Mediagazer: Washington Times sold to former execs (Ian Shapira/Post Now)

6:30 PM ET, November 2, 2010

Top News:

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

It's Official: News Corp.'s Paywalls Are a Bust — After months of speculation about the impact of reader paywalls at two News Corp. newspapers in Britain — the Times and the Sunday Times — the media giant finally released some official numbers today, and they don't paint a very pretty picture.

Discussion: BBC, Felix Salmon, New York Observer, Guardian, The Next Web, Boing Boing, paidContent:UK and Jon Slattery, Thanks:mathewi

Laura Oliver / Journalism.co.uk:

News International publishes paywall figures, claims 105,000 online customers — Tweet — News International has released its first figures for subscriptions to the Times and Sunday Times websites since introducing a paywall to the sites five months ago.

Discussion: Guardian, paidContent, blogs.independent.co.uk, BBC, New York Times, Beehive City, TechCrunch, paidContent:UK, Techdirt, SAI, Wired.co.uk, THINQ.co.uk, Media News, Associated Press and Jon Slattery

Matt Diaz / Nieman Journalism Lab:

It's election night: Here's what some news orgs (old & new) have planned — It's election day in the United States, and with election day comes election day coverage. With more media players than ever aiming for their own slice of the audience, here are a few highlights of what they've got planned …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, CJR, BlogPost and Lost Remote, more at Techmeme »

Steve Myers / Poynter Online:
Washington Post Sponsors Election Day Trending Topic on Twitter

Discussion: msnbc.com, GigaOM, Mashable!, newsfeed.time.com, New York Observer, MediaMemo, GalleyCat, Gothamist, Journalism.co.uk, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, paidContent, Tech Daily Dose, The Atlantic Online and Twitter Blog, more at Techmeme »

Skrentablog: Anatomy of blekko's press launch

Edmund Lee / AdAge:
Twitter Begins Publishing Ads in Users' Streams

Discussion: CenterNetworks, The Next Web, HootSuite blog, Twitter Blog, VentureBeat, GigaOM, eMedia Vitals, paidContent, ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

ABC News cuts ties with Breitbart on election day — Andrew Breitbart will not be a part of ABC News' election coverage on Tuesday night. That goes for television, online, or any combination of the two. — Andrew Morse, executive producer of ABC News Digital, informed Breitbart on Tuesday …

Discussion: ABC News' Press Room, Mediaite, Romenesko, Media Decoder, The Daily Caller, The Plum Line and Big Journalism

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:
Breitbart, ABC News spar over his election night role

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Big Journalism, The Wrap, Salon, FrumForum and Romenesko

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

O'Donnell receives most coverage of 2010 candidates — Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell didn't get too much national media coverage before upsetting the Republican establishment and winning the Delaware primary in September. But since then, O'Donnell's been all over the news …

Discussion: New York Observer, Mediaite, Gawker, Romenesko, msnbc.com, The Daily Caller, Ezra Klein, Ben Smith's Blog and FrumForum

Larry Kramer / American Journalism Review:

Navigating the Future — While nostalgia may nudge some of us to see the news media's present financial crisis as the chaotic collapse of a once great, solid and rational system, the truth is that the old business models that paid for traditional media were always jury-rigged …

Discussion: C-Scape

Dean Starkman / CJR:

Felix Salmon is the Columbia Journalism Review's New Peterson Fellow — Will blog about media coverage of fiscal and economic policy — Felix Salmon, the finance blogger for Reuters and a leading voice on financial and economic issues, has been appointed the Columbia Journalism Review's …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Romenesko and Felix Salmon

Ian Shapira / Post Now:

Washington Times sold to former execs — A group of fired Washington Times executives, led by the paper's founder and Unification Church patriarch Rev. Sun Myung Moon, has purchased the 28-year-old conservative newspaper from Moon's eldest son, saving it from a shutdown, according to a Times source.

Discussion: Romenesko and The Politico

Josh Tapper / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Getting lapped by innovation abroad? Mario Garcia's path to better designed newspapers — In seeking out inspiration for its print redesign, Canada's Globe and Mail didn't look south of the border, as one might expect. Instead, the national daily focused its gaze overseas …

Discussion: Garcia Media

Kevin Fagan / San Francisco Chronicle:

Bruce Brugmann: Guardian of influence loved, hated — To know Bruce Brugmann's office is to know him. — Papers lie heaped against every wall - story printouts, protest posters, data sheets. Muckraking classics and bound volumes of every San Francisco Bay Guardian from 1966 on are stuffed …

Discussion: Romenesko

David Kaplan / paidContent:

E.W. Scripps: Print Bundling Continues To Pull Down Online Ad Revs — Bundling print and online newspaper ad sales together has come to be viewed as problem that publishers need to move away from. E.W. Scripps (NYSE: SSP) situation over the past year makes that point pretty well.

Discussion: MediaPost

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

BBC Builders: Vicky Spengler prototypes the future of TV — The next in our series profiling developer talent at the BBC is Vicky Spengler, lead designer in George Wright's prototyping team at BBC Research & Development. — Spengler works with a team of designers, producers and engineers …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Bang! Publishers Say Giant Web Ads Have “Stopping Power” — Bigger really is better! — So say Web publishers who have been running supersized, don't-you-dare-look-away-from- me ads for the past year. — Even better, the ad sellers insist-they have scientific proof to back up their claim.

Discussion: Mediaweek, MediaPost and mediabistro.com