Mediagazer: Dutch social network Hyves sold to media group, as European-based … (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch Europe)

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: AllYourTV.com, CJR, National Review, Gawker, Salon, BrauBlog, TBD All News, Lost Remote, The Atlantic Online, This Just In, Jezebel, Gothamist, Washington Post and Big Hollywood

Discussion: Fox News

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, The Next Web, Guardian and Jon Slattery

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, The Next Web, Guardian and SAI

Barbara Levin / Turner Newsroom:

Jonathan Wald Named Executive Producer of CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight — Jonathan Wald, former executive producer of NBC's Today and Nightly News, and former senior vice president of CNBC, has been named executive producer of CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight debuting in January 2011 …

Discussion: Mediaite, Media Decoder, New York Observer and Broadcasting & Cable

Discussion: Romenesko and MarketWatch

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.

Discussion: GigaOM, paidContent, Twitter Blog, TechCrunch, The Next Web and ReadWriteWeb, more at Techmeme »

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 …

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, New York Magazine, TVNewser, TVWeek.com, Free Press and Talking Biz News

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.

Discussion: ONA10 and Knight News Challenge

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

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 …

Discussion: NPR Topics

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

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

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Inside the Google Books Algorithm — Google is famous for the brilliance of its algorithm for searching web pages. While the company looks at dozens of factors in determining which results to display, the heart of the search engine is using links between pages to rank their relevancy.

Discussion: The Next Web

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

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:

Dutch social network Hyves sold to media group, as European-based networks feel the Facebook heat — Leading Dutch social network, Hyves, which for a long time held out against the encroachment of Facebook, is selling the entire company to Dutch media group TMG (Telegraaf Media Groep) for an undisclosed sum.

Discussion: paidContent

Mike Shields / Adweek:

Richard Johnson, Digital, Really? — What business do Richard Johnson and Jesse Angelo have launching a national iPad newspaper? — Richard Johnson, really? No, seriously, what business do Richard Johnson and Jesse Angelo, two ink-stained print lifers from a newspaper that has famously bled billions …

Discussion: New York Observer and Romenesko

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

YouTube Meets Formspring With Video Q&A Site VYou — Founded by Steve Spurgat and Chuck Reina, the New York-based and newly launched VYou is a combination of Formspring, YouTube and Twitter ("Formspring + video + crack." is a popular description amongst its beta users).

Discussion: The Next Web and The Awl

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: New York Observer, MediaPost, Wall Street Journal, PR Newswire, Media Maverick, Gawker, New York Magazine and DailyFinance, more at Techmeme »

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

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

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

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

Meredith Builds Agency Unit as Home for Further Acquisitions — Media Company ‘Hungry’ to Buy More Agencies, New Group Leader Says — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Meredith is creating an Emerging Markets Group within its now-sizeable marketing services arm to house New Media Strategies …

Discussion: MediaPost, Thanks:kunur

Media Standards Trust:

Foreign news coverage in UK press falls 40% since 1979 — A new report published by the Media Standards Trust finds that: — Foreign news coverage across four UK national newspapers has fallen by 40% since 1979 in absolute terms — International news makes up only 11% of the national newspapers studied compared to 20% in 1979

Discussion: Guardian, Jon Slattery and Journalism.co.uk

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

WSJ's secret project will focus on foreign coverage — TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE — In mid September, Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson made an internal announcement, appointing two journalists to oversee a secret project that he said would be “crucial to our success as a company.”

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

Josef Adalian / New York Magazine:

The Vulture Transcript: Conan O'Brien Opens Up About His New Show, His Old Show, and Why He's Not Interested in Being a Folk Hero — Thanks to Twitter, the Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour, and a smattering of viral videos, Conan O'Brien's extended absence from the airwaves …

Discussion: Splitsider