Mediagazer: Patch Is A Huge Waste Of Money, And It Has Us Worried About Tim … (Nicholas Carlson/The Wire)

9:00 AM ET, January 27, 2011

Top News:

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

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:
Bill Keller's Clash with Assange

Discussion: Gawker, Techdirt, @chanders and The Atlantic Online

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

Discussion: blogs.journalism.co.uk, The Nation, Noted and Jon Slattery

Keith Richman / AdAge:

Why Demand Media Really Is a Media Company and Its IPO Will Succeed — Critics Conveniently Forget That Media Companies Have Always Scrambled to Give People Content They're Looking for — Today, Demand Media will have its IPO, and while the company and its model have taken a lot of hits lately …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

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.

Discussion: paidContent, The Wire, The Atlantic Online, Gannett Blog and Deal Journal

Julianne Pepitone / CNNMoney.com:
Demand Media shares soar 34% in IPO

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

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

Discussion: BoomTown, FT tech hub, The Next Web, SAI, Deal Journal, Money & Company, Black Web 2.0, VatorNews, Money & Company, paidContent and Dow Jones Newswires, more at Techmeme »

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, eMedia Vitals and Change of Subject

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

The disruptors arrive at Davos — Last year at Davos, I said I was among the disrupted when I preferred to be among the disruptors. — The disruptor arrived last night. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, former spokesman for Wikileaks and founder of the competitive OpenSecrets …

Discussion: Canadian Press

Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:

Localeaks: A Drop-Box for Anonymous Tips to 1400 U.S. Newspapers — Although the mission of WikiLeaks is to “open governments,” it's done quite a lot to make us think about how to open journalism as well. We've seen a number of new whistleblower sites crop up - OpenLeaks and Rospil …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Soup, WebNewser and Lost Remote

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.”

Discussion: Poynter and @dangillmor

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

Discussion: Regret the Error and FishbowlNY

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Netflix Takes Aim at the Cable Guys, With a Promise to Start Firing Tomorrow — Interesting PR campaign from Netflix, which is fighting with the cable guys and telcos over the cost of delivering all that streaming video to your living room: The company is going to publish a list of broadband Internet providers, ranked by performance.

Discussion: NetworkEffect, Multichannel News, CNET News, Company Town, brandflakesforbreakfast and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Wall Street Journal:

Hulu Plots New Script — Just as the digital wave transforms the television industry, Hulu, a pioneer of Internet TV, is in internal discussions to dramatically transform itself. — The free online television service has become one of the most-watched online video properties in the U.S …

Discussion: Engadget, SlashGear and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Jason Silverman / Underwire:

David Carr Is Journalism's New Superhero in Page One Doc — David Carr, left, chats with The New York Times media editor Bruce Headlam in a scene from Page One. — Photo courtesy Sundance Institute — PARK CITY, Utah — In an attempt to describe the new age of journalism …

Discussion: Cinema Blend Feeds

David Lipke / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: GQ's Menswear Finalists... Bill Keller's New Column... THE FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT: GQ has revealed the finalists for its fourth annual Best New Menswear Designers in America competition, with the talent pool this year including Patrik Ervell, Alexander Wang for his T by Alexander Wang line …

Mark Mulligan / paidContent:

Why And How Digital Music Products Have Indeed Failed — There's been a lot of buzz (some positive and not so positive!) about comments I have made about the current state of the digital music market in the New York Times and at Midem. — The quote which really grabbed the attention was …

Discussion: MediaPost

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: FishbowlDC, Poynter and CJR

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

Netflix Passes 20 Million Subscribers But Doesn't Give Full-Year Guidance — Netflix's Q4 subscriber growth beat the Street, passing 20 million subscribers for the first time, but revenue was a little weak. — Notably, Netflix is NOT providing full-year revenue or subscriber growth guidance …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Macgasm, MacStories and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

The New Republic:

Home News — Today, The New Republic announces that Marty Peretz, who has been editor-in-chief of the magazine for 37 years, will become editor-in-chief emeritus. In addition, he will move from writing his blog, The Spine, to writing a column for the website.

Discussion: Salon

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:

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: DocumentCloud and Future of Journalism

TED Blog:

Introducing TED Books — Today, we're thrilled to announce the launch of TED Books, an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution. Shorter than traditional books, TED Books run less than 20,000 words each — long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting.

Discussion: Boing Boing, VentureBeat and ReadWriteWeb

Ben Smith / Ben Smith's Blog:

Dear commenters, Steve Doocy is reading — One of the themes of the Esquire profile of Roger Ailes, with which Ailes cooperated, is that Ailes reads ever word written about him. — You might think that was an exaggeration. But apparently he does, or someone over on Sixth Avenue does.