Mediagazer: Playboy Goes Geo-Local With Scout App, Even as Iconic Media Company … (Kara Swisher/BoomTown)

Blank Slate: Jacob Weisberg Was a Web Pioneer. But He Doesn't Much Care for What Works on the Web Now. Can Slate Recover? — Slate, the Web site, is 14 years old, an eternity on the Internet. During that span, its New York offices have moved nine times.

Discussion: The Awl and Romenesko

Weisberg: NYO wrong; Slate's ‘going gangbusters’ — Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg's note to staff about today's New York Observer story — You may have seen the story about Slate that's up on the New York Observer website today. I wanted to take a minute to respond …

Discussion: Mediaite and New York Observer

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Slate's Traffic Is Gangbusters, Except When It's Not — Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg wrote a memo to his staff today in response to this week's Observer cover story, a look at how the 14-year-old site is faring against new and ferocious competition. He takes exception to our piece …

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Lou Dobbs joining Fox Business Network — Just about a year to the day that he left CNN, Lou Dobbs is returning to cable news, this time as host of his own show on News Corp.'s Fox Business Network. — Fox Business Network is expected to announce that it has signed Dobbs as early as Wednesday afternoon.

Discussion: Romenesko, Media Decoder, Gawker, Talking Biz News, Business Wire, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, The Wire, Indecision Forever, Politics Daily and TVNewser

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Sorkin talks Dealbook's changes and business journalism — TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE — New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin founded the Dealbook blog and daily e-mail back in 2001, when such dissemination strategies for business news were in their infancy.

Discussion: www.wnyc.org

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

DealBook relaunch triggered N.Y. Times blog shutdown — Something strange happened Tuesday night on the New York Times' website: All 58 of its blogs went dark. — “We're working hard to get our blogs back up and running,” the Times tweeted around 7 p.m. “Stay tuned.”

Discussion: the nytpicker, Romenesko and New York Observer

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

NY Times Editor on the ‘Beauty’ of Readers' Ignorance — Gerald Marzorati, center, with Marc Jacobs (L) and Paul Krugman. Image by Getty Images via @daylife — The New York Times cultivates an image as the preferred read of the intellectual elite, but at least one of the paper's higher-ups seems …

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Observer

Ryan Kearney / TBD All News:

Why did Gawker publish, then retract, a gruesome murder photo? — Recently, Gawker did something unusual: It removed a photo that was upsetting people. The photo showed the body of Christopher Jusko, a 21-year-old graffiti artist who was stabbed to death in New York's East Village on Oct. 25.

Discussion: New York Observer, The Awl and Romenesko

Alan Rusbridger / Poynter Online:

Openness, Collaboration Key to New Information Ecosystem — In 2009 you could smell the fear. As banks crashed and the recession hit, even the grandest media companies trembled a little. We had all known for some time that the revolution we're all living through would at some stage get really tough.

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Schools Chief Has Much in Common With Boss — Cathleen P. Black earned a reputation in publishing as a tough-minded chief executive who never left her employees guessing what she wanted. A student of management, she wrote a book about strategies for success in the corporate world.

Discussion: Media Decoder, nyc.gov, Capital New York, This Just In, Styleite, Salon, Mixed Media and The Atlantic Online

Discussion: All Things Digital and MinOnline

ProPublica:

Read the Leaked P.R. Plan to Spin Our Dialysis Investigation — Update (2:39 p.m.): Kidney Care Partners released an official statement. — The umbrella group Kidney Care Partners (KCP), an advocacy and lobbying organization for dialysis providers, patient groups, drug companies and others …

Discussion: MinnPost and LA Observed

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Romenesko, MinnPost and mediabistro.com

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Talking Points Memo's first developer talks startup life, jumping to ProPublica and data journalism — What's it like being the only in-house techie at a news startup? Talking Points Memo's first developer Al Shaw says “it's kind of like being a reporter....you have to be a generalist,” …

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Eisner's Studio and AOL Pair Up for Web Series — In a deal to be announced Wednesday, Michael D. Eisner's Web studio, Vuguru, will produce half a dozen scripted Web video series for AOL. — The partnership is the latest attempt by AOL, which has been struggling, to infuse its home page and its Web sites with original video.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, TVWeek.com and WebNewser

Post by Venkat / Technology & Marketing Law Blog:

Twitter Clarifies Usage Rules, but AFP Still Claims Unbridled Right to Use Content Posted to “Twitter/TwitPic” — Twitter recently issued new guidelines regarding use of the “Twitter” and “Tweet” marks, and use of the underlying tweets by users and third parties as well: “Guidelines for Use of the Twitter Trademark.”

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Playboy Goes Geo-Local With Scout App, Even as Iconic Media Company Attempts Turnaround — How about some check-ins at the Playboy Mansion? — That's not exactly on the menu for a new mobile application being launched by the iconic adult-oriented media company today, called Scout (although BoomTown wishes it were).

Discussion: New York Observer

Robin Sloan / Snarkmarket:

Escape from Thunderdome — Here's the tick-tock: Marc Ambinder writes a terrific, thought-provoking post titled I Am a Blogger No Longer. Here at Snarkmarket, it strikes us all so well and so deeply that we decide to dive in: — Matt goes first, and he talks about what “ego-driven reporting” might or might not be.

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Twitter Plus TV Creates “Social Viewing” — Although television has become more fragmented thanks to the web, millions of people still tune in for certain shows, including the Emmys and the MTV Video Music Awards. The real-time conversation that Twitter allows makes it a perfect companion for those events …

Discussion: WebNewser, more at Techmeme »

Media Week:

The Times and Sunday Times attract 75% of online audience from UK — News International's paywall around sites for The Times and The Sunday Times has created a more affluent and more engaged digital audience, with a significantly larger UK bias than any other newspaper, according to chief marketing officer Katie Vanneck.

New York Post:

Camera-ready — Tweet — Celebrity chef Rachael Ray is tapping Liz Vaccariello, a former editor-in-chief of Prevention with a made-for-TV smile, to be the new editor-in-chief of her namesake magazine, as it gears up to fight a slew of rivals. — The foodie wars are increasingly going multimedia.

Media Week:

‘Electricity in the newsroom’: the rise and rise of the iPad — The iPad has brought the greatest excitement to the media industry since the dotcom boom. Alexandra Jardine reports how newspaper and magazine publishers are swelling audiences and ad revenue through launching apps on the revolutionary new platform

David Schlesinger / Reuters:

Our need to be in the midst of danger — Below is the keynote speech Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger delivered today to the International News Safety Institute — Death came screaming out of the sky on July 12, 2007. — Two Apache helicopter gunships operating more than 500 metres away …

Amy Garmer / KnightComm:

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action — The Knight Commission recognized that people need tools, skills and understanding to use information effectively, and that successful participation in the digital age entails two kinds of skills sets: digital literacy and media literacy.

Discussion: KnightBlog

Jon Friedman / MarketWatch:

ESPN's Skipper: iPad is not print's savior — Commentary: It's all about finding medium's best use of content — NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — John Skipper understands the iPad — and a good deal of ESPN's future rests in his hands. — Skipper, ESPN executive vice president for content …