Mediagazer: Movie Moguls Tap into Television Production (Lauren A. E. Schuker/Wall Street Journal)

12:30 PM 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: The Wire, Poynter, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, mediabistro.com, Yahoo! News, SAI, Noted, Editors Weblog, @zseward, @lavrusik and VentureBeat

Felix Salmon:

The NYT's bizarre iPad paywall — Russell Adams has some inside dope on the price the NYT is intending to charge with its paywall: … This strikes me as peculiar. The idea seems to be that if you want to use the NYT iPad app at all, that'll cost you a hefty $240 per year, over and above the cost of the iPad itself.

New York Post:

Google's Schmidt eyeing TV — Google honcho Eric Schmidt, who announced his plan to hand over control of the tech giant last week, is eyeballing a career in TV, Page Six has learned. — Sources say the outspoken chief, who broke the news that he's passing the CEO title …

Discussion: TVNewser, The Huffington Post, The Wire, Company Town and Deal Journal, more at Techmeme »

AdAge:
What Larry Page Will Be Up Against at Google

Discussion: MediaFile and San Francisco Chronicle, more at Techmeme »

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, On Media's Blog, @iwantmedia and @lavrusik

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? …

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, paidContent, Poynter, Guardian and WebNewser

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 …

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu

Tim Stelloh / New York Times:

Not Quite a Reporter, but Raking Muck and Reaping Wrath — Daniel Cavanagh was nervous. — He paced the living room of his duplex apartment collecting his things: a large digital camera, an iPhone, a black leather jacket. — “I'm about to get crushed,” he said, running his hands through his hair.

Discussion: @scootsmoon, @markbriggs and Rhetorica

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

An Irreverent Campaign From Bon Appétit — ADVERTISERS have long used cheeky entreaties to pique the curiosity of consumers. For example, Doral cigarettes urged smokers to “Taste me,” the Preakness horse race asked bettors to “Get your Preak on” and current ads for Celebrity Cruises proclaim, “X the rules.”

Discussion: New York Observer, MediaPost, New York Times and @iwantmedia

Nicole LaPorte / The Daily Beast:

Exposing the New York Times Newsroom — A new documentary peers into the workings of the New York Times, depicts the struggle between old and new media—and features a feisty David Carr. Nicole LaPorte reports from Sundance. — In 1969, Gay Talese's The Kingdom and the Power was published …

Discussion: @megan

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 …

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu

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 …

Discussion: On Media's Blog

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

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 …

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