Mediagazer: After 25 Years, Village Voice Publisher Cohen Steps Down (David Kaplan/paidContent)

11:05 AM ET, January 26, 2011

Top News:

Julianne Pepitone / CNNMoney.com:

Demand Media shares soar 34% in IPO — NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Shares of online content creator Demand Media rose 34% in early trading Wednesday, raising $66.5 million for the company in an IPO that valued Demand at more than $1 billion. — The offering included 8.9 million shares …

Discussion: Exile On Wall Street

Lynn Cowan / Dow Jones Newswires:

Demand Media 8.9M-Share IPO Prices At $17 Each, Above Range — Internet content specialist Demand Media Inc. priced its 8.9 million-share initial public offering at $17 a share Tuesday, above its expected $14 to $16 range. — The company's shares will list Wednesday in the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DMD.

Discussion: MediaMemo, paidContent, Money & Company, Wall Street Journal, Black Web 2.0, @pkedrosky, VatorNews, SAI and The Wire

Tom Junod / Esquire:

Roger Ailes on Roger Ailes: The Interview Transcripts, Part 1 — TALENT SCOUT /// “I thought Glenn at Headline News was not doing what he could do. I thought Bill O'Reilly at Inside Edition was not doing what he could do. I thought Sean Hannity on radio — good-looking guy, why not put him on television?

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, Yahoo! News, Ben Smith's Blog, Swampland and New York Magazine

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

News Corp. Showdown: Roger Ailes vs. Rupert Murdoch's Kids — Lachlan Murdoch. Image by Getty Images via @daylife — Rupert Murdoch turns 80 in less than two months, and he's finally acting like it. According to The Daily Beast's Peter Lauria, the News Corp. chairman is moving toward …

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blog, VentureBeat, Gawker, The Wire and Runnin' Scared

NetNewsCheck Latest:

Newspaper Site Generate Big Traffic In Q4 — Newspaper sites generated an average monthly audience of over 105 million unique visitors — 62% of all adult Internet users — during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to a study from comScore and the Newspaper Association of America.

Erik Sass / MediaPost:

Newspaper Web Sites Reach 62% of Online Population — Newspapers are not dying — at least online. An average of 105.3 million people pre month visited a newspaper Web site during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to comScore data cited by the Newspaper Association of America …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

David Kaplan / paidContent:

After 25 Years, Village Voice Publisher Cohen Steps Down — Village Voice Publisher Michael Cohen is preparing to exit the free alt-weekly after nearly 25 years. He'll be replaced by Village Voice Media veteran Josh Fromson, who is currently publisher of the SF Weekly.

Discussion: Market Wire, New York Observer, FishbowlNY, @edmundlee and Poynter

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Netflix: Why Time Warner slams us — Time Warner's very public bashing of Netflix in recent weeks is a result of the media conglomerate's frustration over having to bid against the Web's top video-rental service for Warner Bros. content, says a Netflix executive.

Discussion: paidContent, Hollywood Reporter, GigaOM and Broadcasting & Cable

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

Discussion: Lost Remote, Bits, Ars Technica and Fast Company, Thanks:mathewi

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:
LATer to NYT: I pray you're never run by ex-radio hatchet men

Discussion: Media Junkies, Unite!

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Analysis: the Internet Stole Obama's State of the Union From Cable News — A reliable producer of big ratings for cable news networks for decades, the President's annual State of the Union address on Tuesday seemed to mark a turning point in which media delivery of the event …

Discussion: TVNewser, Mediaite, Tuned In, CNN, New York Observer and LA Observed

Tommy Christopher / Mediaite:

National Journal Skirts Embargo, Posts Full Text Of Obama's State of the Union Address — The White House has taken more care than usual that President Obama's State of the Union address not leak to the press early, advising reporters that their advance copies of the text would be sent out very close to the speech's scheduled start.

Discussion: The Wrap, Gawker, Yahoo! News and On Media's Blog

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:
The Most Tech-Enhanced SOTU Yet

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

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Real Blogs Don't Have Interstitial Ads — Hey, if I dish it out, I have to be able to take it, too. And take it today I have. We've put up this ridiculous interstitial ad here on TechCrunch that appears the first time you visit the site. — It's an ad for Dell.

Discussion: Gawker

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

Journalism's Subterranean Saviors — The iPhone will become available for Verizon customers in a few days, and New York City should steel itself for a pedestrian population more app-enabled and more dangerously distracted than ever. But the subway is another thing entirely.

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Raphael G. Satter / Associated Press:

AP Interview:WikiLeaks seeking more media partners — LONDON - WikiLeaks hopes to enlist as many as 60 news organizations from around the world in a bid to help speed the publication of its massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic memos, the site's founder said Tuesday.

Discussion: Big News Network.com, Noted, The Nation and Jon Slattery

Joel Meares / CJR:

Q&A: Former NYT Shanghai Bureau Chief Howard French — On how the press covered Hu Jintao's visit … Much of the coverage of President Hu's visit, outside of the business pages at least, focused on the joint press conference Hu and Obama gave at the White House on Wednesday.

Discussion: The New Yorker 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: Strobist and Future of Journalism

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Obama has pre-SOTU lunch with TV news stars — Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, one of the attendees at the traditional, pre-State of the Union lunch at the White House, couldn't discuss specifics of the President Obama's address while on the air Tuesday afternoon.

Discussion: TPMMuckraker, Mediaite, FishbowlDC and TVNewser

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Facebook Brings Back (Part of) Beacon, and No One Blinks — In 2007, Facebook unveiled a plan to let brands turn Facebook users' online activities into ads. Cue uproar, and an eventual apology from Mark Zuckerberg. — Yesterday Facebook unveiled a plan to let brands turn Facebook users' online activities into ads.

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog and Adweek, more at Techmeme »