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

9:10 AM ET, November 17, 2010

Top News:

The Tina Brown Turnaround — Tina Brown was in a state. It was Tuesday morning, Nov. 9, and the Daily Beast editor was in Barry Diller's office at IAC headquarters on the West Side. Talks with Sidney Harman about merging the site with his recently acquired Newsweek were back on—big time …

Discussion: New York Magazine, Felix Salmon and Media Decoder

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Newsweek and the Gray Lady: Your Future Awaits — Ever since the news hit that Newsweek's new owner is combining the publication with Tina Brown's web-based media outlet The Daily Beast, there has been a frenzy of criticism over the decision to kill Newsweek's website and redirect readers to The Daily Beast site instead.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, BlogPost and CJR

Matthew Creamer / AdAge: Why Tina Brown Might Not Be Crazy to Kill Newsweek.com

Lauren Rabaino / 10,000 Words:

Six must-have WordPress plugins for newsrooms — Last year, the Online Journalism Blog brought you 85 plugins for blogging journalists. I've narrowed my own selection down to six plugins, not necessarily for individual journo-bloggers, but for any newsroom with an active WordPress install …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Google News experiments with metatags for publishers to give “credit where credit is due” — One of the biggest challenges Google News faces is one that seems navel-gazingly philosophical, but is in fact completely practical: how to determine authorship. In the glut of information on the web …

Google News Blog:
Credit where credit is due

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and ReadWriteWeb

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker's Music Critic, Will Be Editor at News Corp.'s iPad Newspaper — Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development …

Discussion: paidContent, Romenesko, Gawker, New York Observer and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Masthead for News Corp's tablet ‘newspaper’ is starting to fill up

Discussion: Romenesko

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

Up for audit: ‘Checkbook journalism’ and the news groups that buy big stories — At first it was only supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer that did it. While the “respectable” media shunned the practice, the Enquirer developed a long and proud tradition of “checkbook journalism …

Discussion: Romenesko

Ben Fritz / Company Town:

Amazon.com going into movie producing with new website, first look deal with Warner Bros. — Hollywood has seen some unusual entrants to the business of film producing over the years, but the world's largest online retailer might just be one of the least likely.

Discussion: Thompson on Hollywood, Media Decoder and /Film, more at Techmeme »

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: Buzz Bissigner's double-barreled tweets — The author of ‘Friday Night Lights’ takes on politicians, journalists and even friends in 140-character blasts. — It was just after 7:30 last Saturday morning when anyone following Buzz Bissinger's Twitter feed might have sensed …

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: The Huffington Post

MediaShift:

Crowdsourced Fact-Checking? What We Learned from Truthsquad — In June, Senator U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch made the statement that “87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage” by President Obama's health care plan. — It was quite a claim. But was it true?

Discussion: MediaBugs Blog

David Freedlander / New York Observer:

Forever Bloomberg: The Mayor Is on the Hunt for a Successor. Could Cathie Black Be It? — Mayor Michael Bloomberg keeps a countdown clock on the wall in the City Hall bullpen. Whenever asked about his future plans—which is often, especially now that the Bloomberg for President rumor mill is churning …

Joel Meares / CJR:

Jim VandeHei Talks Politico Pro — “We're going to dig really deep... really cover what's happening.” — Politico has just announced it will be launching a subscriber service, Politico Pro, next February. According to a press release, Politico Pro's expected staff of forty journalists will provide …

Discussion: Romenesko and The Politico, via:romenesko

Jason Fry / National Sports Journalism Center:

The Sports-News Ecosystem Begins With the Link — Earlier this month, the National Sports Journalism Center held a panel discussion called “Where's the Line?” that sought to examine a host of digital-era questions: What information can you trust? Is the mainstream media taking up stories before they're properly verified?

Discussion: Romenesko

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

The British are Coming: BBC Readies Global Launch of the iPlayer — MONACO — With the approval of its governing body, the BBC is readying the global introduction of the iPlayer, the highly successful video on-demand platform which registered 139 million video program views in October.

Discussion: GigaOM

Not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be:

Cooks Source crams the other foot in there, still doesn't get it — I'd more or less stopped paying attention to the Cooks Source thing; nihilistic_kid declared victory and walked away, the entire Internet seemed to know that it was a publication based on plagiarism.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Gawker and New York Magazine

Hillary Busis / Mediaite:

Plum TV Targets Influential Audience, Announces Multi-Million Dollar Expansion — Upscale consumers, take note—Plum TV, a lifestyle network that targets “the most active, influential, and educated audience in the world,” is planning a major expansion. The company has also installed …

Bobbie Johnson / GigaOM:

Struggling Six Apart Begged for $2M Loan — When blogging pioneer Six Apart announced in September that it was being purchased by ad network VideoEgg and being folded into a new company, Say Media, the deal confirmed what many had been saying for some time: the once-hot startup had been left …

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Outside.in Partners With CityGrid On Targeted Local Ads — Hyperlocal news aggregator Outside.in has been testing targeted ads from IAC's CityGrid ad network. CityGrid, parent of the Citysearch local guide network, has been exploring partnerships with other community marketers since the spring …

Discussion: outside.in blog

The Huffington Post:

CBS Anchor Erica Hill On Covering The Royal Engagement — Erica Hill, the news anchor for CBS' “The Early Show,” doesn't jump on a plane and rush to another country for just any story. But the news of Prince William's impending marriage to Kate Middleton was irresistible — to Hill's boss, at least.

NPR:

Should Objectivity Still Be The Standard In News? — After MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was suspended for making political contributions, journalist Ted Koppel criticized the lack of objectivity in the news, and looked backward toward the halcyon days of Murrow. But media critic Jeff Jarvis believes the old model is outdated.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

AOL's European Media Director Downing Has Left — The director of the AOL (NYSE: AOL) Media division in Europe, Julian Downing, has left the company, paidContent:UK has learned and confirmed. — It's thought Downing's role was made redundant, though AOL would not confirm.

Discussion: MediaPost

Meg James / Los Angeles Times:

Fixing NBC will be priority for new chief of NBC Universal — Steve Burke will become CEO when Comcast takes over the media company. He is expected to install two experienced TV executives at the broadcast network when he unveils his management lineup. — When Comcast Corp.'s Steve Burke assembled …

Discussion: Company Town