Mediagazer: Craziest Startup Idea Ever? … (Jay Yarow/The Wire)

4:40 PM 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, msnbc.com, Gawker, George Dearing dot com, Salon, ArabCrunch, FishbowlNY, Poynter, The New Yorker Blog, New York Magazine, Editors Weblog and The Next Web

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
New York Times, Al-Jazeera Do An End-Run Around WikiLeaks

Discussion: Runnin' Scared and New York Observer

Mike Fleming / Deadline.com:
Sundance: Participant Media, Magnolia Team For New York Times Docu ‘Page One’

Discussion: Fimoculous and The Daily Beast

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, Yahoo! News, NetNewsCheck Latest, MacNN, App Advice, Macgasm, MacStories, Noted and Poynter

Peter Lauria / The Daily Beast:

Rupert Murdoch's Family Reunion — The mogul is working to bring daughter Elisabeth back to News Corp. with a deal to purchase her production company, Shine Group. Peter Lauria looks at Rupert's “master plan” for keeping the media empire in the family. — Rupert Murdoch may soon be reunited …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Mixed Media, Runnin' Scared, On Media's Blog, The Corsair and Company Town

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

News Corp.'s Daily iPad Newspaper Launching “In the Next Few Weeks” — The “Daily,” the iPad news app News Corp. was supposed to launch last week, should hit the market “in the next few weeks,” according to James Murdoch. That's not technically news, since it confirms what I had heard last week …

Discussion: Guardian and New York Observer

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.

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

New York Times, Washington Post Join to Sell Content to Subscribers Online — Ongo Inc., a startup funded by New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. and Gannett Co., began offering an Internet service that aggregates news and information from multiple publications for a monthly fee.

Discussion: GigaOM and Noted

Jay Yarow / The Wire:
Craziest Startup Idea Ever? …

Discussion: Top Digital Journal News and The Wall Blog

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: paidContent, Venture Capital Dispatch, VentureBeat, SAI, Softpedia News, Fast Company, Electronista, Search Engine Land and Noted, more at Techmeme »

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:

Times to Staff: We Built You Some Rooms So You Can Sleep Off Your Hangovers — This is the image from the Times internal newsletter. The filename on the photo is “recoverycouch.jpg.” — An amused Timesian just sent us this note from an internal newsletter sent to staffers today:

Discussion: The Wire, New York Observer and @romenesko

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Roll Camera! Jason Calacanis Makes a Video Push at Mahalo, and Wants You to Know About It — Jason Calacanis has overhauled his Mahalo start-up yet again. Just ask him. — Actually, no need to: The not-at-all bashful entrepreneur has been working hard to make sure we're all aware of what he's calling …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, SAI and VentureBeat

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

The iPad newsstand that works — Zinio's digital revenues have grown 350% since last April. Will Apple put a stop to that? — When we wrote a few weeks ago about the signal failure of Apple's iPad to halt the magazine industry's downward spiral (See Why digital newsstands stink), we had forgotten about Zinio.

Discussion: Poynter, ReadWriteWeb, TeleRead and Monday Note

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Meredith Rides Ad Recovery Wave, As It Relies More On Integrated Marketing — Women's magazine publisher Meredith Corp. (NYSE: MDP) posted strong results last quarter, signaling that the magazines and local broadcast were continuing to reap the benefits of the wider advertising recovery.

Discussion: rbr.com, MediaPost, Folio and Broadcasting & Cable

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, Techland, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Inside Facebook, Electricpig.co.uk, ReadWriteWeb, SAI, All Facebook and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Caroline McCarthy / The Social:

Why so much fuss about Demand Media's IPO? — When Demand Media holds its initial public offering tomorrow, it'll be the first venture-backed IPO of 2011 and, though relatively small by Wall Street's standards, the most talked-about technology IPO in quite some time.

Discussion: rbr.com and Editors Weblog

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

LATer to NYT: I pray you're never run by ex-radio hatchet men — Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Geoff Mohan writes to the New York Times (and cc's his letter to Romenesko): “I was shocked today (1/24/11) to find there are people who gripe about the good old days in Los Angeles …

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner and The Huffington Post

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.

Mike Orren:

A modest proposal for paywall purveyors — This morning, I was helping a friend whose company got featured in the Dallas Morning News. The story is behind the registration (soon-to-be-pay) wall. It's the sort of story that a company wants to show off to prospects and investors as a sign of traction and credibility.

Alex Ben Block / Hollywood Reporter:

Jeff Zucker Praises Keith Olbermann; Reveals His Own Plans … Miami - Jeff Zucker dropped a strong hint at the end of his one on one session at NATPE on Monday about what he wants to do when he leaves NBC this Friday. — The former executive producer of The Today Show said the thing …

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.