Mediagazer: More Staff Shuffling At Newsweek As Merger Talks Collapse (Joe Pompeo/The Wire)

9:10 PM ET, October 19, 2010

Top News:

Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels: I have not resigned — Randy Michaels, the embattled chief executive of bankrupt Tribune Co., said Tuesday he did not resign from the company despite expectations that he might step down from his post or be asked to leave it at a board meeting Tuesday.

Discussion: rbr.com, Romenesko, The Wrap, The Wire, Chicago Breaking Business, New York Magazine and Collective Talent

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Tribune's Lee Abrams Defends Himself: “I Will Not Stop Pushing” — Apparently Lee Abrams' hasty exit from Tribune Co. did not involve signing a far-reaching non-disclosure agreement, because the former chief innovation officer just sent an extraordinary email defending himself against a number …

Discussion: Romenesko, Gawker, The Wire, FishbowlNY and LA Observed

New York Times:

Tribune Board Said Ready to Oust Chief Executive — The board of directors of the Tribune Company is expected to ask for the resignation of Randy Michaels, the controversial chief executive of the company, on Tuesday, according to a person directly involved in the matter.

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

Yahoo Says Display Ad Sales Up 17 Percent — Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which has been under pressure to turn around its flagging performance, couldn't afford to disappoint Wall Street this quarter. And the company did not. But it didn't exactly surprise either, posting quarterly results in line …

Discussion: Mashable!, Business Wire, CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, BoomTown, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Digits and Tech Trader Daily, more at Techmeme »

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch: Bartz On Blogging: “An Extremely Hard Engineering Feat”

Jeremy Porter / Journalistics:

Top 25 U.S. Newspapers Ranked By Twitter Followers — While the Top 50 U.S. newspapers seem to be just starting to build up their fan base on Facebook, Twitter has been a priority for a while. If you were to rank the Top 25 U.S. newspapers by Twitter followers, the order would be much different …

Joe Pompeo / The Wire:

More Staff Shuffling At Newsweek As Merger Talks Collapse — Amid the breakdown of negotiations that would have merged Newsweek with The Daily Beast, the magazine's revolving door continues to spin. — As reported last week, staff writer Nick Summers is heading over to The New York Observer …

Discussion: New York Observer, MinOnline, The Wrap and The Daily Beast

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:
Welch warns beast

Discussion: New York Observer, Gawker, DailyFinance, ClickZ, New York Times, CNET News and Wall Street Journal, more at Techmeme »

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Ooyala Launches Video Paywall Powered By PayPal — Video publishing platform Ooyala is launching a new product today, called Ooyala Paywall. The feature is exactly what it sounds like. Ooyala Paywall, which is powered by PayPal, allows publishers to implement a payment system to allow visitors view their videos.

Discussion: Business Wire, VideoNuze and Beet.TV

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The scalability of collaboration: ProPublica partners with five (five!) other outlets for its latest story — Today brings the launch of a blockbuster story: A group of investigative journalists, looking into the financial practices of pharmaceutical companies, found that many doctors …

Discussion: ProPublica, Consumer Reports Health Blog, Boston Globe, Romenesko, The Now/ledge, The Consumerist and New York Magazine

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Another Web Ad Shop Gets Gobbled Up: Deep Focus to The Engine Group — Deep Focus, the New York-based digital agency that works for Nike, Time Warner's HBO, Microsoft's Bing and many other blue chip names (here's an example) has been acquired by U.K.-based The Engine Group.

Discussion: MediaPost, IanSchafer.com and paidContent

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

A Newspaper Pay Wall Goes Up-And So Do Visitor Numbers — The New York Times is getting ready to roll out a “metered model” pay wall in January, and plenty of people fret that the paper will see its audience disappear when the (porous) gates go up. Here's a counterargument: The Telegram & Gazette.

Discussion: The Wire, MediaPost, NetNewsCheck Latest, Romenesko and The Next Web

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Buddy Media Raises $23 Million For Brand-Focused Facebook Page Management Platform — Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page management tools to brands, has just raised $23 million in Series C Funding led by Institutional Venture Partners with SoftBank Capital, Greycroft Partners …

Discussion: New York Observer, Newsroom, Silicon Alley Insider, SocialTimes.com, NYConvergence.com and AdExchanger.com

Martin Langeveld / Nieman Journalism Lab:

NAA finds a more favorable website stats vendor — but misses the readership shift to mobile news — When last we checked on the Newspaper Association of America's web stats (and other data) back in April, the monthly website usage information that the nation's daily newspaper organization …

Discussion: CommPilings

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Can we make journalism a tax-exempt purpose? Expanding the meaning of nonprofit journalism — [Nikki Usher has been looking into the options for news organizations under current nonprofit laws. With coauthor Michelle D. Layser, she'll have a paper on the subject appearing in an upcoming number of the Utah Law Review.

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Poll: Most say media encourages political division — As the 2010 election winds down, a majority of Americans say the media, both partisan and nonpartisan, encourages political division more than it does cooperation. — Just 30 percent of respondents believe the mainstream media is interested …

Discussion: The Caucus and Mediaite

Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:

No, We Don't Hate WikiLeaks — We interrupt our regular coverage to address a rare dispatch from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that crossed the WikiLeaks Twitter feed this morning. — In it, Assange slams Wired.com, and this writer in particular, for what he labels a false report …

Discussion: main page collection, Mediaite, Guardian, CIR: All New Content and TwitLonger