Mediagazer: Biden thinks The Onion's spoofs of him are ‘hilarious’ (Rachel Rose Hartman/Yahoo! News)

7:30 PM ET, January 28, 2011

Top News:

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

TV Crews Struggle in Egyptian Chaos — Television crews in Cairo fought to stay on the air on Friday as protests enveloped major cities in Egypt. — Egyptian authorities adopted various tactics to halt live broadcasts from the capital city, but for the most part networks like CNN and NBC were able to send signals out.

Discussion: Lost Remote, GigaOM, Broadcasting & Cable, Poynter, Multichannel, CNN, The Huffington Post, The Wrap, Josh Braun's Blog and Wilshire & Washington

Curt Hopkins / ReadWriteWeb:

Al Jazeera Releases Egypt Coverage Under Creative Commons (UPDATED) — Qatar-based news service Al Jazeera has a long relationship with Creative Commons licensing. Now, for its coverage of the Egyptian uprising, it has released photographs via Flickr and video on a CC license.

Discussion: ShortFormBlog, more at Techmeme »

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

NYT interviews Egyptian blogger via Skype — It looks like much of Egypt is without internet access at this hour, but earlier the NY Times interviewed Gigi Ibrahim (@Gsquare86), an Egyptian blogger and activist, who's been sending out a steady stream of tweets from Cairo. And they did it via Skype:

Discussion: Mediaite, About.com Journalism, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, The Lede and NYConvergence.com

New York Times:
Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration

Mark Hosenball / Reuters:

Exclusive: The next generation of WikiLeaks — (Reuters) - All across Europe, from Brussels to the Balkans, a new generation of WikiLeaks-style websites is sprouting. — Like their forerunner, the fledgling whistle-blowing sites are a chaotic mixture of complex systems engineering, earnest campaigning, muckraking and self-promotion.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Adam L. Penenberg / Washington Post:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: ‘Anarchist,’ ‘agitator,’ ‘arrogant’ and a journalist

Discussion: Gawker, The Firewall and The Huffington Post

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Spotify Close To A Deal With EMI — Spotify, a digital music service that has been popular in Europe but met roadblocks in its plans to enter the American market, is inching closer to its goal. A week after it signed an arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment for distribution in the United States …

Discussion: Globe and Mail

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Spotify exec eyes Apple with suspicion

Discussion: GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

MoJo's Egypt explainer: future-of-context ideas in action — This week's unrest in Egypt brings new relevance to an old question: How do you cover an event about which most of your readers have little or no background knowledge? — Mother Jones has found one good way to do that.

Discussion: Mediaite and Daily Kos

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Zucker-Katie redux — Former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, expected to set up shop Monday on Park Avenue, is already lining up his next gig — he's talking about starting a syndicated talk show featuring CBS News anchor Katie Couric, according to three separate sources.

Discussion: Gawker, TVNewser, MediaPost, Company Town, rbr.com, TVWeek.com, Chickaboomer and New York Magazine

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

NPR probe of Juan Williams firing questions Ellen Weiss's management style — When Vivian Schiller became NPR's chief executive in early 2009, she knew enough to know that she didn't know very much about producing radio news. For that, Schiller, who formerly headed the New York Times' cable …

Discussion: Poynter, On Media's Blog and Gawker

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

New York Times, ProPublica explain how e-books help monetize old news, grow audience — New e-books from The New York Times and ProPublica highlight the potential for journalists to find new audiences, and possibly new revenue, for long-form reporting. — The two e-books launched this week …

Discussion: Epicenter and bookforum.com

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

New York Times Fixes Paywall Glitches to Balance Free vs Paid — New York Times Co. has been working to fix about 200 glitches in the technology for charging online readers of its namesake newspaper, just weeks before the project is scheduled to debut, said a person familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Poynter, WebNewser and Talking Biz News

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

Aaron Sorkin's Cable News Drama Is A Go At HBO With Pilot Order, Scott Rudin Producing — EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Sorkin long-gestating drama set behind the scenes of a nightly cable news show is becoming a reality. HBO has closed a deal for a pilot order to the project, which reunites …

Discussion: From Inside the Box, On Media's Blog, The Wrap and AintItCool

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Would you ‘like’ (or dislike) a TV commercial? — You're liking lots of stuff on Facebook, why not “like” a commercial you see on TV? Google TV executive Mark Piesanen threw out that idea at the NATPE conference this week, explaining that technology under development by Canoe Ventures could power it.

New York Post:

Mag sale Lag-arderes — The Lagardére sale of all its ti tles outside of France to the Hearst Corp. for nearly $1 billion is going to drag on even longer than expected. — On Monday, the Paris-based media giant is expected to announce that the deal won't be finalized until the third quarter of this year.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and New York Magazine

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:
Guild, Newsweek pact clears way for Daily Beast merger

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

NBC News Digital Chief: Video News Consumption is Bigger Than Ever — Powered by a “billion” cameras, coupled with new devices for viewing, more consumers are watching video news than ever before, says Mark Lukasiewicz, NBC News VP for Specials and Digital.

Discussion: msnbc.com, WebNewser and Josh Braun's Blog

Joseph Berger / New York Times:

Near City's Old Newspaper Row, the Media Are Returning — In the late 19th century, a cluster of buildings along or near Park Row, close to those busy news engines, City Hall and the city's courts, housed almost every daily newspaper in town — The Herald, The Sun, The Tribune, The World, The Journal and The Times.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and MediaPost

Rachel Rose Hartman / Yahoo! News:

Biden thinks The Onion's spoofs of him are ‘hilarious’ — A mock photo of Vice President Joe Biden washing a Trans-Am shirtless. Strange? Distasteful? Crossing the line? — Not so, Biden says. — “I think it's hilarious,” Biden told Yahoo! in a wide-ranging interview Thursday.

Discussion: Poynter, The Atlantic Wire, Gawker, Mediaite, The Wire, Political Punch, Indecision Forever, Washington Post and TPMDC

Gizmodo:

How Hulu Lost Its Place In a Netflix World — Hulu is a terrific service. Who could argue with free, current episodes of primetime TV on your computer? But for months now, Netflix has been eating Hulu's lunch. And Hulu's plan to fight back sounds more like a swan song.

Discussion: MediaPost, GigaOM, Mediaweek and ReelSEO Online Video …