Mediagazer: Out of Digital Chaos, a New Stability for Media (Michael Zimbalist/AdAge)

10:10 AM ET, January 25, 2011

Top News:

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

NY Times considers creating an ‘EZ Pass lane for leakers’ — The New York Times is considering options to create an in-house submission system that could make it easier for would-be leakers to provide large files to the paper. — Executive editor Bill Keller told The Cutline …

Discussion: Guardian, FishbowlNY, Poynter, The New Yorker Blog, Editors Weblog, New York Magazine and The Next Web

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google To Acquire fflick For $10 Million — Back in August we wrote about a neat service called fflick that looked to harness Twitter to power a movie sentiment and recommendation engine, with an added dash of colorful style. Now the service is getting two big thumbs up from Google …

Discussion: Noted, Softpedia News, Electronista, Fast Company and Search Engine Land, more at Techmeme »

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

DLD11: James Murdoch On The Daily, Paywalls, Google And Apple — James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and currently Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, was interviewed on stage at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany. — Murdoch touched on everything …

Discussion: paidContent, Noted, MacStories and App Advice

Ben Parr / Mashable:

Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format — Facebook is rolling out Sponsored Stories, a new ad format that turns your friends' actions into promoted content. — Sponsored Stories is “a way for marketers to sponsor activities that happen throughout the News Feed,” Facebook Product Marketing Lead Jim Squires told Mashable.

Discussion: AdAge, Electricpig.co.uk, Inside Facebook, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and SAI

Wendy Davis / MediaPost:

Justin.tv Sued For Copyright Infringement — In a move reminiscent of Viacom's attempt to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, Zuffa's Ultimate Fighting Championship has sued Justin.tv for allegedly not taking enough proactive steps to prevent users from uploading pirated streams.

Michael Zimbalist / AdAge:

Out of Digital Chaos, a New Stability for Media — An Ecosystem With Many Different Species of Devices, All Competing for the Scarcest Resource: Our Attention — Somewhere over the Rockies during my flight home from CES, I took a stroll through the cabin to help alleviate the misfortune of having been assigned a middle seat.

Andrea Spiegel / de.tech.ting:

Launch Day at Forbes: What (and how) we're building — I sometimes think of our effort to reshape Forbes as Extreme Makeover: Media Edition. It's daunting to take on a media entity with a 93-year legacy and a huge sitemap. It's not like tearing down a vacant building and re-imagining from scratch.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Ongo: Aggregation So Good, You'll Pay for It. (Maybe.) — Say “aggregation” to most newspaper publishers and what they hear is “content stealing.” But a new aggregator launching today promises to put some money back in the pockets of publishers by catering exclusively to news junkies who will pay for a better reading experience.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Bits, Journalism.co.uk, The Wire, paidContent, PR Newswire, TheStreet.com, Bloomberg, Faster Forward, The Next Web, FT tech hub, Mashable, Poynter, MediaPost and The Atlantic Online

Lindsay Powers / Hollywood Reporter:

EXCLUSIVE: Subway Won't Advertise on Second Episode of MTV's Skins … Another major sponsor has pulled out of advertising on MTV's controversial show, Skins. — A rep for Subway tells The Hollywood Reporter that the sandwich chain “will not be advertising on [Monday's] episode.”

Discussion: Moneywood, AdAge, Guardian, MediaPost, Advocate, RADAR, Gothamist, Inside TV, TMZ.com and The Wrap

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Mark Bittman ends NYT ‘Minimalist’ column after 13 years; heads to opinion section, magazine — Mark Bittman has long considered himself an advocate for eating well. For more than 13 years, Bittman says he's expressed his views “largely through recipes” in the weekly New York Times column, “The Minimalist.”

Discussion: The Wire, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Media News International and Gawker

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:UK:

Orange Bets Big On Video, Buys 49Pct Of ‘French YouTube’ Dailymotion — Orange, the French telecoms operator, has entered into exclusive negotiations to take a 49 percent stake in the online video company Dailymotion, for €58.8 million ($80 million), giving the company a full valuation of $160 million.

Discussion: Guardian, France Telecom Groups …, Online Video News, SAI, Reuters, PC World, TechCrunch Europe, TechEye and TelecomTV, more at Techmeme »

New York Post:

Condé to 1 WTC: ‘Matter of time’ — Five months after Condé Nast and the Port Authority signed a non-binding “letter of intent,” a completed lease for the glam-magazine factory to move to 1 World Trade Center is inevitable, sources predicted. — The only disagreement is over timing.

MediaShift Idea Lab:

Salon.com Retracts Vaccination Story, But Shouldn't Delete It — Last week Salon.com, a publication I helped edit for many years, officially retracted “Deadly Immunity,” a 2005 story by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that had promoted scientific research (never very persuasive and now widely discredited) …

Discussion: Poynter and Kempton

New York Times:

Olbermann Split Came After Years of Tension — MSNBC never had any doubt about what it was getting when it made Keith Olbermann the face of the network in 2003: a highly talented broadcaster, a distinctive and outspoken voice and a mercurial personality with a track record of attacking his superiors and making early exits.

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

HuffPo ‘fires’ unpaid blogger for participating in labor demonstration — On Wednesday, January 19, more than 200 union members stormed into a Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Washington, D.C., and held a guerrilla-style demonstration for about 10 minutes, protesting a home-builders' group …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Poynter, Talking Biz News and Runnin' Scared

Corbin Hiar / PBS:

NYU's Studio 20 Creates Innovative, Collaborative Hothouse — Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by the USC Annenberg nine-month M.A. in Specialized Journalism. USC's highly customized degree programs are tailored to the experienced journalist and gifted amateur.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

James Hibberd / Inside TV:

Advice columnist Dan Savage lands MTV pilot — EXCLUSIVE — Savage Love may be coming to MTV. — Columnist Dan Savage is working on an advice show for the network. — MTV has ordered a pilot that follows Savage as he tours college campuses giving his brand of brutally honest (and sometimes graphic) sex and relationship advice.

Discussion: TVWeek.com, Advocate and Gawker

Steven Church / Bloomberg:

Tribune Creditors May Be Seeking Too Many Documents, Bankruptcy Judge Says — Tribune Co. creditors may be seeking too many documents related to confidential settlement talks in the newspaper publisher's bankruptcy, the judge overseeing the case said. — U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin J. Carey …