Mediagazer: Comments and free samples: How the Honolulu Civil Beat is trying … (Justin Ellis/Nieman Journalism Lab)

Save Newsweek.com:

A Defense of Newsweek.com — It's always nice to wake up and find out in the Times that your job is doomed. As they put it on Saturday morning, quoting the new CEO of the so-called Newsweek Daily Beast Company, Stephen Colvin: “Newsweek.com will cease to exist after the merger …

Discussion: Still Not Going To Do …, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard, Felix Salmon, paidContent, The Daily Dish, Yahoo! News, New York Magazine, The Wire and AdAge, via:nicksumm

Newsweek Weds Daily Beast? Good Luck With That — Putting together The Daily Beast and Newsweek makes little financial sense, includes not much in the way of editorial synergies — is it The News Beast or The Daily Week? — and marries two properties that have almost nothing in common …

Discussion: Romenesko, The Awl, New York Magazine, CNN and Soup

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal: New Vision for Old Press

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Vicious Infighting at NBC News — MSNBC's president vowed to fire Keith Olbermann after he threatened to take his case to other networks. Howard Kurtz on the civil war that has NBC brass—and his own staff—fuming. — Keith Olbermann was having dinner with his manager at an Upper East Side restaurant …

Discussion: MarketWatch, Mediaite, Gawker, National Review, Mixed Media, Romenesko, TVNewser, The Huffington Post and Gothamist

John Heilemann / New York Magazine:

The Education of a Murdoch Man — At News Corp., outgoing schools chancellor Joel Klein will look for ways to build an individualized-online-classroom business. — In the wake of last week's shockeroo announcement that Joel Klein was stepping down as the city's schools chancellor …

AdAge:

Hitting Pay Dirt on Content Farms Is All About the Traffic — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The Examiner and its better-known competition, Demand Media and Associated Content, are often lumped into a sector called “content farms,” which enlist freelancers to write search-friendly content …

Discussion: Romenesko, mediabistro.com and eMedia Vitals

Rick Edmonds / The Biz Blog:

Seven Reasons Newspapers Are Not Rebounding Financially — This was to be a year of convalescence for newspapers, not a total recovery but a dramatic improvement on the dismal results of 2008 and 2009. However, with third-quarter earnings in and just seven weeks left in 2010, the industry's vital signs are distinctly mixed.

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Exclusive: Comcast's Top Digital Exec Amy Banse to Open New Silicon Valley Equity Fund for Cable Giant and NBC — Amy Banse, currently the president of Comcast Interactive Media, is shifting into a job as head of a new Silicon Valley-based equity fund aimed at making digital investments …

Nick Bilton / Bits:

One on One: Tim Wu, Author of ‘The Master Switch’ — Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who came up with the term “net neutrality” in a research paper, has just written a new book, “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires,” published by Knopf.

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

NBC Ad Urges Recording News — Of all the news commercials on the networks this year, one running this fall for “NBC Nightly News” might be the most unorthodox. In it, the anchor Brian Williams recommends that people record the 6:30 p.m. newscast if they will not be home in time to watch live.

Discussion: Gawker, TVWeek.com, The Huffington Post, Romenesko and New York Magazine

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Let a Zillion Users Blab: Yahoo Debuts “Contributor Network” — Yahoo is debuting a new offering for its hundreds of million of users, which takes the Demand Media model and notches up the volume by presumably allowing a thousand flowers to bloom. — Or, more to the point, blab.

Discussion: AdAge, Yahoo! and Yodel Anecdotal, more at Techmeme »

Wall Street Journal:

Comcast NBC Deal Review Quickens — WASHINGTON—As Comcast Corp.'s chief operating officer, Steve Burke, prepares to unveil his new management plan for NBC Universal this week, federal regulators have stepped up their reviews of the cable giant's deal to acquire control of the televison …

Discussion: Company Town, Post Tech, TVNewser and New York Magazine

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Comments and free samples: How the Honolulu Civil Beat is trying to build an audience (and its name) — “You're starting from absolute scratch. That's a big hill to climb.” — That's not an excuse, but it is the reality of the news startup that John Temple is describing.

Laura McGann / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo's growth over the last decade: Moving from solo blog to news org — It's funny to think back to the Talking Points Memo of ten years ago, just a strip of text down a single blue page. (It also had a red-background phase before settling in on the beige color scheme it still has today.)

Discussion: Yahoo! News and Romenesko