Mediagazer: Why And How Digital Music Products Have Indeed Failed (Mark Mulligan/paidContent)

6:35 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, Latest Open Salon Blog, The Atlantic Wire, The Corsair, The Awl, Runnin' Scared, 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 …

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 Wire, The Atlantic Online, Gannett Blog and Deal Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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: FishbowlNY

Wall Street Journal:

Hulu Reworks Its Script as Digital Change Hits TV — 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 …

Discussion: SlashGear and Electronista

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 …

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

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, CNET News, Company Town and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

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: MacStories, Macgasm and CNET News

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

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

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

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

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.