Mediagazer: Ask a Top Democrat! (David Weigel/Weigel)

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: BusinessJournalism.org …, MediaMemo, Gawker and Romenesko

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.

Discussion: Twitter Blog, Epicenter, paidContent, New York Times, ReadWriteWeb, Lost Remote, Mashable!, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Between the Lines Blog, ResourceShelf, Laughing Squid and Silicon Alley Insider, more at Techmeme »

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.

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: Romenesko and National Media

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, National Media, VatorNews, Poynter Online, PewResearch.org, ReadWriteWeb, MediaPost, Embargo Watch 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

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 …

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.

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

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

Nick Davies / Guardian:

Sienna Miller set to join legal action — Actor poised to take legal action while it emerges Sean Hoare has been interviewed by police under caution — Sienna Miller was today expected to become the latest public figure to join the legal assault on Scotland Yard and the News of the World over the phone-hacking scandal.

Discussion: New York Observer and Press Gazette

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: PC World, Story Lab, TechFlash and Soup

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: NewTeeVee and ReadWriteWeb, more at Techmeme »

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.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Looking For More Content, Ad Partners, iVillage Promotes Curbishley — The media personnel shifts keep on coming... iVillage is promoting John Curbishley from VP of strategy to SVP of Business Development, the NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) unit will announce later this morning.

Discussion: WebNewser and mediabistro.com

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.

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:

Techmeme Turns 5: Interview With Founder Gabe Rivera — This week, leading tech news aggregator Techmeme turned 5 years old. The service launched in September 2005, under the name tech.memeorandum, and ReadWriteWeb was one of the first media publications to review it. — In 2005, tech.memeorandum mostly tracked blogs.

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

Howard Kurtz:

Jack Anderson's Nixonian tactics — There was a time in Washington when Jack Anderson was a hero, the columnist who kept unearthing Richard Nixon's dark secrets, a Pulitzer winner who revealed the administration's secret tilt toward Pakistan in its war against India.

Discussion: Romenesko, msnbc.com, New York Observer and Hit & Run

Sophie Hoeller / New York Times:

What's a Virtual Assignment Desk ? — If The Local East Village, a collaboration between The New York Times and New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is an experiment in online journalism, then one of its most ambitious applications, the Virtual Assignment Desk, is an experiment within an experiment.

The Wrap:

Michael Eisner and the L.A. Times—A Marriage Made in Heaven? — Michael Eisner running to the Tribune Company, the man in charge of the Los Angeles Times? That seems to be the word - and, actually, it does make perfect sense. After all, more than most companies what does a newspaper need to thrive?

Discussion: The Wire