Mediagazer: ‘The Simpsons’ Explains Its Button-Pushing Banksy Opening (Dave Itzkoff/ArtsBeat)

8:45 PM ET, October 11, 2010

Top News:

Ben McGrath / New Yorker:

SEARCH AND DESTROY — Nick Denton's blog empire. — For years after starting Gawker Media, the online publishing network, in 2002, Nick Denton ran the company out of his apartment, in SoHo. “He said, ‘If you run it out of your house, then no one expects anything,’ ” …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Runnin' Scared, DealBook, Romenesko, VentureBeat, New York Magazine, Hit & Run, Guy Fawkes' blog, The Awl, New York Observer, The Wire, Spiersblr and Michael B. Duff

Felix Salmon:
Gawker's numbers — Ben McGrath's long-awaited New Yorker profile …

Discussion: City Room and Mediaite

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

What Should Hugo Do? — The New York Times Magazine has long been one of the most important magazines in the country, and many journalists and readers would argue, among the most boring. — Now, after a long competition, it has a new editor, Hugo Lindgren, from Bloomberg Businessweek.

Discussion: The Wrap and Romenesko

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Times Names Deputy Magazine Editor — The New York Times will have a new deputy editor for its Sunday magazine. — On the heels of the paper's selection of Hugo Lindgren as editor of the magazine, Mr. Lindgren announced on Monday that he has hired Lauren Kern to be his second in command.

Discussion: BuzzMachine

Dave Itzkoff / ArtsBeat:

‘The Simpsons’ Explains Its Button-Pushing Banksy Opening — How did “The Simpsons” manage to track down Banksy, the pseudonymous British artist, and get him to create the powerful opening-credit sequence from Sunday's show, which seems to reveal the torturous sweatshop responsible for its creation?

Discussion: Velocity, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Gothamist, Underwire and Most Recent Home Page Posts …

Max Read / Gawker:
Banksy Makes The Simpsons Funny Again

Discussion: Crain's New York Business, BBC, Speakeasy, Guardian, Wooster Collective, Laughing Squid, PSFK, Mediaite and MediaFreak

The Wrap:

Arianna's $250K Bus to Jon Stewart Rally a ‘Shock’ at HuffPo HQ — Arianna Huffington's surprise gift to Jon Stewart — a convoy of shuttle buses to his “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington — was an even bigger surprise to the folks at the Huffington Post.

Discussion: Mediaite, Romenesko and The Huffington Post

David Carr / New York Times:
A Vanishing Journalistic Divide

Discussion: Romenesko, Thompson on Hollywood, New York Observer and LA Observed

Mindy McAdams / Teaching Online Journalism:

Boring old news media: Still boring, still old — I was just rereading a post by Steve Yelvington — whom I used to call the smartest man in online journalism (and he may still be — it's just that there are so many more people in it now, it's hard to name just one).

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Freed Journalist Laura Ling Will Host ‘E! Investigates’ — Laura Ling, who was detained in North Korea with a colleague from Current TV last year, is restarting her television career at a channel much closer to home — E!, the entertainment channel. — Ms. Ling has been hired to host “E! …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Multichannel, The Wrap and Perez Hilton

Telegraph:

Andrew Marr attacks ‘inadequate, pimpled and single’ bloggers — Andrew Marr, the BBC political presenter, has dismissed bloggers as “inadequate, pimpled and single” loners who rant about the world from the safety of their mothers' basements. — The so-called “citizen journalists” …

Discussion: Guardian, iMediaConnection Blog, BBC College of Journalism Blog, One Man & His Blog, themediablog.typepad.com and Out With A Bang

Robert Hernandez / Online Journalism Review:

Storify's Burt Herman on the evolution from reporter to entrepreneur — By Robert Hernandez: For this week's post, I sat down with Burt Herman (@burtherman), entrepreneurial journalist who is the CEO of Storify and founder of Hacks/Hackers. — NOTE: We did the Q & A-style interview …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

What is the future of the fourth estate? — Kicking off Cif's new series of long-form blogs, your thoughts, please, on the three-way split in today's news media — Natalie Hanman, the editor of Comment is free, is launching a new series of long-form blogs in which a writer is given space …

Discussion: BuzzMachine

the nytpicker:

Stunner. At 7:00 AM Today, NYT Announced That It Has Officially Run Out Of Ideas. — In a stunning announcement, the NYT has disclosed to its readers that it has officially run out of ideas. — As of this morning at precisely 7:00 a.m., the NYT's “Idea Of The Day” blog …

Discussion: Idea of the Day

Washington Post:

Cable news chatter is changing the electoral landscape — When Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News program, he read her some advice from another Fox commentator, Sarah Palin. — Palin, urging the Delaware Republican to “speak through Fox News,” …

Discussion: Technology Liberation Front

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Bloomberg Plans a Data Service on the Business of Government — Ambition and confidence have never been in short supply at Bloomberg L.P. — Chapter 4 of Michael R. Bloomberg's autobiography, the part in which he describes conceiving the idea for Bloomberg News in the late 1980s, is titled …

Discussion: Romenesko, New York Observer, New York Magazine and Talking Biz News

Jason Fell / Folio:

Consumer Magazines Notch Another Quarter of Ad Page Growth — Pages increase 3.6 percent; however, are down 1.6 percent year-to-date. — As the economy continues to rebound so does consumer magazine advertising. During the third quarter, advertising pages grew 3.6 percent to 40,387.55 pages …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Romenesko and MinOnline

Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:

Mixpo Unveils Tools To Move TV Ad Budgets Online — Google TV and Apple TV will change the dynamics between television and online advertising, but Mixpo, a video ad provider, still plans to make an impact on the TV-to-Web conversion. — Going after the budgets allocated to TV advertising …

New York Times:

After Building an Audience, Twitter Turns to Ads — Twitter at last looks serious about making money. — In the last two weeks, the company has introduced several advertising plans, courted Madison Avenue at Advertising Week, the annual industry conference, and promoted Dick Costolo …

Discussion: Fast Company, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Poynter Online, Silicon Alley Insider and Lost Remote