Mediagazer: Xtranormal Videos Run Rampant on Web, Make Their Way to TV (Nat Ives/AdAge)

8:10 PM ET, January 7, 2011

Top News:

Award-Winning Village Voice Contributor Canned For Fabricating Sources, HuffPo Deletes Posts* — On Wednesday Village Voice editor Tony Ortega pulled an article from the Voice website after it came out that freelance reporter and recent Columbia grad Rob Sgobbo had fabricated the sources …

Discussion: Gawker, The Huffington Post and Gothamist, Thanks:mradamtaylor

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Village Voice says writer fabricated characters for for-profit colleges story — Voice editor Tony Ortega says freelancer and Columbia journalism student Rob Sgobbo made up a character, “Tamicka Bourges,” who claimed she'd amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree.

Discussion: New York Observer, Village Voice, Mediaite, mediabistro.com, FishbowlNY, Regret the Error and freefromeditors

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Newspaper removes ‘homeless voice’ YouTube clip — The YouTube video of the homeless man with the golden voice has to be one of the biggest social media hits in local media history. Earlier this week, a Columbus Dispatch videographer saw a homeless man holding a sign that promised a …

Discussion: Poynter, rbr.com, Associated Press, The Huffington Post, msnbc.com, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog and newsfeed.time.com

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Memo to Newspapers: Stop Thinking Like a Portal

Discussion: Lost Remote and prTini, Thanks:mathewi

Paul Ford / Ftrain.com:

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium — I look forward to your feedback. — I sometimes chat with people in the book- and magazine-publishing industries. They complain to me about the web. They worry about what is being lost. They can sound like this bookseller in Buffalo, New York:

Discussion: Anil Dash and AdAge

Rob Wong / Hulu Blog:

Hulu Plus Coming Soon to Android Mobile Phones, Live on Vizio HDTVs — Since we launched Hulu Plus, it's been our goal to continue to add more platforms and devices to the subscription service to offer you as many ways as possible to stream the shows you want, whenever you want.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Techland, PC Magazine, Fast Company, paidContent, The Next Web, MarketingVOX, SlashGear, 901am and Android Community, more at Techmeme »

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Julian Assange's $1.5M Memoir Being Rushed to Press by Publisher — Julian Assange's memoir — part of a $1.5 million book deal the WikiLeaks founder inked two weeks ago — already has a release date: April. As in 2011. — Assange's U.K.-based publisher Canongate announced on Friday …

Discussion: Gawker, Guardian, Yahoo! News, Mediaite and Media News International

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

WordPress.com growing fast. Over 6 million new blogs in 2010, pageviews up 53% — Automattic's WordPress.com, the commercially run leg of the popular blogging platform is growing incredibly fast, according to its latest statistics. — Automattic tells us that it has seen over 6 million …

Discussion: Mashable!

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

The ‘Lost’ Paradox: Why Some Free Shows On The Web Are So Heavily Pirated — Earlier this week, the popular BitTorrent news blog TorrentFreak published a list of the most pirated TV shows of 2010. The No. 1 most-pirated show—that would be ABC's Lost, which was illegally downloaded nearly six million times …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and PSFK

Oliver Luft / Press Gazette:

ITV News and NBC to share foreign correspondents — ITV News and the US network NBC have jointly appointed Rohit Kachroo to act as Africa correspondent for both broadcast organisations. — Kachroo, who is currently ITV News' crime correspondent, is expected to take up his new post …

Discussion: TVNewser and Mediaite

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Xtranormal Videos Run Rampant on Web, Make Their Way to TV — Startup Rolls Out Characters That Look a Lot Like Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer and Andy Rubin — LAS VEGAS (AdAge.com) — Geico's slick CGI gecko is getting competition from some adorably low-fi characters.

Discussion: GigaOM

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

IMG Sells The Daily to Founder; Name Dispute Still Unresolved — Whatever Rupert Murdoch decides to call the fancy new iPad-only news product he's launching in a few weeks, it's no longer IMG's problem. The talent agency and media conglomerate has agreed to sell The Daily …

Discussion: New York Observer, FishbowlNY, The Fix and Fashionista

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Robert Gibbs on tangling with the White House press corps — Robert Gibbs is well versed in the ways of the scoop-obsessed Washington press corps, having been a political spokesman for more than a decade. But the outgoing White House Press Secretary says that the pace of news has only revved …

Discussion: Poynter, Political Punch, ABCNEWS and The Daily Beast

Emily Bell / Guardian:

Views-led news sparks identity crisis — From Oprah Winfrey to Glenn Beck, left and right are exploiting opinionated output - and now Piers Morgan enters the fray — There has always been a market for opinionated performance in the US that goes beyond what the temperate would describe as rational.

Discussion: TVNewser, Collective Talent, Speakeasy and Media Matters for America

Matt Kinsman / Folio:

The Atlantic Posts Profit for First Time In Years — Claims double digit increases in digital, events and print. — The Atlantic says it turned its first profit in decades in the fourth quarter of 2010, driven by double-digit revenue increases year-over-year in digital (up 70 percent) …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, New York Observer and The Wrap