Mediagazer: ‘Beast’ talks on again (Keith J. Kelly/New York Post)

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Observer Exclusive: Newsweek and Daily Beast to Merge — Newsweek and The Daily Beast will announce tomorrow morning that the two publications will merge, a source close to the deal tells The Observer. — It will be a 50-50 merger of the two companies. The editorial staffs will combine under …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, The Wrap, Romenesko, Mediaite, New York Magazine, paidContent, AdAge, SAI, NY Daily News, Macleans.ca, Gothamist, The Huffington Post, TheStreet.com and Post Now, Thanks:taylorbuley

Daily Beast, Newsweek to Wed! — Some weddings take longer to plan than others. The union of The Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine finally took place with a coffee-mug toast between all parties Tuesday evening, in a conference room atop Beast headquarters, the IAC building on Manhattan's West 18th Street.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Guardian, New York Observer, Deadline.com, The Daily Beast, TechCrunch and Mixed Media

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:
‘Beast’ talks on again

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Romenesko, New York Observer, Gawker and New York Magazine

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Can Adding Staff Curators Help Digg Recover? — Digg has had a rough time since it launched a redesign of the site several months ago; users reacted badly to the loss of certain features and the site's new focus on more “mainstream” sources of content, and the new CEO spent his first few weeks apologizing …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Digg Blog, The Next Web and Download Squad, more at Techmeme »

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter Online:

5 Ways to Get People to Contribute Good Content for Your Site — As news organizations experiment with user-generated content, they're learning that users are capable of creating quality content that can be turned into powerful projects. What's not as clear: How can news organizations motivate people …

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Kommons Launches Quora-Like Platform To Question Public Figures — Leveraging on the success of Quora, niche Q&A sites are popping up everywhere. There's a Quora for the enterprise, and even a Quora for the legal community. Even Facebook is throwing its hat in the ring with Facebook Questions.

Jim Romenesko / Romenesko:

Mediabistro launches blog about Twitter — Mediabistro Launches AllTwitter Blog Covering Business and User Aspects of Twitter — Mediabistro (a division of WebMediaBrands Inc., Nasdaq: WEBM) has launched AllTwitter, a new blog covering news, providing tips, and supporting opinions about social media platform Twitter.

Discussion: Slate and New York Observer

Wall Street Journal:

James Frey's Next Act — For James Frey, success and controversy are a package deal. — His 2003 debut book, “A Million Little Pieces,” was named Amazon Book of the Year and has sold eight million copies in more than 30 languages. When it was revealed that parts of the purported memoir …

Gabrielle Gurley / CommonWealth Magazine:

The Herald's head man — Q&A with Joe Sciacca, Editor-in-Chief — A 27-YEAR VETERAN of the Boston Herald, editor-in-chief Joe Sciacca has spent most of his career covering Massachusetts politics. So on election night when US Rep. Barney Frank complained about the “complete political irrelevance …

Discussion: Romenesko and Media Nation

Noah Bierman / Boston Globe:

State tells man he may be jailed for releasing data — Information was provided by Mass. — Governor Deval Patrick's administration told a local website operator he could face jail time for publishing information that the state provided under an open-records request.

Discussion: Romenesko

Joel Johnson / Gizmodo:

You Write ‘Bias Journalism’ and I Read ‘Derp’ — First of all, you probably mean “biased.” Second of all, journalism isn't a term that means “stories you agree with”. Third of all, f**k you. — It seems like every so often the comments at Gizmodo fill up with entitled, half-witted thinkers, like a boil taut with ignorance.

Thanks:alexia

Cindy Royal / Cindy's Take on Tech:

An Open Letter to Wired Magazine — Dear Wired: — I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with you. I love you. You're charming, attractive and smart, everything I could ever want in a magazine. My heart skips a beat when I see a new issue in my mailbox.

Discussion: The Awl

Sam Stein / The Huffington Post:

Media Matters Pays $86,000 In Auction To Have Lunch With Murdoch — WASHINGTON — In one of the more clever moments of issue advocacy in recent memory, the progressive media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, successfully won an online auction Thursday to have a “friendly lunch” …

Discussion: Media Decoder, New York Observer, Yahoo! News, The Atlantic Online and Gawker

Glenn Davis / Mediaite:

Rachel Maddow Interviews Jon Stewart — Right after Bill O'Reilly got a former president on his program, Rachel Maddow had a big guest of her own - Jon Stewart. Stewart was a game guest despite clearly not feeling too well, and explained his thoughts on the Rally to Restore Sanity …

George Winslow / Broadcasting & Cable:

iPad Users More Likely to Cut Pay TV — A new survey from The Diffusion Group (TDG) finds that people who own iPads or are planning to purchased one in the new few months are significantly more likely than average adult broadband users to either downgrade or cancel their pay TV services.

Discussion: MediaPost

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of journalist headcounts — [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] — We try to make sense of how much we've lost …

Discussion: CJR

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

New Rules for Media Ethics — After the absurd spectacle of one of TV's most partisan shouting heads being suspended for making political donations, it's clear that the time has come for journalism's ethical guidelines to be updated, in the spirit of common sense. Let's try! — Disclosure

Felix Salmon:

The NYT's subscription strategy — If a gaffe is when somebody accidentally tells the truth, then Gerry Marzorati's latest comments probably count: … Marzorati went on to become positively disingenuous: … Well, no. When I pay for most things by credit card, I know exactly what I'm paying.

Discussion: main page collection and Mixed Media