Mediagazer: Pecker's package — Tweet — National Enquirer publisher … (Keith J. Kelly/New York Post)

3:05 PM ET, November 1, 2010

Top News:

Rally to Shift the Blame — In his new role as a political leader, which is what you call somebody if he hosts a rally on the Washington Mall for over 200,000 people, Jon Stewart was a little hemmed at the Rally to Restore Sanity on Saturday. Because sanity should know no party, partisan rhetoric was not on the teleprompter.

Discussion: CJR, Gawker, AllYourTV.com, The Atlantic Online, Lost Remote, Jezebel, Romenesko, Gothamist, This Just In, Washington Post, Big Hollywood and CBS News

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

Gawker to Drop Old Blog Look — Founder Denton Favors Newsmagazine Style, Refashioning Face of Online Media — Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, whose snarky approach has shaped the blogosphere's tone for years, is overhauling his sites to broaden their appeal, an attempted transformation …

Discussion: Romenesko, Guardian and SAI

Ross Dawson / Trends in the Living Networks:

Launch of Newspaper Extinction Timeline for every country in the world — Back in August I predicted that newspapers in their current form will be irrelevant in Australia in 2022. That received significant international attention including from The Australian, The Guardian, Editor & Publisher …

Discussion: TheAustralian, Guardian and Jon Slattery

Steve Coll / New Yorker:

Will WikiLeaks become a trusted source? — Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had a tumultuous youth in Australia and grew into an autodidact with eclectic skills and a deep distrust of hierarchies and governments. In 2006, as he prepared to launch a digital enterprise devoted …

Arthur S. Brisbane / New York Times:
Sharing Secrets at Arm's Length

Discussion: The Daily Caller and the nytpicker

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Twitter Begins Publishing Ads in Users' Streams — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Starting today, Twitter will drop advertising into individual users' Twitter streams, also known as timelines, according to people familiar with the matter. Longstanding Twitter advertisers Virgin, Starbucks and Red Bull have bought into this new service.

more at Techmeme »

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter Online:

5 Takeaways from the Online News Association Conference — Jane McDonnell, executive director of the Online News Association, opened up this year's conference by calling it “the conference where journalism doesn't know it's supposed to be dead.” That couldn'thave been more true.

Keisha C. Frazier / ONA10:
Online Journalism Awards honor the best of the best

Discussion: KnightBlog and journalists.org

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

Keeping the Party Going at Viacom — Philippe Dauman says he paid his way through college in part by playing poker. Now the Viacom Inc. CEO is making bets in an arena with high stakes for the media business: putting traditional content on the Web. — Viacom, a media company …

Discussion: Company Town

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

A Donation Clouds Fox News Report — The Fox Business Network focused on what it called “The War on Business” all last week, but on Tuesday its coverage was decidedly more focused — with a series of reports about a California ballot initiative that its parent company, the News Corporation, had spent $1.3 million to defeat.

Discussion: Gawker, TVWeek.com, TVNewser, Free Press and Talking Biz News

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Michaels Weighs Comeback Plans — Barely a week after an ignominious end to his career at Tribune Co., Randy Michaels said he hopes to return to the industry that didn't exactly embrace him. — “I may go buy some media, I may go run some media, I don't know,” he said. “My phone's been ringing.

Discussion: Tower Ticker and Chicago Tribune

Meg Pickard / Guardian:

Open door on ... guidelines for journalists using social media — The Guardian's head of digital engagement on ... the rules of participation — The US department-store chain Nordstrom famously gave new starters an 8in by 5in card as an employee handbook.

Thanks:martinsfp

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Time Magazine's Odd but Unintentional Pairing — Talk about a mismatch. — Time magazine's election preview issue contains four separate inside covers, each one featuring a Republican or Tea Party candidate prominent in politics this year: Rand Paul, Meg Whitman, Marco Rubio and Christine O'Donnell.

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Bloomberg:

Cablevision-Fox Blackout May Raise Hurdles for Comcast in Deal for NBC — The spat between News Corp. and Cablevision System Corp. that blacked out Fox programming for more than 3 million subscribers may raise hurdles for Comcast Corp.'s $28 billion deal to take control of NBC Universal.

Discussion: Hillicon Valley

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Beware the GOP Coronation — Republicans will win big, and the press coverage will be glowing. But don't forget: At the 100-days mark in his presidency, Obama walked on water. Howard Kurtz on the media's mood swings. — Less than two years after taking office on a wave of hope …

Financial Times:

Bloomberg launches $2,000 newsletters — Bloomberg is pushing further beyond its traditional financial data terminals with the launch on Monday of a series of newsletters, costing $2,000 per year each, aimed at extending its reach into niche professional markets.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:

Glam Media Set to Overtake AOL: Verticals vs Portals — The latest comScore Top 50 Properties (U.S.) statistics make sobering reading for AOL, the former king of the portals in the 90s and early part of this century. While AOL is the number 5 ranked U.S. web property …

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Pecker's package — Tweet — National Enquirer publisher American Media has some sensational news of its own: bankruptcy. — Faced with resistance from a single balky bondholder, the company, which also owns Shape and Star, is scrapping the debt-for-equity swap it has labored …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, PR Newswire, Gawker, DailyFinance, Romenesko and New York Magazine

Martin Langeveld / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Jim Hopkins' Gannett Blog: a useful watchblog finds its niche; should others emulate its “water cooler”? — Last year in this space, I took a swipe at Gannett Blog, a “watchblog” published by ex-Gannett journalist Jim Hopkins of San Francisco in which he had been keeping an eye on the country's largest newspaper company.

Discussion: Gannett Blog

Emily Yoffe / The Atlantic Wire:

What I Read — How do people deal with the torrent of information that rains down on us all? What's the secret to staying on top of the news without surrendering to the chaos of it? In this series, we ask people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets.

Thanks:jaredbkeller

James Robinson / Guardian:

News Corp seeks EU approval for Sky takeover — Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate is to kickstart its effort to gain clearance this week — News Corp is expecting to formally notify the European commission this week of its intention to bid for BSkyB. — The move will kickstart …

Steve Coll / CJR:

Reboot — An open letter to the FCC about a media policy for the digital age — Welcome back to Washington, belatedly. It was a year ago that the Federal Communications Commission announced your appointment as senior adviser and leader of the Future of Media Project …

Discussion: Save the News Blog

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:

Alaska station says Breitbart Web site audio attack is bogus — Is another Andrew Breitbart Web site production about to be unmasked as bogus? — Breitbart's Big Journalism site is making an incendiary accusation: That reporters at the Anchorage CBS affiliate KTVA were caught conspiring …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Big Journalism, The Daily Caller and Media Matters for America

P.J. Salvatore / Big Journalism:
Anchorage CBS Affiliate Caught on Voicemail Conspiring Against …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Ben Smith's Blog, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, The Daily Beast, TVNewser, Media Matters for America, The Daily Caller, The Daily Dish, Mediaite and FrumForum

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Want to Lend the New York Times Some Money? — The publisher says it will launch a $200 million debt offering, and will use the money for “general corporate purposes including, among other things, to pay down debt and other financial obligations”. The company had previously announced …

Discussion: The New York Times Company