Mediagazer: Obama has pre-SOTU lunch with TV news stars (Michael Calderone/Yahoo! News)

10:40 AM ET, January 26, 2011

Top News:

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

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 …

Lynn Cowan / Dow Jones Newswires:
Demand Media 8.9M-Share IPO Prices At $17 Each, Above Range

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

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: Lost Remote, NetNewsCheck Latest, News: News blog, The Wire, The Atlantic Wire, Runnin' Scared, Future of Journalism and FishbowlNY

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!

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, more at Techmeme »

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: FishbowlNY

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

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: Esquire, Yahoo! News, Ben Smith's Blog and Runnin' Scared

Peter Lauria / The Daily Beast:
Rupert Murdoch's Family Reunion

Discussion: VentureBeat, Gawker, MediaPost, FishbowlNY, The Corsair and Company Town

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: Mediaite, Tuned In, CNN and New York Observer

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

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

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: Noted, The Nation and Jon Slattery

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

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.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

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.