Mediagazer: Google searching for profitable new lines of business (Andrew Leckey/Los Angeles Times)

12:30 AM ET, January 17, 2011

Top News:

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

Why Two Sites This Week Decided To Start Paying Their Writers — We hear all the time about sites debating whether to charge consumers for content but whether to pay people to create that content is something they're also tinkering with. If you needed any proof, there were two examples this week.

Discussion: IR Web Report and Talking Biz News

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Man Bites Dog! Web Publisher Pays Writers — It's a time-honored Web tradition: Build a business by getting people to give you interesting content to publish, for free. And it's still a very popular one. See: Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, Quora, etc.

Discussion: Reuters, paidContent and VentureBeat

Emili Vesilind / All The Rage:

The Golden Globes gifting suites — the freebie fests evolve — A three-stop tour of this year's Golden Globes gifting suites proved that companies — OPI as well as Fancy Feast — are still dying to get their products in the hands of celebrities. — And by “celebrities” we mean a slew of B-listers and a couple of bona fide stars.

Discussion: Gawker and The Wire

Andrew Leckey / Los Angeles Times:

Google searching for profitable new lines of business — Its stock dropped 4% last year after doubling in 2009. Also, Columbia Acorn International has been a steady performer but is likely to be more volatile than some other foreign funds. — Question: Will Google Inc. stock do well in the future?

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

The Uncertain Future of Free Dailies — There are signs. Not necessarily good ones. At ten in the morning in Paris, you still find piles of free dailies at almost every distribution point. At four in the afternoon, in the business district, outside one of the busiest subway stations …

C. W. Anderson / The Atlantic Online:

Tech and Social Movements: Beyond ‘Did Twitter Cause the Tunisian Uprising?’ — One of the least important things the uprising in Tunisia is going to do is add more empirical fuel to the long-running debate about the role played by digital social media in fostering political and social change.

Discussion: Foreign Policy, New York Times, Guardian, GigaOM, Main page collection, Gawker, Guardian, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, The Lede, Eunomia, Middle East Blog, Los Angeles Times and CNN

Media Decoder:

Publishers Told to Say Yea or Nay to Borders Deal by Feb. 1 — Publishers have been given until Feb. 1 to decide whether they are willing to accept Borders' proposal to turn delayed payments into a loan, several people briefed on the situation said on Friday.

Discussion: Jacket Copy

Joel Meares / CJR:

Play With The 2010 News Cycle Thanks To Pew — How did Fox, NBC, NPR fill the year's “newshole”? — Forgive us for not noting this sooner—our attention has been devoted to the Giffords shooting and debates that followed. But a big hat-tip to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence …

Louis C. Hochman / Morris Township-Morris Plains Patch:

Column: The Shrinking Newsroom Is Bad For Us All — It's bad news. And it's bad for news. — The journalists of the Daily Record, Courier News and Home News Tribune learned this week about half of them will lose their jobs in the latest in a string of consolidations that goes back several years.

Discussion: Gannett Blog