Mediagazer: Simon Doonan Is Leaving The New York Observer (Joe Pompeo/The Wire)

3:15 PM ET, September 1, 2010

Top News:

Apple Premieres New Apple TV for Breakthrough Price of $99 — Rent Commercial Free HD TV Episodes for Just 99 Cents — Apple® today announced the new Apple TV® which offers the simplest way to watch your favorite HD movies and TV shows on your HD TV for the breakthrough price of just $99.

Discussion: paidContent, Boy Genius Report, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AppleInsider and The Official Netflix Blog, more at Techmeme »

Donald Melanson / Engadget:

Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping social network — Not a huge surprise here, but Apple's just announced ITunes 10, complete with a brand new logo that finally ditches the CD. What is something of a surprise, however is the standout feature: Ping. That's Apple's take on a music-centered social network …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Apple, PC World, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo and Bits, more at Techmeme »

Dominic Patten / The Wrap:
Just when it seemed all the wired geeks had moved on from music …

Discussion: Multichannel, Variety, All Things Digital, Fast Company, hypebot and NPD Group, more at Techmeme »

Liz Gannes / GigaOm:
Akamai Powering Apple Live Stream (And I Can Prove It)

Discussion: NewTeeVee, Cult of Mac and Apple, more at Techmeme »

TBD:

Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring evacuated; gunman inside — UPDATE 2:25 All workers in building were evacuated. Many told to go home though they left personal items in the building. — UPDATE 2:21: Police are saying there is at least one hostage.

Discussion: Post Now, CNN, The Wire, Mediaite, Village Voice, mediabistro.com, Gawker, Associated Press, Fox News, We Love DC, Associated Content and On The Air

Choire / The Awl:

Discovery HQ Being Evacuated: Man Demands “Stop All Shows Glorifying Human Birthing” — “A man with what appears to be an explosive device has taken at least one hostage at the Discovery Communications building in downtown Silver Spring, Montgomery County Police said.”

Discussion: The Wire, Mediaite, The Wrap, The Huffington Post, ABCNEWS and Boing Boing

Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Grabs the TV Remote — Amazon.com Inc. is working on a new subscription service that would deliver TV shows and movies over the Internet, ramping up the battle among Web companies to control entertainment in the living room. — The Internet retailer has in recent weeks pitched …

Bloomberg: Amazon.com Girds for Combat With Netflix

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

TV News for Early Risers (or Late-to-Bedders) — Last season, the big battle in television was fought over late night. This season, the battleground is shaping up to be the early morning. Very early. — The television business, it seems, is learning what the predawn buyers …

Discussion: New York Observer, LA Observed and Collective Talent

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

New York Times Warns Newsroom on Anonymous Sources — Fresh from a farewell dinner for departing New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt, the paper's standards editor, Phil Corbett, issued a memo to the newsroom yesterday on that perpetually controversial issue: use of anonymous sources.

Discussion: CJR and Romenesko

Jube Shiver Jr. / American Journalism Review:

Embracing Original Content — As fewer and fewer people use portals to access the Internet, AOL and Yahoo! are hiring journalists and posting their own material in an effort to bolster Web traffic. When they went calling on professional sports leagues for help in expanding …

Alan Deutschman / Vanity Fair:

The Vanity Fair 100 — Two years ago, when Facebook recruited its 100-millionth user, a celebratory toga party was thrown by C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg, a classics buff who is prone to spontaneously reciting Homeric verses from memory. Since then the stunningly successful Web site has quintupled …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and DealBook

Rebecca Dana / The Daily Beast:

Implosion at CBS News — With a new round of layoffs expected this fall, CBS News is being trimmed to the bone. Rebecca Dana on the dramatic drop in ratings, strange BlackBerry blackouts, and eager suitors for anchor Katie Couric. — On Monday, Katie Couric begins her fifth …

Discussion: TVNewser, Romenesko, MarketWatch and Media Buyer Planner

Village Voice:

NYC's Golden Gossip Era Fades — Gotham gossip loses grip, fights off rabble. Rattled tattletales tell all. — A few months ago, Richard Johnson, the 56-year-old long-time editor of Page Six, walks into the office of his boss, New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan.

Discussion: Romenesko, City Room and tag me with a spoon

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

The Awl Goes for Laughs With Spin-off Site Splitsider — Irreverent Blog Launched by Gawker Vets Is Getting Some Brand Dollars, Including Gillette — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The Awl is expanding. The three-man enterprise, run by editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk and publisher David Cho …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab and Silicon Alley Insider

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

News Corp Has Name For New Internet-Killing iPad Newspaper: “Daily Planet” — There hasn't been much news about Rupert Murdoch's forthcoming tablet and mobile phone “newspaper” since The L.A. Times reported on it in mid-August. — But Buried in the last graph of Shira Ovide's piece …

Discussion: WebNewser, Digits and 9 to 5 Mac

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb: iPad Newspapers: Ripe For Innovation

Paul Bedard / US News:

Washington Times Sold For $1, Just Like Newsweek — The Rev. Sun Myung Moon is regaining control of the Washington Times after allies of the South Korean spiritual leader agreed to acquire the paper for just $1 and assumption of most if its debts, according to an internal memo.

Discussion: New York Observer, TPMMuckraker, New York Magazine and The Wrap

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Want to join my entrepreneurial journalism class? — I have a little room in my entrepreneurial journalism class at CUNY. — I'd especially like a few under- or unemployed journalists looking to start businesses in the class to add to the mix of experience among the students.

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

All the web's a stage: Scholar Joshua Braun on what we show and what we choose to hide in journalism — Joshua Braun is a media scholar currently pursuing his Ph.D in Communications at Cornell. His work is centered at the intriguing intersection of television and the web …

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Simon Doonan Is Leaving The New York Observer — Simon Doonan, a longtime New York Observer writer who's one of the salmon-colored weekly's most valuable brand names, is leaving the paper, The Wire has learned. — We hear he'll be starting a new column for Slate, whose chairman, Jacob Weisberg, has been courting him for some time.

Discussion: Romenesko

Media Week:

Financial Times targets businesses with new campaign — The Financial Times is rolling out a global corporate marketing campaign to promote the FT subscription as an essential tool for businesses. — FT: latest campaign promotes subscriptions — The campaign, created by DDB London …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Facebook Won't Run Ads for “The Social Network,” but Facebook Users Like It Anyway — Facebook loves Hollywood ad dollars, except in the case of one particular film. That would be “The Social Network,” the upcoming film best known as “The Facebook Movie.”

Discussion: TechCrunch and Show Me The Money

Amit / Digital Inspiration Technology Blog:

Who Broke the News (or the Embargo) First? — Let's say a company is about to launch a new product and, as is the standard practice, they have pre-briefed a select group of media outlets and bloggers about the news under an embargo. — The launch date is close and writers have already prepared …

Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:

YouTube Releases Ridley Scott's ‘Life In A Day’ Project Raw Footage — Google's YouTube/Ridley Scott project, Life in a Day, has launched a video gallery making available raw footage from some of the 80,000 video submissions across 197 countries and 45 languages.

Jonathan Bellack / The Official Google Blog:

Online publishers: growing the display advertising pie — This is the latest post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, director of product management Jonathan Bellack looks at our efforts to help online publishers generate more advertising revenue - Ed.

Discussion: Guardian

Will Weissert / Associated Press:

New photos show Fidel Castro with US journalist — HAVANA—Cuba on Tuesday released pictures of Fidel Castro with an American magazine correspondent and a Washington-based policy expert, while a Mexican newspaper published an interview in which the gray-bearded revolutionary expressed regret for past persecution of homosexuals.

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Washington Post launching iPad app in ‘coming weeks’ — The Washington Post plans on rolling out its iPad app “in the coming weeks,” following major papers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in creating a product for the Apple device. — Ken Babby, the Post's chief revenue officer …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals blogs, Romenesko and The Wire