Mediagazer: How Sam Spratt is finding a niche for illustrations in the text … (Greg T. Spielberg/Nieman Journalism Lab)

6:55 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, Techland, George Dearing dot com, Salon, ArabCrunch, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Gawker, 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 — The New York Times is considering creating an electronic tip line so that leakers of classified documents can go direct instead of having to use a middleman like WikiLeaks, according to executive editor Bill Keller.

Discussion: Runnin' Scared 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.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, PR Newswire, paidContent, Poynter, Mashable, Ars Technica, Bits, VentureBeat, Fast Company, Faster Forward, The Next Web, Gannett Blog, TheStreet.com, Tech Pinger, FT tech hub, Screenwerk, Future of Journalism and MediaPost

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: Noted

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

Discussion: Top Digital Journal News and The Wall Blog

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Newspapers Try to Reimpose Scarcity on News With Ongo

Discussion: Lost Remote, Thanks:mathewi

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: Guardian, paidContent, paidContent, Yahoo! News, App Advice, MacNN, MacStories, NetNewsCheck Latest, Macgasm, Noted and Poynter, more at Techmeme »

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

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: Venture Capital Dispatch, paidContent, Techland, GigaOM, Softpedia News, Fast Company, SAI, Electronista, VentureBeat, 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, @romenesko and New York Observer

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

Greg T. Spielberg / Nieman Journalism Lab:

How Sam Spratt is finding a niche for illustrations in the text-heavy world of digital journalism — Sam Spratt is a freelance artist, but thanks to journalists, not a starving one. Since graduating from college in July, the illustrator has done hundreds pieces for Gawker Media …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

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, VentureBeat and SAI

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, Folio, MediaPost and Broadcasting & Cable

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

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

ASME Unveils New Guidelines for Magazine Web Sites — Group tries to lay down law on advertising, editorial distinction — With Web sites increasingly permissive about the kinds of ads they'll accept, the American Society of Magazine Editors is trying to push back.

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

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 …

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:

The Most Tech-Enhanced SOTU Yet — More reasons to ditch your TV and watch online — Don't have a TV to watch tonight's State of the Union address? Or do you just get bored with all the standing-applause breaks without constant visual and informational input? You are in luck.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, Online NewsHour, Esquire and Sunlight Foundation Blog