Mediagazer: Times partners with 3 for three-month paywall offer (Rachel McAthy/Journalism.co.uk)

3:45 PM ET, November 15, 2010

Top News:

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, CJR, Yahoo! News, Spiersblr, Editors Weblog, Guardian, The Daily Dish, New York Magazine, paidContent, The Wire and AdAge, via:nicksumm

David Carr / New York Times:

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, The Life and Times …, 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: CJR, Gawker, Mediaite, Mixed Media, National Review, TVNewser, The Huffington Post and Gothamist

Jon Friedman / MarketWatch: What might Comcast make of Olbermann?

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: Yodel Anecdotal, Yahoo!, AdAge and Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

David Lieberman / USA Today:

Yahoo to launch network featuring exclusive news — Yahoo became one of the Web's most popular news sources by aggregating and featuring other people's journalism. On Tuesday, it will take its biggest leap yet into the highly competitive business of creating its own news content.

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 …

Nat Ives / AdAge: What to Expect as News Corp. Dives Into Business of Education

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.

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

James Robinson / Guardian:

MailOnline: what is the secret of its success? — It's the most popular newspaper website in the UK, with nearly 18 million readers a month, and is second only to the New York Times worldwide — He probably doesn't worry about falling house prices or the evils of multiculturalism …

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.

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 …

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, Mediaite and Romenesko