Mediagazer: Building a Better Explainer: Help Us Out (Jay Rosen/Pressthink)

Aaron Wiener / The Washington Independent:

The Washington Independent, signing off — Nearly three years ago, The Washington Independent was launched as a bold experiment in online journalism. The idea was to combine hard-nosed investigative reporting with all the web had to offer: the nimbleness of real-time coverage …

Discussion: Romenesko, The Huffington Post, Weigel, WhoRunsGov.com …, CJR, NMPolitics.net, Oliver Willis, Alibi.com Blog and BrauBlog

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Sen. Rockefeller rips media industry at hearing on recent distribution fights — Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) blasted the media industry at a hearing Wednesday afternoon. — Although the topic of the hearing being held by the Senate Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Communications …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Media Decoder, MediaPost and TVNewser

Rockefeller: News media has surrendered to “forces of entertainment” — The 24-hour news cycle has forced the media to embrace hype and rumor-mongering to the detriment of the public interest, according to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, Thanks:gnagesh

Russ Smith / splicetoday.com:

Love the Royals, Hate the Republicans — Media celebrity Tina Brown is extraordinarily agile: one day she'll bash wealthy Americans, and the next wax flowery about Prince William and his future bride. — There's only one certainty in the event of a nuclear war: Tina Brown will survive.

Discussion: Romenesko

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Newsweek and the Gray Lady: Your Future Awaits

Discussion: AdAge and Yahoo! News

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Bewkes: Era Of ‘Media Mogul’ Is Over — After trying to determine which seat was the power seat on stage at The Paley Center's International Council conference, the NYT's David Carr asked Jeff Bewkes, Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner's chairman and CEO, about where power resides in the media business today.

Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:

Twitter's Official Analytics Product Has Arrived — Twitter has started inviting a select group of users to test a new analytics product, Mashable has learned. Such a product has been rumored for some time, and a Twitter executive said earlier this year that Analytics would debut by the end of 2010.

Discussion: Guardian and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Alex Williams / ReadWriteWeb:

No Tweeting Allowed for President Bill Clinton's Keynote at Salesforce.com Event — No tweeting, live blogging, posting to Facebook or any other use of social media will be permitted when President Bill Clinton gives the keynote address at Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce.com event taking place Dec. 6-8 …

Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog, Yahoo! News, SAI, Techdirt and WebNewser

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

‘The Daily’ is Murdoch's ‘No. 1 most exciting project’ — On Tuesday, The Cutline's Michael Calderone and I wrote about News Corp.'s rapidly evolving plans for a national “newspaper” that will be available exclusively on the iPad and other tablet devices. — Details remain scarce …

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Building a Better Explainer: Help Us Out — My graduate students and I are embarking a big project that revolves around a particular genre in journalism: the explainer. And we need your help. — An explainer is a special feature that does not provide the latest news or update you on a story.

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Roger Ailes Lets Rip — In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, the Fox News chief says Obama thinks differently from most Americans, defends Murdoch's GOP donations, and admits Beck sometimes goes too far. … In the media world, as in politics, having a high-profile target can be a very good thing.

Discussion: Mixed Media, New York Magazine, Swampland, Guardian, Romenesko, Mediaite, New York Times, CJR, ThinkProgress, Media Decoder, TVNewser, Salon, Fox News Watchdog and Peter Daou

Chip / Redlights and Redeyes:

open letter to newspaper photographers — If you think you are safe in your job, you aren't. — I say that bluntly to make the point stick. You are a number. You are expendable. Your work will win awards. Your work will sell papers. In the end, if they don't sell that ugly ad around your photo, you don't have a job.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

SNL Kagan: Cord-Cutting's A Fact; Other Factors Drive Down Pay TV Subs Too — Despite the insistence that there is no meaningful cable TV cord-cutting by media executives like Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner's Jeff Bewkes and Viacom's Philippe Dauman—not to mention research backed up by Nielsen …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Media Decoder and Broadcasting & Cable, more at Techmeme »

Joy Mayer / RJI:

What “engagement” means to Lauren McCullough at the Associated Press — How do you build a relationship with a global audience, personalizing a brand and involving users in your coverage? The Associated Press is going for it, with aggressive social media strategies and a reliance on its 3,000 journalists.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Village Voice Media To Handle Portion Of Ad Sales For Gothamist — Village Voice Media is branching out into ad sales for sites outside its blog network. The free city weekly publisher has started selling some ad placements on Gothamist's site this week. In an interview with paidContent Bill Jensen …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Thanks:nitwitty

Jonathan Stray:

What's the point of social news? — According to Facebook, social news seems to be mostly about knowing what all my friends are reading. I'm not so sure. But I think there really is something to the idea of “social news” for journalism, and for journalism product design.

Nick Davies / Guardian:

Court says News of the World staff who ordered phone hack must be named — Judge rules that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire must identify journalists who instructed him to intercept voicemail messages — The private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal has been ordered …

Michael Malone / Broadcasting & Cable:

TVNewser Acquires TVSpy — Industry news site grabs industry news site; seeks to get in on station job listings — WebMediaBrands, the company that owns the popular Web portal mediabistro.com, is acquiring TVSpy.com from Vault, Inc. WebMediaBrands also owns the industry news/gossip site TVNewser.

Discussion: Romenesko and MediaPost

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

A shift at Shape — Tweet — Shape Editor-in-Chief Valerie Latona, who was criticized for putting country singer LeAnn Rimes on the October cover, is out at the American Media-owned monthly after five years. — Tara Kraft, a one-time p.r. consultant for Clinique who has spent …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Folio, Gawker, New York Observer, New York Magazine, AdAge and Journalism.co.uk

DigiDave:

How I turned 20k into 48k — There are many things that excite me about Spot.Us. One in particular, which I believe is part of our pathway to sustainability is “community-focused sponsorship” (CFS). It is the main thrust of my fellowship at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.