afghanistan, the …

Discussion: Romenesko, TVWeek.com, TVNewser and On Media's Blog

The Atlantic Online:

10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books — 1. The phrase “reading revolution” was probably coined by German historian Rolf Engelsing. He certainly made it popular. Engelsing was trying to describe something he saw in the 18th century: a shift from “intensive” reading and re-reading of very few texts to …

Discussion: Snarkmarket

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

The life of a freelance biz reporter, aka getting your life back — TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE — Heidi N. Moore has been a financial reporter for more than a decade, working in such newsrooms as Institutional Investor, The Deal and The Wall Street Journal.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Bankrupt Playlist.com Owes Labels $28 Million — It's wrestled with legal issues, on-off label licenses and low income. Now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Playlist.com music service formerly run by Owen Van Natta owes $27.7 million to the major and indie labels for use of their songs.

John Lippman / Company Town:

Tribune Co. creditors court Michael Eisner and Jeff Shell for top jobs — Former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Michael D. Eisner is in discussions that could lead to his return to the media spotlight - as chairman of the now-bankrupt Tribune Co. — The media company's largest creditors …

Discussion: Chicago Breaking Business

Andrew Littledale / Backstage.bbc.co.uk blog:

Pulling related web content into a live TV stream — Like everyone else, we have been wondering what set top boxes connected to the internet will look like for the user. What kind of interfaces will work best when TV and the web become bedfellows? — We decided to mock up a prototype application …

Discussion: paidContent:UK

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

WebMediaBrands Adds Sports Media Site To Its Roster — WebMediaBrands (NSDQ: WEBM) is going in-house for its latest expansion, launching a MediaBistro spinoff called SportsNewser, which will feature “breaking news and analysis of the sports media business,” as well as “interviews with prominent broadcasters …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, eMedia Vitals and The Wire

Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Podcaster Leo Laporte, the everywhere man — Leo Laporte arrived Thursday at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. — On Friday morning he arrived at the office of KFI AM 640, the radio station that airs his syndicated “The Tech Guy” program. At 3:42 p.m., he was back at the airport, ready to fly home to Petaluma, Calif.

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:

Rachel's New War — She didn't want to talk about the mosque. But Fox baited her into it. The MSNBC host banters with Lloyd Grove about “fake” news, wearing glasses on air, and whether she wants to get married. — For a cable news host intent on luring eyeballs to her prime-time show …

Discussion: Mediaite, News Hounds, Inside Cable News and The Huffington Post

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Janice Min's Hollywood Reporter: A Bitchy Switch — Who's the bitch now? Taking a page from her reign at Us Weekly, Janice Min has been making her presence felt on the Hollywood Reporter website. — Many inside the industry were shocked at a lead story on Tuesday that felt like a broadside …

Discussion: New York Observer and Hollywood Reporter

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

NPR's Argo Project becomes the Argo Network, mixing the local and the national on reported blogs — NPR's Argo Project (or Project Argo — it seems to vary) is starting to take shape — launch is set for one week from today, September 1. Argo is the network's $3 million effort …

Zach Baron / Sound of the City:

How Kanye West's Twitter Killed Music Magazines — Today, Slate posts “an all-access, totally non-exclusive interview with the would-be king of hip-hop,” Kanye West. The conceit is as follows: though the rapper stopped giving many interviews in the aftermath of his mother's death …

Discussion: Slate, The Wire, Soup and Speakeasy