Mediagazer: Comcast launches new web video service, stepping up fight (Paul Thomasch/Reuters)

3:25 PM ET, October 26, 2010

Top News:

Nikesh Arora / The Official Google Blog:

$5 million to encourage innovation in digital journalism — Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we're eager to play our part on the technology side—experimenting with new ways of presenting news online …

Discussion: MediaMemo, KnightBlog, Romenesko, Knight Foundation, MediaFile, paidContent, mediabistro.com, JNews, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web and Guardian

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Google donates $5 million for news innovation to Knight Foundation and new international efforts — Google and news organizations have had a rocky time of it. To overdramatize the situation only slightly: Google insists that it cares about journalism as a necessity of our shared democracy …

Discussion: rbr.com, SAI, KnightBlog and The Next Web

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Politico, Seeing a Market Need, Adds a Paid News Service — To the rapidly growing field of Washington reportage, add one more entrant: Politico Pro. — Politico, the Web site and free daily publication that brought a 24-7 cable news sensibility to political reporting …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Fast Company, The Wire, AdPulp, Editors Weblog, New York Observer, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine, Thanks:eldon

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Katie Couric, On the Move — The CBS anchor is nearing the end of her contract—and signs point surprisingly to her staying put. Howard Kurtz talks to her about her salary, her next move—and her love of the campaign trail. — Katie Couric is feeling liberated.

Discussion: TVNewser, Gawker, Romenesko and The Wire

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

The Perfect Content Companion For iPad + Instapaper, Longreads Gets A Website — I've been in love with the simple bookmarking service Instapaper for a few years now. The release of the iPad has made it even better. You see, my daily routine now involves using the Instapaper app on the iPad …

Discussion: MarkArms, New York Observer, Brooks in Beta and The Awl, Thanks:markarms

Dumplings from this Panda!:

Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners? — Digg recently published a blog post titled “Digg's Algorithmic Mystery Tour” on October, 15th. While a Digg blog post is a normal thing, a post about the algorithm was very surprising to me. Why did Digg, which never bothers …

Discussion: TechCrunch and WebNewser, more at Techmeme »

Steve Myers / Poynter Online:

George Packer's 5 Tips for Reporting on Anything — The New Yorker's George Packer has written about disaffected voters in Ohio and beleaguered homeowners in Florida; the massive city of Lagos, Nigeria, and the cloistered, oppressed country of Burma. He has described the dangerous predicament …

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Observer

Paul Thomasch / Reuters:

Comcast launches new web video service, stepping up fight — * Movies, TV shows available from over 90 media partners — Comcast Corp. (CMCSA.O), the largest U.S. cable operator, on Monday rolled out a service that allows its subscribers to watch an array of television shows and movies on a personal computer or laptop.

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner and MediaPost

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

No Longer ‘Must-See TV’ — Drop in Thursday's Prime-Time Viewing Could Cost Marketers Weekend Shoppers — Television is losing ground in one of its most lucrative strongholds: Thursday nights. — Fewer people in the U.S. are watching Thursday prime-time TV so far this fall …

Discussion: MediaPost, Media Buyer Planner and TV Squad

Nielsen Wire:

Nielsen estimates 362,000 Britons behind the Times paywall — Matthew Dodd, SVP, Research & Analytics, EMEA — As newspapers grapple with monetizing their content online, a recent Nielsen study found that one in five UK visitors to the Times of London and the Sunday Times websites …

Discussion: paidContent

Nat Worden / Wall Street Journal:

‘Monday Night Football’ Goes Online for Subscribers — Time Warner Cable Inc. and ESPN are planning to serve up a bold cable-TV experiment in making programming available online behind a paywall, starting with this week's “Monday Night Football.” — The two companies say they will make …

Discussion: Digits

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Claims of Good Faith, and Bad, in Cable Dispute — The high-stakes feud between the News Corporation and Cablevision reached the point of filing grievances before the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, with each side trying to prove that it had been bargaining in good faith — while charging that the other side had not.

Discussion: NY Daily News, rbr.com, Company Town, Gothamist and paidContent

Ian Austen / New York Times:

Globe and Mail Uses Old Weapons in Press War — TORONTO — Like many newspapers in North America, The Globe and Mail rushed out an iPad application. But the technology that the 166-year-old Globe is really staking its future on is not the sort that immediately comes to mind in an increasingly digital world.

Discussion: Guardian, J-Source and The Wire

Emma Heald / Editors Weblog:

I from the Independent has arrived: affordable, concise, but will it complement or replace its parent paper? — The Independent's new daily i launches today. Billed as the first quality daily to launch in Britain in 25 years, it aims to provide a full news service “in a way that is fully accessible …

Discussion: Press Gazette, BBC, Bloomberg and Media Week

Julian Lee / Sydney Morning Herald:

Murdoch calls on company troops to fight film PR blockade — Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendi, at the Academy Awards. — The world's largest media company, News Corporation, is threatening to deny coverage of movies starring artists who routinely refuse to give interviews to its outlets, one of its senior journalists has revealed.

Discussion: mediabistro.com and MediaPost

Markcuban / blog maverick:

The Rule of Thumb on Disrupting Digital Businesses aka Why The internet is not disrupting TV — There is a widespread misconception that the common thread to industries that the Internet has disrupted is that the disrupted industries were or remain analog and the digital nature of the internet made it impossible for them to keep up.

Discussion: Podcasting News

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

National Journal editor wants to ‘win the morning’ (and then some) — Editor-in-chief Ron Fournier has ambitious goals for the just-relaunched National Journal. — “We have got to win the morning,” Fournier said. “We've got to win the afternoon. And we've got to win the evening.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Mediaite, FishbowlDC, Romenesko and coverawards.com

Foster Kamer / Runnin' Scared:

Why the New York Post's iPad App is Amazing, Awesome, and Completely Necessary (Video) — Remember that time Apple released this thing called the iPad and a bunch of people who worked in media were like ooh I wonder if it's going to save us so pretty wanna touch and everyone else …

Discussion: Poynter Online