Mediagazer: USAT: It's (About) Time for the Next Re-Invention (Ken Doctor/Newsonomics)

9:10 AM ET, August 28, 2010

Top News:

Welcome to your new vital, valuable media brand; USA Today's reorganization steps back to the past — In a major shift in strategy, a top Gannett executive has announced a sweeping restructuring of its newspaper publishing strategy, one designed to be a model for the newsroom of the future in a rapidly changing digital marketplace.

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org …, ReadWriteWeb, Shaping the Future …, Garcia Media, PR Newswire, Poynter Online, FishbowlNY, The Wire, Editors Weblog, New York Observer, Associated Press and New York Times, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

USAT: It's (About) Time for the Next Re-Invention — You remember USA Today's innovation? In 1982, it zagged when others were zigging. The brilliance of Al Neuharth's vision was several-fold: — Most importantly, it focused on audience. An audience not attached to any particular local geography …

Discussion: Romenesko, Jon Slattery and On Media's Blog

David Kaplan / paidContent:

USAT Starts ‘Radical’ Shakeup: 130 Layoffs; News Tailored To Mobile, Ads — USA Today Publisher Dave Hunke is embarking on the biggest change in the Gannett (NYSE: GCI) flagship's 28-year history as he shifts away from print and towards mobile. The newsroom is being restructured around content rings instead …

Discussion: National Media, Media Decoder, MediaPost, MediaPost, rbr.com, 5 Blogs Before Lunch and Newspaper Death Watch

Foster Kamer / Runnin' Scared:

Ben Huh of “Cheezburgur” Fame Offers to Take Reddit Off of Conde Nast's Marijuana-Hating Hands — Earlier today, it started breaking that Reddit — the user-controlled web content aggregator recently purchased by Condé Nast, which has now been accurately described as …

Discussion: The Daily What, The Social, VentureBeat, benhuh! and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Reddit Tells Conde Nast to Go to Hell

Discussion: Switched

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

BBC iPlayer Should Work For Brits Abroad, Global Version ‘Within A Year’ — BBC director-general Mark Thompson has committed the corporation to making its iPlayer VOD service available to UK license payers whilst traveling overseas. — In his MacTaggart Lecture to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh …

Discussion: paidContent:UK, Guardian, Media Week and The Next Web

Mark Briggs / Poynter Online:

Why News Startups Should Think Collaboration, not Competition, with Big Media — How will new media replace old media? The rise of independent journalism startups, combined with the shrinking of mainstream news organizations, provokes the question. And for some media pundits, the question is when - not if.

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote: A look at Miami Herald's hyperlocal approach

Brian Stelter / ArtsBeat:

Going Online With the Emmys — LOS ANGELES — On the fringes of the Emmy telecast this year, producers are trying to appeal to the growing number of people who split their time between the television set and the computer screen. — The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences …

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Wayne Friedman / MediaPost:

Will Digital Entities Want To Play In The Big-Budgeted TV Game? — Where does one market TV shows in the new digital age? Do you need a big-branded network like HBO or NBC to power up pricey TV dramas and other programs, or will these traditional “brands” come to an end? Will YouTube, Twitter and Facebook be enough?

Mike Taylor / FishbowlNY:

Source: Tina Brown Gunning for Editor-in-Chief Spot at Newsweek — Update:Well, it looks like The Daily Beast editor Tina Brown got a reprieve from the task of enrolling her daughter in college. She sent us this statement through a spokesperson: … So if Brown ever was looking for the top Newsweek gig, she isn't anymore.

Discussion: The Wrap, Romenesko, 5 Blogs Before Lunch and New York Post

Jack Neff / AdAge:

Isaiah Mustafa and Social Media Prove No Match for Free Goods — As Flood of Body Wash Slows, so Do Old Spice Sales — BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Muscular as Isaiah Mustafa and his viral videos may be, they seem no match for the power of free goods. — The latest four-week scanner data …

Discussion: Gawker and the Econsultancy blog

Laura Oliver / Journalism.co.uk:

Breaking news agency BNO withdraws iPhone app, expands wire services — News agency BNO News, which began as a breaking news Twitter service, is withdrawing its iPhone application as it expands its wire service. — The organisation launched the iPhone app in August 2009 prior to handing control …

Caroline McCarthy / The Social:

‘Social Network’ raises questions as debut nears — Actors Jesse Eisenberg (left) and Joseph Mazzello, playing Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz in the upcoming film ‘The Social Network.’ — NEW YORK—They're everywhere here: on the sides of buses and along the walls …

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

The Tweet Paywall — If it's true that attention is a scarce resource, drawing attention to something ought to be worth something, right? — That's the idea behind a service that soft-launched this summer called PayWithATweet. It allows you to stash a piece of content (say …

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Mobile news apps fall short — Little interactivity and even less innovation. That's the headline from a new study of the state of mobile news from the University of Colorado. The report chides news organizations for playing it safe and creating apps that just do the basics.