Mediagazer: Venerable Lefties at Harper's Divided by Union (Gabriel Sherman/New York Magazine)

8:25 PM ET, January 18, 2011

Top News:

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:

FCC, Justice approve Comcast and NBC joint venture — Federal regulators on Tuesday approved Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, allowing for a joint venture that puts a vast library of television shows and movies under the control of the nation's biggest cable and broadband Internet service provider.

The United States Department of Justice:

Justice Department Allows Comcast-NBCU Joint Venture to Proceed with Conditions … WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice announced today a settlement with Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co.'s subsidiary NBC Universal Inc. (NBCU) that allows their joint venture to proceed conditioned …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Updated: DOJ's Approval Of Comcast-NBCU Contingent On Giving Up Role In Hulu

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, rbr.com and Susan Crawford blog

Tom Junod / Esquire:

Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America? — An exclusive and unbiased investigation into the highly paid operative of a foreign-born tycoon, a man who reengineered political and media culture and fomented a revolt that threatens the very stability of our country — Today, here at Esquire …

Discussion: CJR, Poynter, TVNewser, New York Magazine, Chickaboomer, On Media's Blog, Ben Smith's Blog, Gawker, Runnin' Scared, FishbowlNY, Mediaite, The Wire and The Awl

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers' Web Traffic — While newspapers around the world are anxiously asking themselves what would happen if they started charging readers to view articles online, a few answers have started to emerge. — Steven Brill's Journalism Online experiment …

Discussion: CJR, Poynter, About.com Journalism, Gawker, The Rural Blog, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, Editors Weblog, Noted, NetNewsCheck Latest, eMedia Vitals and Stowe Boyd

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Strong Ratings for Piers Morgan's Debut — CNN's “Piers Morgan Tonight” premiered to 2.1 million viewers on Monday, according to preliminary ratings from The Nielsen Company. — CNN said that Mr. Morgan's audience was 219 percent bigger than the channel's average audience during …

Discussion: ArtsBeat, Guardian, The Wire, Show Tracker, Washington Post, TV Squad, The Huffington Post, Gawker and On Media's Blog

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:
CNN's Piers Morgan puts Twitter to work for TV debut

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

WSJ denies rumor that editor's leaving for Australia — A thinly-sourced report in today's Sydney Morning Herald suggests that Robert Thomson, managing editor of News Corps' Wall Street Journal and one of Rupert Murdoch's top lieutenants, may be packing his bags for a move back to Australia.

Stephen Mayne / Sydney Morning Herald:
Change afoot for Murdoch's minions

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Venerable Lefties at Harper's Divided by Union — Harper's, one of the last bastions of old-line liberalism and a lonely defender of a certain idea of what literary culture should be, has long been supported by the largesse of its owner and patron, John “Rick” MacArthur …

Discussion: Poynter, The Huffington Post, New York Observer, FishbowlNY, Publishing Executive … and Boing Boing

Lisa Bertagnoli / Chicago Business:

Bloggers quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards — Jim Harbison launched a blog thinking it would be a showcase for his love of mid-century-inspired art and design—and maybe spawn a book deal or guest editorship somewhere. — “I wanted to participate in a world …

Discussion: The Awl, Runnin' Scared and Chris Mohney

Stephen J. Dubner / Freakonomics:

Yes, This Blog Is Leaving NYTimes.com — As reported in Forbes on Friday, the Freakonomics blog will be leaving NYTimes.com on or around March 1 and returning to its indie roots. — The Forbes piece and most of the followup coverage drew the seemingly obvious connection between …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

H.P. Updates TV's Old Product Demos — A mainstay of early television — live commercials demonstrating products like Polaroid cameras and Timex watches — is making a comeback, updated for a new century by migrating to new media. — Hewlett-Packard is teaming up with the YouTube …

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:
HP Launches Live Improv Comedy Show on YouTube

Discussion: Mashable and Data Central

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: Ad Tech Startups Banding Together To Take On Google And Microsoft — As the online ad technology industry consolidates, it is becoming tougher for startups to stand out among the giants. The 500-pound gorillas like Google and Microsoft keep integrating in new technologies …

Discussion: New York Observer

Market Wire:

Digital Publisher Vook Closes $5.25 Million Financing — Established Leader in Publishing Content for Tablets, Smartphones and E-Readers Builds on Its Momentum for 2011 — Vook, the leading digital publisher of mixed-media reading, announced it closed $5.25 million in Series A financing …

Discussion: VatorNews, The Vook Blog and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam (With Updates) — Matt Cutts is the head of Google's anti-webspam team and tonight he came across what looks like a huge trove of scammy, spammy spam - on Facebook. And it involves Microsoft. Advertising publication AdAge reported tonight …

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Scribd Raises Another $13 Million, Aims To Bring Social Reading To Every Device — Scribd, the document sharing hub that launched as a ‘YouTube For Documents’ and has since added other key features, including an online bookstore and a publisher analytics platform, has raised another big round of funding …

Discussion: Softpedia News, paidContent, VentureBeat, NetworkEffect and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

MediaShift Idea Lab:

Which Metrics Matter for Measuring User Engagement? — Gail Robinson's recent post on traffic in a post-loyal era got me thinking about measures of web traffic and, more broadly, how to measure the impact of non-profit journalism. — I certainly don't disagree with Gotham Gazette's decision …

John Carney / CNBC:

Did Goldman Just Admit That It Leaked The Facebook Offering? — While the news that Goldman Sachs is restricting its Facebook investment fund to investors outside the US is already prompting cries that US securities regulations have become perverse, the media seem to be missing an important part of this story.

Discussion: Techdirt, Deal Journal and Wall Street Journal

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Goldman Blames Media Attention For Killing Off Its U.S. Facebook Offering

Discussion: SAI, New York Observer, Bloomberg, ClickZ, broadstuff, BoomTown, Felix Salmon, VentureBeat, The New Yorker Blog, New York Observer and On Media's Blog, more at Techmeme »

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

TPM hires The Hill's Crabtree, plans D.C. expansion — Talking Points Memo is preparing for a significant expansion in 2011, including plans to roughly double the size of the political news site's Washington, D.C., bureau by the end of the year. — To kick things off …

Discussion: FishbowlDC

The Huffington Post:

Regis: It's Over — Regis Philbin says he's leaving the show that bears his name. — “This will be my last year on this show,” the 79-year-old host said Tuesday morning on “Live! with Regis and Kelly.” “It's been a long time, it's been 28 years since I've been here.

Discussion: Mediaite, ABCNEWS, NY Daily News, Media Decoder, Moraes on TV, New York Magazine, newsfeed.time.com and AOL News

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: Entertainment News Company TheWrap Acquires ItsOnTheGrid.com — TheWrap, a venture capital-backed news organization focused on the business of entertainment and media, has acquired ItsOnTheGrid.com (IOTG), TechCrunch has learned. — TheWrap made the acquisition for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock.

Discussion: The Wrap and paidContent

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Ex-AOL CEO Randy Falco Lands At Univision As COO — Nearly two years after being ousted as AOL's chairman and CEO and replaced by Tim Armstrong, Randy Falco has a new job as EVP/COO of Spanish language media network Univision Communications. Falco, who also once served as COO of NBC Universal …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Media & Entertainment, rbr.com, Company Town, Moneywood, Multichannel, AdAge, The Wrap and mediabistro.com

Laura Kusisto / New York Observer:

HuffPo Bloggers Will Soon Shop More at Trader Joe's — The lefty blog that your neighbor contributes to, The Huffington Post, plans to set up new digs in one of Chelsea's most desirable buildings. — Staffers have been told that the high-end aggregator is moving to 675 Sixth Avenue, the Mattel Building.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Sam Petulla / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New Yorker web editor: The site is “guided by what's on paper” — In a 2006 post at Design Observer, Michael Bierut praised what he termed the “slow design” of The New Yorker: “the patient, cautious, deliberate evolution of a nearly unchanging editorial format over decades.” — It's an apt description.