Mediagazer: Paul Vallely: Sexed-up contrariness is not journalism (The Independent)

9:35 AM ET, November 8, 2010

Top News:

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Bad News for Liberals May Be Good News for a Liberal Magazine — Other than perhaps the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, there were few places as despondent on election night as the Manhattan offices of The Nation, the 146-year-old journal of fiery leftist opinion.

Wall Street Journal:

AOL Hires Advisers, With Eye on Yahoo — AOL Inc. has hired financial advisers to explore various strategic options for the company, one of which includes a possible tie-up with bigger rival Yahoo Inc., people familiar with the matter said. — In recent days, AOL's advisers …

Discussion: BoomTown, SAI, Reuters, Deal Journal, Search Engine Land, paidContent and DealBook, more at Techmeme »

David Carr / New York Times:

Olbermann, Impartiality and MSNBC — MSNBC, worried that its reputation as a fair broker of the news hung in the balance, sent Keith Olbermann to the woodshed on Friday for an unpaid suspension because he had donated $7,200 to some of the Democratic politicians he had championed on his hit show “Countdown.”

Steve Krakauer / Mediaite:
Keith Olbermann Will Return To MSNBC Tuesday

Discussion: New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Gawker and New York Magazine

Glynnis MacNicol / Mediaite:
Report: Olbermann Was Suspended For Refusing To Apologize On Camera

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, The Daily Beast, mediabistro.com, Runnin' Scared, Wonkette, New York Magazine and Inside Cable News

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

AOL's Patch Has Hired 600 Journalists in 2010 - Has Big Traffic Night for Midterm Elections — NEW YORK — Patch, a network of over 300 local news sites, saw its traffic surge by 300 percent on November 2 as visitors sought local results of the mid-term elections.

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Tremor-Scanscout Merger Creates Web Video Ad Player on Par With Hulu's — Wave of Consolidation in Space Driven by Advertiser Demands for Reach — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Lots of advertisers want to buy online video — they just don't want to buy it in dribs and drabs from a bunch of different places.

Discussion: paidContent and Beet.TV

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Exclusive: SB Nation Raises $10.5 million in Khosla Ventures-Led Series C Round — SB Nation, the Washington, D.C.-based sports blog and news start-up, has just completed a $10.5 million Series C round, which is being led by Khosla Ventures, according to sources.

Discussion: paidContent

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

AOL's Attempt to Spruce Up Its Sites Washes Away Ad Revenue — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It's going to get worse before it gets better. — That's been CEO Tim Armstrong's message since he took the job of fixing sick patient AOL more than 18 months ago. Anyone looking for a glimmer of turnaround won't find much in the numbers.

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

Forbes: Reinvention or Regression? — Are paid blogs the path to reinvention or destruction? — Forbes.com, launched in 1996 when most media companies hadn't a clue about the Web, was once held up as the poster child for how to build an old-media brand online.

Mike Shields / Adweek:

Google TV Gets Static — Search giant fumbles relationship with networks — The biggest flop of the new fall TV season wasn't Fox's Lone Star or ABC's My Generation. — It's Google TV. — The engineers at the search goliath appear to have pulled off the double whammy of disappointing …

Thanks:rawmeet

John Koblin / WWD:

Editors Rex: Lindgren-Moss Saga — Late one night in early February 2009, at the headquarters of New York Magazine at 75 Varick Street, editor Adam Moss walked into the office of Hugo Lindgren, the editorial director. — Lindgren, a kind of bespectacled Aaron Eckhart and one of Moss' right-hand men …

Discussion: bookforum.com

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Huffington Post Adds Divorce Section — There are the society pages, the wedding pages, and now the divorce pages. — Courtesy of Arianna Huffington and Nora Ephron, two women whose own marriages dissolved in public fashion, The Huffington Post is set to begin on Monday a section devoted exclusively …

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Chernin to Start Asia Venture — Former News Corp. President to Launch Hong Kong-Based Media Company — A venture led by former News Corp. President Peter Chernin is expected Monday to announce the launch of a media start-up in Asia, a move that shows the growing importance of the region and its audiences to American companies.

Brooks Barnes / Media Decoder:

Sundance Channel Trumpets Show's Online Buzz — Despite the increasing emphasis movie studios and television networks place on Twitter feeds and Facebook fans, online buzz doesn't always deliver. Universal's “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and NBC's “The Event” are two of the most recent examples.

ABC News:

The Guardian and The Web — MARK COLVIN: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation this week released some figures on the success or otherwise of its experiment in paid online journalism, the project which has put the London Times and Sunday Times behind a paywall.