Mediagazer: First Products. Then the Plots. (Brooks Barnes/Media Decoder)

9:00 AM ET, September 20, 2010

Top News:

Tanzina Vega / New York Times:

New Journalism Degree to Emphasize Start-Ups — The Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York wants to capitalize on some of the shifts that have rocked traditional journalism — and traditional journalists — with the creation of the Tow-Knight Center …

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Aggregators: the good ones vs. the looters — News aggregators have grown into all shapes and forms. Some are truly helping the producers of original content but others simply amount to mere electronic ransack. — My daily media routine starts on Techmeme.

Discussion: Kindle Review and Kirk LaPointe's …

Media Decoder:

Newsweek's Howard Fineman to Join The Huffington Post — Howard Fineman, one of the more recognizable pundits on cable television and a correspondent for Newsweek for 30 years, is leaving the magazine to become a senior editor at The Huffington Post. — Mr. Fineman's move from a print medium …

Discussion: New York Observer, ReadWriteWeb, Runnin' Scared, Mediaite, New York Times, Gawker and New York Magazine

Andrew Vanacore / Associated Press:

The next front for Murdoch's Journal: the weekend — NEW YORK - The Wall Street Journal's editor, Robert Thomson, is never short of fighting words. And he had a few to add in a recent interview about the Journal's new weekend edition, which launches this Saturday with two new sections …

Michael Gross / Crain's New York Business:
Forget the denials. It's war for Times, WSJ

Discussion: Michael Gross

Inc:

The Way I Work: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch — Michael Arrington loves breaking tech stories, but he's not big on PR people, conversational niceties, or sunlight. — Michael Arrington says his style is to “bust the door down and clean the mess up later.”

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Culture Vulture Stands Alone — Regular readers of New York magazine are familiar with its Approval Matrix, which is really more of a graph than a matrix. But that's beside the point. — The matrix plots on X and Y axes pop culture happenings of the previous week, ranking them neatly …

Wall Street Journal:

Apple Courts Publishers on iPad Subscriptions — Effort Suggests Magazines, Newspapers Will Be Company's Next Media Frontier — Apple Inc. in recent weeks has accelerated its efforts to persuade publishers to join the company's first foray into selling newspaper and magazine subscriptions …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Garcia Media and yelvington.com

Wall Street Journal:

Spitzer: Politician to Pundit — The Ex-Governor Discusses His Anxiety as He Prepares to Launch a TV Program — As a politician, Eliot Spitzer was not known to play well with others, whether they were New York Stock Exchange CEO Richard Grasso, Republican state Senate leader Joe Bruno, or state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Discussion: Metropolis

L. Gordon Crovitz / Wall Street Journal:

Now the News Finds You — A Pew study finds people spend an average of 70 minutes a day accessing new and old media. — The woes of the news industry are well reported, but accounts of the financial troubles of the media bury the lead: People are consuming more news.

Brooks Barnes / Media Decoder:

First Products. Then the Plots. — Duffy the bear at a Halloween celebration at Tokyo DisneySea. Duffy is coming to America, and Disney has high hopes. — LOS ANGELES — Disney's newest star is ... a teddy bear? — A few years ago, Tokyo DisneySea, a companion theme park to Tokyo Disneyland …

Olivia Torres / Associated Press:

Mexico border newspaper seeks truce with cartels — CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — The largest newspaper in Ciudad Juarez asked the border city's warring drug cartels Sunday for a truce after the killing last week of its second journalist in less than two years. — In a front-page editorial …

Discussion: Guardian and CNN

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

E.U. Laws Shielding Journalists' Sources Limited — PARIS — In January 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France declared his intention of protecting reporters from having to disclose the names of their sources — a safeguard that many journalists say is necessary for free media to thrive.

Joseph Menn / Financial Times:

Web group to screen bogus drug sellers — In a victory for the fight against criminal networks distributing counterfeit and adulterated drugs over the internet, the world's second-biggest seller of website addresses is to begin screening customers for unapproved drug sales.