Mediagazer: Time Warner and the War Against Free (Diane Brady/Business Week)

10:00 PM ET, January 20, 2011

Top News:

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: Google Investor Relations, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, paidContent, MediaMemo, New York Times, Mashable!, TechCrunch, The Wrap, GigaOM, Poynter, AdAge, Mercury News, CNET News, Felix Salmon, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Mediaweek, Engadget, Crikey, Yahoo! News, Between the Lines Blog, The Atlantic Online, SAI, Search Engine Land, New York Magazine, 901am, Screenwerk, Faster Forward, Fortune, Globe and Mail, The Register, Financial Times, Fast Company, The Next Web, Multichannel, Relevant Results, Techland, Epicenter, Gizmodo, VatorNews, PhoneArena, @romenesko, Broadcasting & Cable, Electronista, AOL News, Future of Journalism, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, MacRumors, ReadWriteWeb, New York Observer, Neowin.net, Google Operating System, Tech Daily Dose, Runnin' Scared, This Just In, Tech Trader Daily and Daring Fireball, more at Techmeme »

Eric Schmidt / @ericschmidt:

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

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

NY Times to Charge Less Than $20/Month for Web Access — New York Times Co. will charge readers less than $20 a month for full access to its namesake newspaper on the Web when the company introduces its paid service, a person familiar with the matter said. — The price has been set at less …

Discussion: WebNewser, Screenwerk, Yahoo! News, paidContent, @pkafka, @romenesko, SAI, New York Observer and NYConvergence.com

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

A Racy Show With Teenagers Steps Back From a Boundary — MTV executives have a new hit drama on their hands, featuring the sexual and drug-fueled exploits of misfit teenagers. They also have something else — a fear that coming episodes of the show may break the law.

Lindsay Powers / Hollywood Reporter:

EXCLUSIVE: Taco Bell Pulls Ads From MTV's ‘Skins’ Over Racy Content … Taco Bell has pulled its ads off Skins after the Parents Television Council urged a boycott. — Spokesperson Rob Poetsch tells The Hollywood Reporter, “We advertise on a variety of MTV programs that reach our core demographic …

Discussion: New York Observer, @matt_creamer, @natives and TMZ.com

Washington Post:

Warren Buffett to step down from Washington Post Co. board — Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said today he would step down from the board of The Washington Post Co. this May. He has served on the board since May 1996 and previously had a tenure on the board from 1974 to 1986.

Discussion: Deal Journal, Poynter, Media Decoder, MediaFile, Gawker and The Daily Caller

Martin Langeveld / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The shakeup at MediaNews: Why it could be the leadup to a massive newspaper consolidation — [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: The Register Citizen

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Arianna Huffington to Launch Site for Blacks — Arianna Huffington is set to launch a new website that will focus on the black community. — The site — dubbed “HuffPost Global Black” — will purportedly offer “news, politics, culture, opinion, and video through the lens of the black experience.”

Discussion: Yahoo! News, @spinsterellla, @umanoid, @jessicawakeman, FishbowlNY and WebNewser

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: MediaMemo, Electronista, @katierosman and Media Decoder

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Interview: Lovefilm Investor Says Amazon Exit Is A Win-Win — Lovefilm eschewed a possible IPO option because Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) gives it a global-scale parent with resources enough to land the rights necessary to profit from the coming online movie explosion, says one of the VCs who has exited in the deal (see earlier story).

Discussion: VatorNews

Robert Andrews / paidContent:
Amazon Buying Lovefilm To Build European Movie Rentals Business

Discussion: TechCrunch Europe, TechCrunch Europe, Index Ventures Blog, The Next Web, Guardian, VentureBeat, The Business Insider, FT tech hub, Media Week, Company Town, Multichannel, CNET News, GigaOM, SAI and MediaMemo

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

Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:

Techmeme and Mediagazer will now include Tweets as headlines — Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera and Mediagazer founder Megan McCarthy announced today, on Twitter, that they both news aggregation sites will be including Tweets as headlines going forward. — In July of last year …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Epicenter, @mikepilarz, @manusalah and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Megan McCarthy / @megan:
Tweets are now being shown directly on Mediagazer - @reply with something fun to join the Discussion!

Discussion: Techmeme News, TechCrunch, Mediagazer News, @cksample, @taylorbuley, @kevinmarks, @edmundlee, @gilzino, @eghosao, @mathewi, SAI, @mattbinder and @bobcaswell

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of Mr. Murdoch's Daily — [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] — Let's pause for a moment and reflect. — It's a daily newspaper being taken to the web.

Tim Radford / Guardian:

A manifesto for the simple scribe - my 25 commandments for journalists | Tim Radford — Former Guardian science editor, letters editor, arts editor and literary editor Tim Radford has condensed his journalistic experience into a handy set of rules for aspiring hacks

Discussion: @felixsalmon, @jayrosen_nyu and blogs.journalism.co.uk, Thanks:fredericl

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

New year brings delays for expected media launches — For the media-obsessed, 2010 was largely spent looking ahead to 2011. — This January was to bring four major launches or relaunches. In the waning days of December, it still seemed reasonable to expect that each debut might happen before the second calendar month of the year.

Discussion: Poynter and The Wire

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

How ‘Cyberlockers’ Became The Biggest Problem In Piracy — Since Napster exploded into the public consciousness when it was founded 12 years ago, the world of digital piracy has been associated with a particular type of software—"peer-to-peer" download services. (Sometimes fairly, sometimes not.)

Diane Brady / Business Week:

Time Warner and the War Against Free — CEO Jeff Bewkes is standing up for paid content in a world of cheap online video. Can he hold the line against iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu? — Daniel Acker/Bloomberg — In a hangarlike Las Vegas exhibition hall on Jan. 6 …