Mediagazer: Hey Cable Guys! Cord Cutting is Real, and It's a Problem, Says Verizon CEO (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

James Robinson / Guardian:

US editor attacks net news ‘parasites’ — Leonard Downie Jr attacks aggregators including the Huffington Post as ‘parasites living off journalism produced by others’ — • Read Leonard Downie Jr's speech in full (pdf) — Leonard Downie Jr, the former executive editor of the Washington Post …

Discussion: Jon Slattery, International Media, On Media's Blog, The Wire, Journalism.co.uk and The Next Web

Discussion: Romenesko, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog and WebNewser

Bloomberg:

Blockbuster Files for Bankruptcy After Online Rivals Gain — Blockbuster Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection after failing to quickly adapt its movie- rental model from storefronts to mail-order and online technology pioneered by rivals such as Netflix Inc.

Discussion: Company Town, Online Video News, Reuters, TechCrunch, The Wrap, Globe and Mail, paidContent, MediaPost, Gizmodo and VentureBeat

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

How Online Video Killed Blockbuster — Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning, as part of a pre-arranged recapitalization that it has negotiated with its bondholders. With the filing, Blockbuster has wiped out nearly $1 billion in debt and given most of its bondholders equity in the company instead.

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What impact is SEO having on journalists? Reports from the field — Last week, I wrote that SEO and audience metrics, when used well, can actually make journalism stronger. But I got pushback from journalists who complained that I was parroting back management views rather …

Discussion: Guardian, Cision and WebNewser

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:

Sorry, New York Times Co, We'd Like To Work With You, But We're Not Going To Blow Smoke Up Your Ass — A few weeks ago, we had an interview scheduled with Cella Irvine, the CEO of About.com. After a hiccup during the recession, About.com is firing on all cylinders again, and we were eager to hear the latest from Cella.

Discussion: WebNewser

Discussion: Shaping the Future …, Business Wire, MediaMemo and CMO.com

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
New York Times Integration with International Herald Tribune …

Discussion: paidContent:UK

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:

Nielsen Testing a New Web-Ad Metric — Nielsen Co. is working on a service that would offer advertisers and Web publishers a new stream of data to improve audience measurement for online advertising, a move that may bring more ad dollars to the sector. — As with TV ratings …

Discussion: Inside Facebook, The Next Web and Nieman Journalism Lab

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Hey Cable Guys! Cord Cutting is Real, and It's a Problem, Says Verizon CEO — The party line from cable executives is that the “cord-cutting” phenomenon-consumers swapping cable subscriptions for Internet video-is a myth. Or, at best, greatly exaggerated. Not so, says Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg.

Discussion: Light Reading, Wall Street Journal, NewTeeVee, Multichannel, MacRumors, Engadget, Online Video News, TUAW and Technology News, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance:

A New Era at Forbes: Staffer Calls Cover Story ‘Stupefyingly Inane’ — Forbes magazine unveils a new look this week, with a redesigned issue on newsstands tomorrow featuring its signature Forbes 400 list, but for a sense of how much the company has changed since Lewis D'Vorkin took …

Discussion: CJR and Romenesko

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Romenesko and MediaMemo

Andrew Wallenstein / Hollywood Reporter:

EXCLUSIVE: MySpace taps new content chief — Andy Marcus aims to leverage site's audition platform — MySpace has tapped Andy Marcus to take the reins on its efforts in the entertainment business. — Formerly senior vp business and legal affairs at MySpace, Marcus will move over to senior vp entertainment and video.

Discussion: paidContent and All Things Digital

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

YouTubeSocial Lets You Simultaneously Watch Videos With Friends — I/O accelerator company SocialVision, purveyors of white-label “Viewing Party” software today launch YouTubeSocial as their first consumer facing product. Similar to Clipsync, YouTubeSocial combines Facebook's Social Graph …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Fast Company and WebNewser, more at Techmeme »

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Mail Online defies August slump to set new monthly user record — Daily Mail website hits new high of 45 million monthly browsers, as guardian.co.uk remains in second place with 35 million — Mail Online defied the traditionally quiet month of August to hit a new traffic record …

Discussion: Media Week and Press Gazette

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

Reuters Adds Some Star Power, Moves Away From The Old “Wire Mentality” — Reuters was never the type of media outlet that well-known journalists with prestigious newspaper and magazine credentials were clamoring to work for. But that seems to be changing.

Discussion: Romenesko

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

ESPN's Newest Premium Apps Are For Insiders Only — While other publishers brag about surpassing single-copy sales on the iPad or look for ways to manage subscriptions outside of iTunes, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) is running a different pattern. The Disney sports unit has a number of successful free and one-time purchase apps.

Discussion: WebNewser, Poynter Online and eMedia Vitals

Brad Stone / Business Week:

Facebook: At the Movies with the Winklevosses — The twins, early Zuckerberg collaborators turned foes, give their take on The Social Network — “It's a little surreal,” says Cameron Winklevoss, standing outside the Sony (SNE) office building in midtown Manhattan with his twin brother, Tyler.

Discussion: New York Observer

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of Apple's “digital circulation” share — [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] — So the newspaper business is now figuring out how to deal with a new middleman, Apple.

Discussion: New York Observer and Newsonomics

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

C-SPAN Archives a Treasure Trove of Material for News Orgs — Whenever there is a political story that the cable news channels aren't covering (or at least aren't covering in full) there is a good chance C-SPAN will be there. Did CNN or Fox News cover the 2008 Libertarian Party convention? Nope.

Discussion: Howard Kurtz

Brad Stone / Business Week:

Facebook Sells Your Friends — How Facebook plans to leverage its 550 million users into the greatest advertising juggernaut since ... O.K., only since Google. That's still huge — There were two obvious winners at the FIFA World Cup this summer. Spain took home the 13-pound …

more at Techmeme »

Nick Bilton / Bits:

Instapaper Goes From Hobby to Start-Up — On Tuesday Marco Arment, the chief technology officer at the social networking site Tumblr, announced that he would be leaving it to tend to a personal project: Instapaper. — I caught up with Mr. Arment on the phone on Wednesday to find out what was next from his personal project.

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Orla Healy (And More?) Out at New York Daily News — We hear from multiple sources that Orla Healy, the legendarily-disliked features editor at the New York Daily News, has been let go. Since Martin Dunn left the paper, Healy's clock has been ticking. Time's up. We hear. [UPDATED below].

Discussion: Runnin' Scared, New York Observer, TechCrunch and New York Magazine

The Wall Blog:

Readers react negatively as UBM puts building mag behind paywall — United Business Media has put the premium content of its Building Design website behind a paywall, asking £69 from a year for access, and sparked a largely (and maybe not surprising) negative reaction from readers.

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

“The mass market was a hack”: Data and the future of journalism — The following is an unedited version of an article written for the International Press Institute report ‘Brave News Worlds (PDF)’ — For the past two centuries journalists have dealt in the currency of information: we transmuted base metals into narrative gold.