Mediagazer: O'Keefe says he wasn't going through with CNN seduction plot (Michael Calderone/Yahoo! News)

3:00 PM ET, October 5, 2010

Top News:

Howard Kurtz Joins The Daily Beast — Media and investigative reporter Howard Kurtz joins The Daily Beast as Washington Bureau Chief. The Daily Beast turns two tomorrow, and an early piece of birthday good news is that Howie Kurtz, who has won renown for his media and investigative reporting …

Discussion: Media Decoder, paidContent, TBD All News, The Wrap, Gawker, Mediaite, The Wire, The Huffington Post, TVNewser, New York Observer, Romenesko and Media Nation

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Jason Calacanis: Revenge is a new editorial project to rival TechCrunch — Jason Calacanis is angry. You can tell he's angry partly because he talks even faster than normal, but also because he's (still) spitting feathers about TechCrunch founder (and now AOL, employee) Mike Arrington.

Discussion: WebNewser, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web and Voices on All Things Digital, more at Techmeme »

Alessandra Stanley / New York Times:

‘Recovering’ Politician, Aspiring ... ? — The ickiness factor of “Parker Spitzer” may subside, but the first glimpse of CNN's latest offering on Monday was hard to watch. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York and the conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker playfully …

Discussion: The Wire, New York Observer, Guardian, Mediaite, Romenesko, Tuned In, New York Post, NY Daily News, Z on TV, Politics Daily, mediabistro.com, New York Magazine, City Room, The Caucus, Chickaboomer, Gothamist, Runnin' Scared, Ypulse and Hot Air

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Digits:

NBC Invests in Targeted TV Ads Business — A company that delivers targeted ads to television sets has scored another endorsement. — NBC Universal plans to announce Tuesday an investment in Invidi Technologies Corp., according to the companies. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed.

Discussion: paidContent and AdAge

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Journalism in Trouble? You Can't Tell by the Super-Salaries — With all the million-dollar salaries being thrown around journalism circles these days, you'd hardly know we were in the depths of a media downturn. — While much of the journalism profession is idled, redundant …

Discussion: MediaPost and Company Town

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:
Michael Ausiello Exits EW And Joins MMC

Discussion: Romenesko, The Ausiello Files and Gawker

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

2 E-Books Cost More Than Amazon Hardcovers — Readers of e-books may not be able to turn paper pages, lend their copies to friends or file them away on living room bookshelves. But they do have the comfort of knowing that they paid less for them than for hardcovers.

Discussion: New York Observer and eBookNewser, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

With Tagline, MSNBC Embraces a Political Identity — MSNBC, once the also-ran but now the No. 2 cable news channel, has a new tagline that embraces its progressive political identity. — The tagline, “Lean Forward,” will be publicly unveiled Tuesday, opening a planned …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Mediaite, Gawker, NewscastStudio Blog, Romenesko, Chickaboomer, Think Progress, B&C, Inside Cable News, New York Observer, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Martin Robbins / Guardian:

Why I spoofed science journalism, and how to fix it — Last week I posted a spoof of science journalism that to my complete surprise went viral. Since then, I've been trying to find answers. What's wrong with science journalism, and how do we fix it? — Bizarrely, the most read article …

Los Angeles Times:

New kids' TV channel raises product-placement concerns — The Hub, co-owned by Hasbro, launches Sunday. Several shows are built around products, but officials downplay worries: ‘Kids are not going to want to see 30-minute infomercials,’ one says. — Margaret Loesch, chief executive of the Hub …

Discussion: Company Town and 5 Blogs Before Lunch

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Pay Now, Read Later: Instapaper Starts Testing Subscriptions — There are few services I use more on a daily basis than Instapaper. The super-simple bookmarking tool has been my go-to way to come back to articles to read later for a few years now. And with brilliant iPhone and iPad apps, Instapaper has only gotten better with time.

Discussion: New York Observer, Fast Company and Download Squad

David Goetzl / MediaPost:

‘B&C,’ ‘Multichannel News’ Erect Pay Walls Between Mags, Online Stories — The new owners of industry publications Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News have erected pay walls around previously free Web content that could have been causing a drain on print subscriptions.

Melanie West / Metropolis:

Bedbugs Suspected Inside Wall Street Journal's Office … Bedbugs have made their way inside retailers, movie theaters, hospitals, government offices and, of course, homes across New York City. It turns out newspapers are not immune. Not even the newspaper you're reading this very moment.

Discussion: Romenesko, The Wrap, Gawker and New York Magazine

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Sony Raises the Curtain on Ariama, Its Classical iTunes — Want your classical music on your iPhone, now? Sony Music is thinking about you: The label has opened up Ariama, its all-classical online store. — This is the iTunes-meets-classical project I told you about in July.

Discussion: Ars Technica and Gizmodo

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

Ben Silverman Partners With Sofia Vergara For Electus' First Big Scripted Sale At ABC — EXCLUSIVE: Ben Silverman is returning to scripted television via the same route that made him an independent producer. ABC is finalizing a deal for a single-camera comedy based on the popular Spanish series Aquí …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Telegraph:

Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes advises against ITV paywall — Jeff Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, the media group, said ITV's advertising revenues will bounce back but has warned the broadcaster against putting up a paywall. — Mr Bewkes told The Daily Telegraph that an advertising boom …

Discussion: paidContent

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

O'Keefe says he wasn't going through with CNN seduction plot — Conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe says that a CNN reporter who exposed his alleged plot to seduce her on a boat “was never going to be placed in a threatening situation.” — O'Keefe offered his explanation of events Monday …

Discussion: Gawker, Romenesko, Big Government and Salon

Dan Zarrella:

New Data: Articles Published in the Morning Shared More on Facebook — It's been a while since I last published Facebook sharing data and I was waiting to gather a large enough sample set to produce this graph. — I analyzed the average (interquartile mean to be specific) …

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Hulu CEO to Big Media: Serve Consumers or Lose Them — At American Magazine Conference, Jason Kilar Tells Attendees to Stop Protecting Outdated Business Models — CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Big media companies have to show enough spine to charge for certain content, but they can't obsess …

more at Techmeme »

Alex Weprin / mediabistro.com:

The Huffington Post Launching a ‘Divorce’ Vertical — Continuing its rapid expansion into new verticals and topics, The Huffington Post is planning a section dedicated to the subject of “Divorce.” — Journalist and author Nora Ephron conceived the vertical, and will serve as its founding editor …

Cpen / Twitter Blog:

Promoted Promotions — When we launched Promoted Tweets back in April, we said that we would be doing lots of experimenting and iterating, as is typical with everything else at Twitter. Since then, we've done and learned a lot - such as adding Promoted Trends to our suite of Promoted Products …