Mediagazer: The story behind the Palestine papers (Guardian)

10:00 AM ET, January 24, 2011

Top News:

New York Times Readies Pay Wall — Paper Will Charge for Bundled Digital Service, Allow Some Free Access — The New York Times is preparing to introduce multiple subscription packages for access to the paper's website and other digital content, kicking off the biggest test to date …

Discussion: Poynter, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, Noted, Felix Salmon, @zseward, @lavrusik and VentureBeat

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Despite Distinctions, Los Angeles Times Loses Standing at Home — LOS ANGELES — Big city newspapers all across the country have suffered one indignity after another in the last few years. But few of them have been as hard hit — or gotten as much grief for it — as The Los Angeles Times.

Discussion: LA Observed

Paul Armstrong / paidContent:

@Themediaisdying: The Brutal Truth From Two Years In The Twitterverse — The facts for the publishing industry are clear - the vast majority of media outlets are declining in one or more ways. — Two years ago, I registered @themediaisdying - a Twitter account through which I tweet links illustrating …

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

BBC's Big Online Cuts: Full Details Announcement — Here is the BBC's full announcement of its online cutbacks...

Discussion: Media Week, paidContent, Poynter, Guardian and WebNewser

Guardian:

The story behind the Palestine papers — How 1,600 confidential Palestinian records of negotiations with Israel from 1999 to 2010 came to be leaked to al-Jazeera — The revelations from the heart of the Israel-Palestine peace process are the product of the biggest documentary leak …

Discussion: Aljazeera, Journalism.co.uk, Editors Weblog, Politics Daily, FP Passport, Guardian, AOL News, blogs.telegraph.co.uk and Clusterstock

Paul Carr / TechCrunch:

NSFW: On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Journalist — So here's an odd thing. Since TechCrunch was acquired by AOL, there has been a slight but appreciable uptick in the number of stories we've run about our new parent company. In the last month alone, we've reported their Q1 goals …

Discussion: Gannett Blog

Craig Silverman / Regret the Error: Does 80 percent of AOL's revenue come from subscribers? …

New York Magazine:

Harper's Union Spat Intensifies As Big-Name Authors Weigh In — John “Rick” MacArthur. — The war of words between Harper's publisher John “Rick” MacArthur and the magazine's union is intensifying. Today, the union is circulating an open letter to MacArthur signed by 84 writers …

Pekka Pekkala / Online Journalism Review:

What if Google categorizes Patch.com as a ‘content farm?’ — By Pekka Pekkala: Last Friday Google made a major announcement: Focus on improving search results has shifted from “pure webspam” to “content farms.” The latter are sites with shallow or low-quality content …

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Future of Journalism and Shelly Palmer Digital Living

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Maxim Will Give Brand Licensing Another Try — Lad mag's first foray into field failed, but company sees new opportunity — Maxim, which epitomized brand extensions gone amok by slapping its name on everything from sheets to hair dye, is getting back into the licensing business.

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

CQ Press to Introduce Specialized Data Service — The race to build the biggest, most comprehensive and specialized cache of at-your-fingertips information and analysis on the business of Washington has added one more combatant. — CQ Press is creating a service called First Street …

Craig Fehrman / Los Angeles Times:

Stalking the D.C. novel — The question isn't who wrote Washington's latest roman a clef, it's whether the book is worth reading. — Every so often, a journalist or a critic or even a novelist will lament the fact that we don't have a truly great Washington novel.

AdAge:

What Larry Page Will Be Up Against at Google — Co-founder Turned CEO Will Need to Reinstill Culture, Deflect Social Strongholds, Attract Ad Dollars — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — A decade after nailing the business of search advertising, Google has never been more dominant.

more at Techmeme »

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Movie Moguls Tap into Television Production — The Weinstein brothers are making a renewed play for the small screen. — Harvey and Bob Weinstein are among several Hollywood movie makers ramping up television production this year, with 15 shows in development and a commitment to spend …

David Carr / New York Times:

MTV's Naked Calculation Gone Bad — What if one day you went to work and there was a meeting to discuss whether the project you were working on crossed the line into child pornography? You'd probably think you had ended up in the wrong room. — And you'd be right.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and 5 Blogs Before Lunch