Mediagazer: Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled (Bill Keller/New York Times)

12:10 AM ET, January 27, 2011

Top News:

Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled — This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication. Not really, I confessed. The Times doesn't have encrypted phone lines, or a Cone of Silence.

Discussion: Poynter, @wikileaks, The Atlantic Wire, The Awl, Latest Open Salon Blog, Runnin' Scared, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine, The Firewall, Yahoo! News, Threat Level, The Huffington Post, The Corsair, Jon Slattery, News: News blog and Gothamist

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Bill Keller's Clash with Assange — As The New York Times publishes its first e-book, editor Bill Keller tells Howard Kurtz how exasperating it was to deal with the WikiLeaks founder—and why he's launching his own column. — Bill Keller, who led The New York Times through its rocky dealings …

Discussion: Gawker, @chanders, The Atlantic Online and Yahoo! News

Raphael G. Satter / Associated Press:
AP Interview:WikiLeaks seeking more media partners

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

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: New York Magazine, Poynter, Poynter, Epicenter, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Exile On Wall Street, Wall Street Journal and Future of Journalism

Shira Ovide / Deal Journal:

New York Times Almost Bought Into Demand Media — Demand Media, which is fresh off its IPO, was almost part of the New York Times family. — Demand, a mass producer of instructional content, approached Times Co. executives more than three years ago about combining the company with About.com, a person familiar with the matter said.

Discussion: @rafat

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Congratulations, Demand Media. You're Still Pretty Dumb. — Well, it happened: Demand Media went public. The content farm made its initial public offering this morning at a share price of $17, valuing it at almost $1.5 billion, and since then it's been trading in the range of $23.

Discussion: paidContent, The Atlantic Online, Gannett Blog, The Wire and Deal Journal, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Wall Street Welcomes the Content Farm: Demand Media Supersizes Its IPO

Discussion: AdAge, FT tech hub, Deal Journal, paidContent, Money & Company, SAI, VatorNews, The Wire, Black Web 2.0, Dow Jones Newswires and Money & Company

Maureen O'Connor / Gawker:

Plagiarizing Editor's Boss: 'Byline Doesn't Take Credit for the Work' — Rodale, publisher of Men's Health and employer of serial plagiarist David Zinczenko, explains why ripping writers' bylines off their work, and slapping Zinczenko's on, is OK: “The byline doesn't take credit for the work, but serves as an overarching tag.”

Maureen O'Connor / Gawker:
Men's Health Editor Plagiarizes His Own Writers

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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: Mediaite, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic Wire, Yahoo! News, Ben Smith's Blog and New York Magazine

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blog:
Dear commenters, Steve Doocy is reading

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, Mediaite, Yahoo! News, Media Matters for America, On Media's Blog, @tolles, Gawker and Swampland

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
News Corp. Showdown: Roger Ailes vs. Rupert Murdoch's Kids

Discussion: Media Matters for America, The Wire, VentureBeat, TVNewser, Gawker, The Wire and MediaPost

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Q&A: Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua at the World Economic Forum — Francine Lacqua, host of Bloomberg's “On the Move with Francine Lacqua”, is currently on the ground in Davos, Switzerland, at the site of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of heads of state, business leaders and economists which opened today.

Discussion: TVNewser

Eric Pfanner / DealBook:
In a Wikileaks Era, Balancing Public and Private

Discussion: Sunlight Foundation Blog

Jason Horowitz / Washington Post:

Before meeting the press, they met Mr. Aly — There is a tradition on “Meet the Press,” television's longest-running news program, to follow the political grilling and roundtable conversation with a friendly off-the-record breakfast. The show this past Sunday seemed no different.

Discussion: Poynter, FishbowlDC and CJR

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

State of the Union: Whitehouse.gov as a media outlet — Every State of the Union can be called “the most technologically advanced State of the Union in history” — at least until the next year's comes along. And last night's speech was no exception: Coverage across outlets was an explosion …

Discussion: Fast Company

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Content, context and code: verifying information online — When the telephone first entered the newsroom journalists were sceptical. “How can we be sure that the person at the other end is who they say they are?” The question seems odd now, because we have become so used to phone technology …

Nicholas Carlson / The Wire:

Patch Is A Huge Waste Of Money, And It Has Us Worried About Tim Armstrong's Ability To Run AOL — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong believes that its local blog network, Patch, will be a “major” part of the company's turnaround as it fills one of the largest “white spaces” left on the Internet.

Discussion: Change of Subject

ProPublica:

Kindle Singles from Amazon Features ProPublica Content — Amazon.com is today launching Kindle Singles, ebook versions of narrative writing longer than almost all magazine articles, but shorter than traditional books. We're delighted to report that ProPublica stories will be included in the Kindle Singles collection.

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Investigations tool DocumentCloud goes public (PS: documents drive traffic) — The rather lovely DocumentCloud - a tool that allows journalists to share, annotate, connect and organise documents - has finally emerged from its closet and made itself available to public searches.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and DocumentCloud

Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:

Twitter Tests Self-Serve Ad Platform — Twitter has begun testing a self-serve ad platform with advertisers and agencies it plans to roll out in the first half of this year, and MediaPost got a glimpse. — Clix Marketing Founder David Szetela began supporting a handful of clients this week.

Discussion: Search Engine Land, ReadWriteWeb, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, MediaMemo and SAI

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: Media Buyer Planner, newsplexer and eMedia Vitals