Mediagazer: We Need New Ways of Judging the Success of Websites (Choire Sicha/The Awl)

6:25 PM ET, December 14, 2010

Top News:

Denton's disgrace — Tweet — A Manhattan woman's life was turned upside down yesterday, one day after hackers gained access to Gawker Media's servers, exposing her e-mail account, password and other personal information. — Within hours, the hackers had used her Gawker information …

Discussion: Mixed Media, All Things Digital, TechCrunch, ClickZ, CNET News, Coding Horror, TUAW, Yahoo! News, PC Magazine, FishbowlNY, Slate, Urlesque, Between the Lines Blog and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Daniel Kennedy / The Firewall:
Discussing Gawker's Breach With Founder Nick Denton

Discussion: Duo Security, TechSpot, DailyFinance and The Daily Beast, more at Techmeme »

Matt Brian / The Next Web:
An Interview with Gnosis, the group behind the Gawker hacking

Discussion: CNET News, ClickZ, The Wire, The Atlantic Online, New York Post, Mediaite, Guardian, PC Magazine, The Awl, Daring Fireball, New York Magazine, SAI and Computerworld

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Reuters America Gets News Service Deep Into Aggregating — As part of Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) expansion into more general news service in addition to its financial reports, the company has launched Reuters America, it's most direct challenge to the Associated Press position as a supplier of articles and photos to newspapers.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Reuters, MediaFile, Poynter, MediaPost, New York Magazine, Globe and Mail and Tower Ticker

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics: Reuters America Claims New Territory; First Stop, Chicago & Tribune

YouTube Blog:

Double rainbows, annoying oranges and bed intruders: the year on YouTube … Email This — BlogThis! — Share to Twitter — Share to Facebook — Share to Google Buzz

Discussion: YouTube Trends, Urlesque, ResourceShelf, Lost Remote, WebNewser, Geekosystem and The Wire

Kevin Allocca / YouTube Trends:
Welcome to YouTube Trends

Discussion: MarketingVOX, PC Magazine, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, TechSpot, Lost Remote, L.A. Times Tech Blog and mediabistro.com

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

The Awl to start paying its writers in January — The Awl, Choire Sicha and Alex Balk's irreverent and idiosyncratic 2-year-old journalism start-up, will as of Jan. 1 start paying the writers who have helped turn the site into a culture and media must-read with half a million monthly visitors.

Discussion: The Awl, New York Observer, eMedia Vitals and WebNewser

Wall Street Journal:

Comcast Service Combines Web, TV — Comcast Corp. is testing a new service that knits together television and the Internet, as the U.S. cable giant goes after rivals that threaten to undermine its business. — Under the new system, which is being tested in Augusta, Ga. …

Discussion: paidContent, Susan Crawford blog, Electronista, GigaOM, Company Town, PC World, Gizmodo, Light Reading, DSLreports, VideoNuze, Hillicon Valley, Lost Remote and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

The Atlantic Online:

The Unknown Blogger Who Changed WikiLeaks Coverage — When historians look back at WikiLeaks and how the world's pundits tried to make sense of what was happening, they'll see a familiar list of sources: Foreign Policy's Evgeny Morozov, The Guardian's John Noughton, The New York Times' David Carr …

Discussion: The Independent

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Exclusive: Ex-NBC Chief Resurfaces With Digital Venture — Fred Silverman, who ran each of the three broadcast networks over the course of the 1970s, is trying his hand at programming on the internet. His production company will launch Blip City, which is billed as “the world's biggest live-video get together,” next month.

New York Times:

Larry King Prepares to Sign Off, and Everybody's Talking — Famous people liked talking to Larry King, and for many of them, there was one reason: His program was the place to go for unhurried, agendaless conversation. — “I consider Larry one of a kind, absolutely one of a kind,” …

Discussion: The Wire, TVNewser and Gawker

Ari Samsky / splicetoday.com:

A Subject of Astonishingly Small Importance — The New York Times, out of touch and incoherent. — ReservasdeCoches.com — I always enjoy reading Arthur Brisbane, the recently appointed public editor of The New York Times. Brisbane supposedly acts as a representative of the Times' readership …

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

By securing Howard Stern, Sirius XM Radio avoids static — The satellite radio company's new five-year deal with the talk show host gives Wall Street a strong signal that it will remain competitive with over-the-air stations. — Talk radio host Howard Stern agreed to a new five-year contract with Sirius XM Radio last week.

Discussion: Company Town, Media Buyer Planner and MediaFreak

Wall Street Journal:

Air Force Blocks Sites With Leaked Cables — The U.S. Air Force is blocking its personnel from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other major publications that have posted secret material obtained by Wikileaks, people familiar with the matter say.

Discussion: News: News blog, Poynter, Open Mike, New York Times, BBC, CJR, Sunlight Foundation Blog, New York Observer, Yahoo! News, CNET News and American Journalism Review, more at Techmeme »

Alex Weprin / WebNewser:

CNBC Goes ‘Pro’ With Pay Digital, Mobile Service — CNBC is launching a premium digital and mobile service, CNBC Pro, with a suite of features meant to appeal to Wall Street professionals. At launch, the service will be available on PCs and Blackberry devices, with support for most other smartphones …

Discussion: Talking Biz News and MediaPost

Gillian Reagan / Bookish:

The Making of the Times' 10 Best Books of 2010 — Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review, insists that getting on the Times' 10 Best Books of 2010 list is not a prize. There's no ribbon. No ceremony. No giant check handed to a weeping recipient.

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Examiner.com is World's Largest ‘News’ Organization...67,000 Writers Under Contract in the U.S. — Inks Content Deal with Reuters — While not a conventional news organization, Denver-based Examiner.com may be the world's largest by the sheer size of its writing stable and the amount of content being produced.

Discussion: Market Wire and Gawker

John Eggerton / Multichannel News:

Viacom Raises Red Flags On Comcast/NBCU — Viacom, according to an ex parte filing, expressed concerns that the proposed merger of Comcast with NBC Universal would impact independent programming during meetings with Democratic Federal Communications Commission commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn.

Discussion: rbr.com and GigaOM

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

France Says Google Is Main Cause Of News Publishers' Woes — French authorities have finally got some kind of ruling against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) - but it turns out to be rather toothless. — The competition watchdog, L'Autorité de la Concurrence, in an opinion expressed to the finance minister …

Andrea Morabito / Broadcasting & Cable:

Cohen Upped To EVP At Bravo — Exec will continue to host ‘WWHL’ in elevated role — Andy Cohen has been promoted to executive vice president, original programming and development at Bravo, the network announced Tuesday. He will continue to be based in New York, reporting to Frances Berwick, president of Bravo Media.

Discussion: MediaPost