Mediagazer: Backstage at the Onion's New TV Show (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

3:55 PM ET, January 21, 2011

Top News:

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, SAI, WebNewser, Fortune, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, The Atlantic Online, Digits, FT tech hub, Search Engine Land, @jayrosen_nyu 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

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

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, On Media's Blog, Mediaite, Poynter and FishbowlNY

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, New York Times, Guardian, openDemocracy, Guardian, The Lede, Yahoo! News, The New Yorker Blog, Gawker and The Wire

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch set to arrive in UK with News Corp mired in crisis — News Corp chief's London visit next week is timely because no significant decision can be taken at company without him — Rupert Murdoch is due in London next week, just as his company's attempts to close down the phone hacking crisis are in tatters.

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

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: Gawker, Poynter and Media Nation

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

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

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

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) …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Backstage at the Onion's New TV Show — One day, maybe not that far off, we won't distinguish between video we watch on the Web and the stuff we see on TV. But for now, TV is still the big leagues-the place you go if you want the biggest stage, and the most money.

Discussion: Time, AintItCool and New York Times

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

How Radio Vets Rebooted As Podcast Pioneers — Ustream is betting on Adam Carolla to be the live-video streaming service's first pay-per-view partnership. Lucky for them there's another act coming out of Los Angeles radio that is already proving there's a viable subscription business to be had online.

Discussion: LA Observed and Future of Journalism

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.”

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, Michelle Minkoff, Sally Duros, ERICA.ZUCCO, UMass Journalism …, The Next Newsroom Project, Reportr.net, suzanne yada and laurenmichell

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.