Mediagazer: Film Criticism Is Dying? Not Online (Roger Ebert/Wall Street Journal)

7:35 PM ET, January 23, 2011

Top News:

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

AOL Is In Talks To Acquire Outside.In, Save It From Near Certain Death — AOL is talking to local news aggregator Outside.in about a possible acquisition, we've heard from multiple sources. — One source close to the deal told us that it would be “premature” to report that AOL has acquired Outside.in …

Roger Ebert / Wall Street Journal:

Film Criticism Is Dying? Not Online — Thanks to the Internet, there is more and better writing about movies than ever before, says Roger Ebert — Buster Keaton, left, in ‘Speak Easily,’ 1932. Today's critics hail from Seoul, Cairo, Mumbai and Manila.

Discussion: CyberJournalist.net

Craig Silverman / Regret the Error:

Does 80 percent of AOL's revenue come from subscribers? New Yorker discrepancy leads to confusion — Ken Auletta's latest article in the New Yorker — a long feature about the new AOL — set off a lot of online chatter. One statistic in particular was highlighted by the Consumerist and Business Insider.

Discussion: Gannett Blog

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

NY Times will build its digital empire on (metered) quality journalism — The New York Times is moving forward this quarter with its plan to put paid metering on its stories on the internet. And it believes it can do so because of its emphasis on quality journalism, says Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times.

Discussion: @felixsalmon, Tech Europe and The Atlantic Online

Scripting News:

Educating the journo-programmer — There's an idea, emanating from New York, that if we somehow combine the talents of programmers and journalists, we'll figure out how to make news work in the age of the Internet. I haven't been sure what to call this, but I agree that there's a lot of power in the combination.

Discussion: @macloo

Arthur S. Brisbane / New York Times:

A Necessary Clash of News and Advertising — Views from readers, responses from the staff and thoughts from Arthur S. Brisbane, the public editor. — I am writing to draw your attention to a recent two-page spread ("A Year Later, Haunted but Hopeful, Haiti Struggles Back," Jan. 4).

Amanda Andrews / Telegraph:

Virgin Media's Neil Berkett: It's all about ‘connectivity’ and broadband speed — Neil Berkett has an announcement to make: Virgin Media's battle with Sky for the pay-TV market is over. — “This is not a zero-sum game any more,” says the New Zealand-born media executive.

Guardian:

News of the World phone-hacking scandal threatens more newspapers — Lawyer confirms other red tops facing legal claims 24 hours after issue claimed Andy Coulson's job — Britain's tabloid newspapers are now facing a major crisis after being drawn into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Discussion: The Independent, Spectator, The First Post, Telegraph and Daily Mail