Mediagazer: Search Ads Are a Hammer, But Not Everything is a Nail (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

1:05 PM ET, October 29, 2010

Top News:

By Any Means Necessary: Gawker and the O'Donnell Post — We get it. It's a dirty, terrible world out there and anything and everyone is fair game. So when some guy was willing to trash Christine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate for United States Senate in Delaware …

Discussion: Runnin' Scared, Mediaite, The New Yorker Blog, New York Magazine, The Corsair and Politics Daily

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Gawker editor defends anonymous O'Donnell post — Gawker was convicted Thursday in the court of Twitter opinion. The charges: misogyny and reckless link-baiting. — “Today, we are all Christine O'Donnell,” wrote Salon's Justin Elliott. — He was one of several journalists and bloggers …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Wire, Romenesko, Vanity Fair, Gawker, Facebook, The First Post, The Spy Report, Hot Air, FrumForum and New York Observer

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Behind Gawker's Christine O'Donnell ‘One-Night Stand’ Story — Christine O'Donnell. Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife — Gawker has proven yet again that the journalist's pen is sometimes most effective when it's writing out a check. — The Nick Denton-owned gossip site scored …

Joel Meares / CJR:

Keeping Up With Chuck Todd — “I'm in a business where I'm not allowed to miss right now” — It's 6:50 a.m. on a drizzling New York morning and Chuck Todd is standing behind a wall on the cluttered Today Show set, safely out of shot as he waits to talk America's early risers through the upcoming day in politics.

Discussion: Romenesko, Gawker and Inside Cable News

Michael Oneal / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune braces for competing bankruptcy plans — Unhappy creditors face Friday deadline to offer alternatives — Still recovering from a management scandal that claimed its chief executive a week ago, Tribune Co. is bracing for its next disruption: How to cope with legal challenges …

Discussion: Romenesko

Jason Stverak / Online Journalism Review:

Joining the online news bandwagon — By Jason Stverak: Howard Kurtz, Peter Goodman, Jim VandeHei, and Richard Johnson are just a few of the many reporters voluntarily exiting the legacy media to join online news ventures. — While many are scratching their heads wondering …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Jon Friedman / MarketWatch:

Jon Stewart: America's anchor-in-waiting — Commentary: The Most Trusted Name in ... something or other — NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Comedy Central's Jon Stewart will be the first person to tell you, again, that he is an entertainer, not a journalist. Therefore, he can't qualify …

Discussion: Romenesko, Washington Post and Media Decoder

Tom Ramstack / All Headline News:

Traditional Journalists Switch to Internet or Face Layoffs — Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) - Some journalists complained Thursday during a business conference in Washington, D.C., about what they see as the sunset of the traditional news media while others said the Internet was opening new opportunities.

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson / Financial Times:

NY Times confident ahead of new era — At times over the past two years, the New York Times has seemed to be a bastion under siege. A gruelling advertising recession, coupled with continued pressure on newspapers from digital alternatives, compelled it to take a $250m loan in January 2009 from Carlos Slim …

Discussion: Romenesko and Guardian

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Search Ads Are a Hammer, But Not Everything is a Nail — Search-related keyword advertising is a multibillion-dollar industry for a reason — because it is extremely good at converting people who are searching for information into shoppers who want to buy something.

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Jonathan Mendez's Blog and VentureBeat

Steve Smith / MinOnline:

Consumers See Old Media Ways Doomed — Americans may still prefer to get their information and news via traditional means, but most of us don't feel these venues will survive in their current form. In a shocking poll result from Harris and 24/7Wall Street, 55% of 2,095 U.S. adults surveyed …

Discussion: MediaPost

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

Craig Silverman shares excellent advice on accuracy, verification and preventing errors — We knew we were risking schedule conflicts when Craig Silverman agreed to present a workshop on accuracy and verification for the TBD Community Network while he was in Washington for the Online News Association.

Discussion: TBD All News

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

YouTube Won't Fix Google TV's Content Problems — Updated. There's been an interesting development in the recent Google TV saga, in which the search giant has shifted responsibility for the new TV operating system into its YouTube division, according to a report the SF Chronicle.

Discussion: GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

James Temple / San Francisco Chronicle:
Google shifts TV effort to YouTube

Discussion: VentureBeat, The Wire, TechCrunch, CrunchGear, Fast Company, MediaPost and Electronista

Irin Carmon / Jezebel:

Antoine Dodson Responds To The Haters — Antoine Dodson has been accused of “turning rape into a joke”, and before his viral video fame, he survived sexual abuse and homophobic bullying. But he's not letting any of it get him down, he told me recently. — Antoine had no way of knowing …

Carly Harrington / Knoxville News-Sentinel:

Scripps Networks Interactive moving headquarters to Knoxville — Register or log in using your account on these websites. — Web Search powered by YAHOO! SEARCH — Election 2010 links — KNOXVILLE — Scripps Networks Interactive, the company that operates cable channels HGTV and The Food Network …

MediaShift:

How the Tea Party Utilized Digital Media to Gain Power — The biggest story of the U.S. midterm election has been the growing influence of the Tea Party movement. Since their first rallies in early 2009, these vocal, visible conservatives have succeeded in shifting the center of American political discourse to the right.

Discussion: Media Matters for America and rbr.com

David Saleh Rauf / American Journalism Review:

Shield Law Showdown — It's do or die. That's how media groups describe the state of the long-stalled legislation to create a federal shield law for journalists. The bill passed the House and has emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee. But it is on the verge of suffering a familiar fate: death in the Senate.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

What's the Boston Globe Worth, Anyway? Try $120 Million — A group of investors, led by entrepreneur Aaron Kushner, wants to buy the Boston Globe. The New York Times Co. says it's not for sale — but then that's what the Bancroft family said when Rupert Murdoch offered them $5 billion …

Discussion: Romenesko