Mediagazer: New York Times Said to Charge Less Than $20/Month for Web Access (Brett Pulley/Bloomberg)

2:30 PM ET, January 21, 2011

Top News:

Joe Coscarelli / Runnin' Scared:

Nick Summers Out at New York Observer, Returning to Newsweek For Tina Brown — Just one big, local item on this slushy Friday for the reincarnated Press Clips column: New York Observer media reporter Nick Summers, on the job less than three months after the departure of John Koblin …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Awl, On Media's Blog, @mlcalderone, Poynter and The Wire

Matt Cutts / The Official Google Blog:

Google search and search engine spam — January brought a spate of stories about Google's search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we've refined …

Discussion: TechCrunch, FT tech hub, @jayrosen_nyu, Search Engine Land, SAI and 901am, more at Techmeme »

Tom Krazit / CNET News:

Google ready for action against content farms — Google is ready to fire a shot across the bow of the so-called content farms, willing to acknowledge recent criticism of the quality of its search results but still not quite ready to detail specific remedies.

Discussion: paidContent and New York Observer

New York Post:

Newsmax Media finds its Coz — Former American Media Ed itorial Director Steve Coz has landed at the fast-growing Newsmax Media as editorial director. — The company, which lost out in the bidding for Newsweek last year in part because of its conservative leanings, is among the few media companies …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, New York Observer, Mediaite, On Media's Blog, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Eric Schmidt / The Official Google Blog:

An update from the Chairman — When I joined Google in 2001 I never imagined—even in my wildest dreams—that we would get as far, as fast as we have today. Search has quite literally changed people's lives—increasing the collective sum of the world's knowledge and revolutionizing advertising in the process.

Discussion: New Yorker, The New Yorker Blog, virtualeconomics, BBC, SAI, Search Engine Land, VentureBeat, Google Investor Relations, The Business Insider, TechCrunch, Newsbook, All Facebook, Mercury News, L.A. Times Tech Blog, MarketingVOX, The Daily Beast, Felix Salmon, GigaOM, paidContent, VatorNews, Between the Lines Blog, Techland, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Gizmodo, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, AdExchanger.com, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Editors Weblog, PE Hub Blog, digiday:DAILY, Mashable!, The Wrap, The Consumerist, The Atlantic Online, 901am, The Next Web, PSFK, Washington Post, Epicenter, Good Morning Silicon Valley, AOL News, Fortune, CNET News, TechEye, Globe and Mail, MediaMemo, Relevant Results, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac, New York Magazine, Financial Times, PhoneArena, paidContent, Screenwerk, Future of Journalism, Tech Daily Dose, AdAge, Venture Capital Dispatch, Engadget, The Register, Faster Forward, Guardian, This Just In, New York Times, Poynter, Tech Trader Daily, Runnin' Scared, Neowin.net, New York Observer, Yahoo! News, Fast Company, Google Operating System, MacRumors, @romenesko, ReadWriteWeb and MediaMemo, more at Techmeme »

Eric Schmidt / @ericschmidt:
Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed! http://goo.gl/zC89p

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Big Bang At Google: Larry Page To Replace Eric Schmidt As CEO On April 4

Discussion: BuzzMachine, paidContent, MediaMemo, Folio, NetworkEffect, The Atlantic Online, mediabistro.com, MediaPost, SAI, Associated Press, MediaNama, Online Video News and parislemon, more at Techmeme »

Amy Gahran / Knight Digital Media Center All-Site Feed:

How missing links hurt online news, part 1 — For nearly 15 years, the internet has been popular with the general public. So it amazes me that so many online news stories still routinely lack the kind of links that online and mobile users find helpful—and that also enhance the transparency, credibility, and shareability of news.

Discussion: newsplexer

Matt Wells / Guardian:

Andy Coulson resigns over phone-hack claims — Andy Coulson, David Cameron's director of communications, has quit in the wake of the latest phone-hacking revelations. — Read a summary of events so far — 3.38pm: While you've been busy reading this live blog, my colleagues have been hard at work on background pieces.

Discussion: Press Gazette, BBC, Journalism.co.uk, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, openDemocracy, Yahoo! News, Gawker, New York Times, Guardian, The Lede, The New Yorker Blog, Guardian and The Wire

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

This Article Explains “This Article Is A Must Read.” — Many of you have asked for a post revealing the story behind this post. (Warning: Don't click if you're easily angered. And please don't read any further if you hate inside baseball stories). — This morning Mike wrote something called …

Discussion: AdAge

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Seeking “Influence,” Bloomberg Beats, AOL, CNN, MSN, Forbes, Reuters, CNBC in Site Traffic — Bloomberg, which had long offered a small amount of the company's deep proprietary content online, keeping most content on its professional trading terminal, is now a popular business and finance site …

Discussion: WebNewser and Adweek

Casey Ross / Boston Globe:

Taylors back local bid to buy Globe — Former executives offer funds, advice — A Wellesley businessman who wants to buy The Boston Globe has gained financial backing from two members of the Taylor family, which owned and published the newspaper for generations.

Discussion: Poynter and Media Nation

Daniel Bachhuber / Daniel Bachhuber's weblog:

Universities as hubs of journalistic activity — In the first Carnival of Journalism of the new year, David Cohn asks: How do we increase the role of higher education as hubs of journalistic activity? — First, the why. Educational institutions often have long-standing ties to a local community …

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Dr.Rosenberry's.Page

Martin Langeveld / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The shakeup at MediaNews: Why it could be the leadup to a massive newspaper consolidation — Editor's Note: Our regular contributor Martin Langeveld spent 13 years as a publisher in MediaNews Group. That gives him an inside perspective on the company's bankruptcy filing and its leadership shakeup, which he shares with us here.

Discussion: Newspaper Death Watch, @jeffjarvis and @jayrosen_nyu

DealBook:

Warner Music Plan: Buy or Be Bought — Updated — Warner Music Group, one of the four major record companies, has hired the investment bank Goldman Sachs to seek out potential buyers for the company, a process that will play out while Warner continues to explore buying the beleaguered British music giant EMI.

Discussion: Guardian, Globe and Mail, CNNMoney Tech Tumblr, MediaMemo, CNET News, Media Decoder, hypebot, Electronista and @katierosman

Gawker:

Disgruntled Copy Editor Strikes Back — James Reynolds spent nearly four years as a copy editor at Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media. Now he's suing the company for failing to pay him overtime for his crappy work, which required no “creativity or imagination.”

Lois Beckett / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“There's a lot of pressure to play for the short term”: The Bay Citizen's editor on its $15 million future — Seven months into its bid to reinvent the metro newspaper, The Bay Citizen has built a staff of nearly 30 people, built a strong traffic base (200,000 uniques in November) …

Craig Silverman / Regret the Error:

Bulls**t Detection 101: Why universities need to teach the new literacy — This post is part of the Carnival of Journalism, a project that gathers together a diverse group of bloggers to tackle a specific topic. Here's the current topic: … I'm going to focus on the recommendation to integrate digital and media literacy.

Discussion: DigiDave, SteveOuting.com, Sally Duros, ERICA.ZUCCO, UMass Journalism …, The Next Newsroom Project, Reportr.net, One Man & His Blog, suzanne yada and laurenmichell

Brooks / SPORTSbyBROOKS:

Sporting News Paid AOL Millions To Drop Fanhouse — Last Thursday I reported on the essential elimination of AOL Fanhouse, with the Fanhouse brand being folded into a Sporting News portal that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong elected to install as its website's new sports content provider.

Discussion: Poynter and Fast Company