Mediagazer: Why SEO and audience tracking won't kill journalism as we know it (Nikki Usher/Nieman Journalism Lab)

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

The New Twitter.com Is a “Consumption Environment”. Translation: Twitter is a (Reluctant) Media Company — Twitter's new Web site has lots of cool features and gizmos. But they're all supposed to do one thing in particular: They're meant to encourage you to spend more time on Twitter.com, where the company can show you some ads.

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Why SEO and audience tracking won't kill journalism as we know it — [I'm happy to introduce Nikki Usher, a new contributor here at the Lab. Nikki is a Ph.D. candidate at USC Annenberg and, before academia, was a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and elsewhere.

Jack Neff / AdAge:

Magazine Readership Off Sharply Among Affluent — Ipsos Survey: Younger Well-Off Readers More Receptive to Ads Than Elders — BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Magazine readership among the affluent plunged 16% in the past year as the group spent 12% more time using the internet and sharply stepped …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Romenesko, Gawker, BusinessJournalism.org … and FishbowlNY

Dean Starkman / CJR:

The Hamster Wheel — Why running as fast as we can is getting us nowhere — “Newsrooms have shrunk by 25% in three years.” —Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media 2010” — “A large majority (75%) of editors said their story counts . . …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Romenesko and National Media

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Helping Journalists Become Hackers and Entrepreneurs — Journalism schools are useful for many things, including research into ethical standards, traditional skill development, and so on. Increasingly, some journalism schools are focusing just on building their students' digital chops …

Discussion: MediaShift, The News About The News, J-Source and New York Times

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

WSJ assigns two editors to secret ‘Special Project’ — To: WSJ All News Staff; Newswires_USERS — I am pleased to announce that two of our most talented editorial executives will be leading a Special Project (notice the capital letters) crucial to our success as a company.

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Five important mobile app findings for news orgs — A new report out today gives news organizations reasons to start thinking mobile apps (if they haven't already). The Pew Internet and American Life Project partnered with Nielsen to survey cellphone users on their app habits …

Discussion: Romenesko, Pew Internet, VatorNews, ReadWriteWeb, MediaPost, National Media, Embargo Watch, PewResearch.org, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Poynter Online and The Hill, more at Techmeme »

Joe Eskenazi / The Snitch:

Declaring San Bruno Fire ‘Crime Scene’ Kept Media Out — It would be hard to begrudge San Bruno police for moving to keep non-emergency personnel out of the neighborhood impacted by last week's blast and fire. On Friday, police declared the incinerated areas a “crime scene,” which severely restricted access.

Discussion: Romenesko, Boing Boing and The Informant

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Weezer's YouTube Trade: We'll Star in Your Videos, You Help Us Sell Music — Weezer had a big hit on YouTube a couple of years ago with “Pork and Beans,” a video that featured some of YouTube's biggest stars. For its encore the band is inverting the strategy: The YouTube stars make their own videos …

Discussion: ClickZ and Mashable!

Niraj Chokshi / The Atlantic Online:

Book Excerpt: Can Videogames Be Journalism? — In July, 2009, Wired magazine waded into the ongoing coverage of Somalian pirate raids with an eight-page visual feature called “Cutthroat Capitalism.” The piece was accompanied by an online game, which, besides being fun to play …

Discussion: knightcenter.utexas …

David Weigel / Weigel:

Ask a Top Democrat! — When a reporter wants to make an argument without actually making the argument, he talks to a simpatico source who'll make the point for him. This is not laziness, mind you. It's just a journalistic convention that doesn't really make sense.

Discussion: Reuters and The Huffington Post

David Kaplan / paidContent:

NBCU Digital Dealmaker Jessica Schell Shifting To Film At Universal — After nearly five years, Jessica Schell is leaving her post as SVP of NBC Universal's digital strategy and business development to take on a new role in the company's film division. Schell's new title is EVP …

Discussion: The Wrap

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

DEMO: Fox-backed Bitbop brings mobile TV streaming to Android — Bitbop is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and NewTeeVee

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

News Corp Calls On Sun Online Editor For iPad Project — Pete Picton, long-time editor of the Sun Online website in the UK, is leaving London to join parent News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) in New York. — Sun Editor Dominic Mohan told staff on Tuesday Picton will be “helping to launch a new digital project”.

Discussion: WebNewser

New York Times:

Jittery News Anchors Aloft Smell News — I'M one of six kids, and all my family ever did was drive. Now, I fly so much I almost miss driving places. But I don't hate flying for work. It means I'm working. — Once I'm in the air, I like to prepare for meetings or read.

Discussion: Romenesko, Mediaite and TVNewser

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance:

Future Dweller Nick Bilton on What Newspapers Can Learn from Porn — No one knows what the future holds for newspapers, but Nick Bilton's guess is worth more than most. A compulsive multitasker, Bilton has had a peripatetic career path through the realms of film, advertising, technology and publishing.

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Berkeley j-school tables $5,000 fee for new students — To: — Dear Alumni and Students, — This is to thank you for the remarkable responses you submitted to us in recent weeks regarding the proposed new professional degree fee at the Graduate School of Journalism.

Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:

In the context of web context: How to check out any Web page — One of the great fears about the Web as it becomes our primary source of news is the notion that it rips stories from their moorings and delivers them to us context-free. We're adrift! In a flood of soundbites! Borne upon a river of bits!

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Bloomberg News Hops Aboard Yahoo Finance — Bloomberg stories are starting to pop up in various places other than company's website or terminal. Now it looks like the news service is running its content on Yahoo Finance. — We're waiting to hear back from a Bloomberg spokesperson for comment.

LAT Blogs / The Big Picture:

Aaron Sorkin on ‘The Social Network’: It's not meant as an attack on Mark Zuckerberg — I won't be seeing “The Social Network” until later this week, but it's clear that the film's acidic portrait of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg will be endlessly debated and dissected in media circles …

Discussion: TechFlash, PC World, Story Lab and Soup

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

More growth for Gawker comments, and more power to elite commenters — We've written before about the commenting system at Gawker Media's family of sites, which for my money strikes the best balance between complexity and simplicity, between encouraging good behavior and policing bad.

Discussion: Deadspin and Gizmodo