Mediagazer: Scribd Redesign Is An Attempt To Become A “Social Network For Reading” (Erick Schonfeld/TechCrunch)

10:00 PM ET, September 13, 2010

Top News:

Americans Spending More Time Following the News — Ideological News Sources: Who Watches and Why — OVERVIEW — There are many more ways to get the news these days, and as a consequence Americans are spending more time with the news than over much of the past decade.

Howard Kurtz / Washington Post: Media Notes: A new poll shows ‘old media’ holding their own in an Internet world

Melvin Felix / NYU Local:

NYU, NYTimes Launch Hyper-Local News Blog for East Village — That's right, we're rollin with the New York Times. — Launching today is The Local: East Village, a new hyper-local, interactive news site run by the university in collaboration with the Times.

Discussion: The Next Web, Lost Remote and EditorandPublisher.com

Jay Rosen / PressThink:

The Virtual Assignment Desk and The Launch of the Local East Village — Today The Local East Village launches. That makes it a big day for me and the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU. And for Studio 20, which developed for the launch a new piece of software: the Virtual Assignment Desk.

Discussion: Rebooting The News, MediaShift, Romenesko and Journalism.co.uk

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

“The Social Network” Is Just as Brutal as Mark Zuckerberg Feared — It's hard to feel sorry for a billionaire. But here I am, feeling bad for Mark Zuckerberg. If you see the “The Social Network” you're probably going to feel bad for him, too. — I saw a screening of the movie last week …

Discussion: Gawker, Anil Dash, Silicon Alley Insider, /Film, The Not-So Private Parts, VentureBeat, New Yorker, BoomTown, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, DealBook, The Wrap and kottke.org, more at Techmeme »

Daily Front Row:

Armstrong to the Rescue! — (NEW YORK) It's a bird! It's a brain! It's AOL execu-hunk Tim Armstrong! Fresh from planet Google, he wants to turn the Web's first megaportal into the world's largest content creator. The best part? He needs your help to do it. Is this the hero we've been waiting for?

Discussion: Romenesko

Chris Smith / New York Magazine:

America Is a Joke — The worst of times for politics and media has been the best of times for The Daily Show's host—and unfortunately things are getting even funnier. — I — t's hard to top a kick in the nuts. — Especially when the kicker is Linda McMahon, the Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Romenesko, The Corsair, newsfeed.time.com, Mediaite, Strupp and On Media's Blog, more at Techmeme »

Natalie Zmuda / AdAge:

Gap Taps Foursquare Cofounders for Holiday Ad Campaign — Crowley and Selvadurai Participate in Exchange for Donation to Nonprofit CampInteractive — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — What do Foursquare cofounders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai have in common with Lauren Bush? The Gap, apparently.

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Washington Post to start running front-page ads — Washington Post readers in the D.C.-metro area probably noticed a Capitol One-sponsored advertisement wrapped around Sunday's paper. The removable wrap, which covered half the front page and all of the back page, was an advertising first for the newspaper.

Discussion: Romenesko

New York Times:

Hollywood Reporter to Become a Weekly Magazine — LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Reporter has been dying a slow death for a decade, bleeding from layoffs, vanishing advertisers and diminished relevance in a news cycle now dominated by cutthroat entertainment blogs.

Discussion: Gawker, The Wrap, Romenesko, DailyFinance, Cinematical, Media Buyer Planner, Mediaite, Audience Development, Company Town, New York Observer, The Wire, LA Observed, New York Magazine and media 360

Chris Dale / YouTube Blog:

Testing, testing...YouTube begins trial of new live streaming platform — From U2 to the Indian Premier League to the White House to E3, we've worked closely with our partners to give you a front row seat to a wide array of live events. Today and tomorrow, tune in as we open a new chapter of YouTube live streaming.

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Wherewereyou: WaPo puts the humble hashtag to work — In our new age of two-way news, news organizations sometimes struggle to find a way to foster productive conversation: to move beyond superficial gestures of inclusiveness — empty questions, atomized responses — to create conversation that is meaningful and purposeful.

Discussion: SocialTimes.com, Lost Remote and NetNewsCheck Latest

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Brightcove: Online Video Discovery Shifting From Search To Social Media — Even in the depths of the recession, online video ad growth continued to surge by double digits. Spending is still expected to rise robustly over the next few years, but a report from cloud-based online video platform Brightcove …

Discussion: Lost Remote, ReadWriteWeb, MediaPost, VentureBeat and NetNewsCheck Latest

Andrew Wallenstein / Hollywood Reporter:

EXCLUSIVE: HBO subscribers dwindling — DirecTV deal impasse just part of the problem — The channel that turned vampire killers into hit television is quietly facing the draining of its own lifeblood: subscribers. — 2010 would seen have the makings of a big year for HBO given …

Discussion: NewTeeVee and Multichannel News

Brian Ries / The Daily Beast:

The Meanest Commenters on the Web — It was supposed to be a meaningful conversation with readers of his Politico blog. Instead, it has degenerated into a screaming pit. Brian Ries on the state of talk-back on the Web. — Ben Smith, the popular Brooklyn-based political journalist who blogs at Politico.com, is under attack.

Discussion: Media Matters for America, On Media's Blog, Mediaite, New York Observer and Ben Smith's Blog

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Letter from Toronto: Transition Grips the Film Business — The sense of transition in the film industry is palpable at this year's Toronto Film Festival, where they are still doling out one press pass per online news organization as if they've not yet noticed that online is where everyone has landed.

Discussion: Variety

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

The FT Has Bought A New Video Studio — The Financial Times has made what it's calling a “major investment” in a new online video studio at its Southwark Bridge HQ. — FT.com had already been posting video interviews with newsmakers and analysis from its editorial staff.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Robert Hernandez / Online Journalism Review:

Online Journalism or Journalism Online? There is a difference — By Robert Hernandez: [Editor's note: Robert Hernandez of the USC Annenberg faculty will be posting frequent commentaries to OJR about online journalism this academic year.] — I'm a journalist, first and foremost.

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Seeing a Tilt in Sunday Talk — Senator Patrick Leahy, left, and Senator Jeff Sessions on “Face the Nation” on CBS, discussing a Supreme Court nominee. — It is a perennial complaint about American television news: that the guests on the Sunday morning public affairs programs are not representative of the country's diversity.

Discussion: Think Progress and Chickaboomer

Dave Winer / Scripting News:

How to reboot RSS — I was not able to influence the VCs who started the RSS companies — famous companies like Newsgator and Feedburner, and not-so-famous ones. Like most VCs they thought they understood better, so they went their own way and most of their companies flopped.

Discussion: GigaOM, Scobleizer and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Felix Salmon:

How the WSJ magazine fails its readers — Lucas Conley's piece on Ugg for the WSJ's magazine is a perfect example of why the WSJ shouldn't have a glossy, fashion-friendly magazine. — Conley does a reasonably good job of covering the way in which Deckers Outdoor Corporation …

Discussion: The Awl

Steven Church / Bloomberg:

Tribune Creditors Seek to Sue Shareholders, Zell — Tribune Co. creditors asked a judge to let them sue real-estate billionaire Sam Zell, who took the newspaper publisher private in 2007 for more than $8 billion, and shareholders who benefited from the deal.

Discussion: Romenesko and LA Observed

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Scribd Redesign Is An Attempt To Become A “Social Network For Reading” — Reading isn't a particularly social activity, but talking about reading and sharing books, articles, and other documents is highly social. Book clubs are so popular because people identify with other people who share the same reading interests.

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Russian Snob Lands in New York — Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian metals magnate and owner of the New Jersey Nets, figures he knows just what New York City needs: another snob. — Mr. Prokhorov this week is bringing Snob, a Russian-language, general-interest magazine that caters …

Discussion: New York Observer and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Atlantic.com's New Tech Channel Will “Take A Broader And More Cultural View Of Technology” — Back in July, former Wired science blogger Alexis Madrigal joined The Atlantic as a senior online editor who was hired to oversee a new tech channel on Atlantic.com.

Michael Wolff / Newser:

Can the Brits Get Rupert? — Even just a few weeks ago, who would have doubted the outcome of a competition between Rupert Murdoch and the New York Times? The Times' many-months investigation of illegal phone hacking by Murdoch reporters in Britain is a reminder that while everybody …

Mike Reynolds / Multichannel News:

Cable's Upfront Trifecta — CAB Estimates Ad-Supported Cable's Take At $8 Million For 2010-11 TV Season — The final tally for cable's upfront for the 2010-11 TV season was a strong one as the medium notched its best performance ever during the annual Madison Avenue bazaar.

Janko Roettgers / NewTeeVee:

The Boxee Box: Intel Inside, Available for Preorder — Boxee and D-Link are announcing today that their upcoming Boxee Box will be powered by Intel's CE4100 Atom processor. The online video set-top-box, which will ship in early November, can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.com starting today.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Bits and Faster Forward, more at Techmeme »