Mediagazer: Huffington Post's CEO on Tina Brown, Advertising and an Eventual IPO (Connie Loizos/PE Hub Blog)

9:35 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, Collective Talent and New York Magazine

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.

Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:

Huffington Post's CEO on Tina Brown, Advertising and an Eventual IPO — Over the last five years, The Huffington Post has grown into a property that attracts 25 million unique visitors a month, and whose 12-month revenue is expected to hit $30 million by year's end. — The question is: what's next?

Discussion: TechCrunch

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

Discussion: New York Observer, MinOnline and The Wrap

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

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

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 …

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

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: IanSchafer.com, MediaPost and paidContent

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:

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: Newsroom, Silicon Alley Insider, New York Observer, 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

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:

Say Media study: Live TV is in bigger trouble than you think — Is the future of television entirely online? When you look at new TV products from Apple and Google, it's clear tech companies think that could be the case. But there's also a sense that the shift is only coming ... sometime, in the hazy future.

Discussion: NewTeeVee and Advertising Lab