Mediagazer: Director: NYT film has A- average rating from critics (Jim Romenesko/Poynter)

3:00 PM ET, January 31, 2011

Top News:

Al Jazeera camera equipment seized — Camera equipment remains seized after release of six Al Jazeera jounralist who were briefly detained in Cairo. — Six Al Jazeera English journalists, who were briefly detained in Egypt, have been released, however; their camera equipment remains confiscated by the military.

Discussion: Poynter, TVNewser, Free Press, The Awl, Babylon & Beyond, On Media's Blog, @nolanjazeera, CNET News, Guardian, Boing Boing, @aymanm, The Huffington Post, mediabistro.com, The Daily Beast, Felix Salmon and Broadcasting & Cable

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Cable companies: Add Al Jazeera English *now* — What the Gulf War was to CNN, the people's revolutions of the Middle East are to Al Jazeera English. But in the U.S., in a sad vestige of the era of Freedom Fries, hardly anyone can watch the channel on cable TV. — Cable companies: Add Al Jazeera English NOW!

Discussion: Doc Searls Weblog, The Wire, Multichannel, Jon Slattery, GigaOM, Media News International, The Huffington Post, Aljazeera, Online Journalism Review, Inside Cable News, Boing Boing and Lost Remote

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Nick Kristof turns to Facebook to report from Egypt — Yesterday afternoon, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof added an update to his Facebook page: … Five hours ago, he added another update: … He's since added two more updates to the page, describing the “giddy” mood at Tahrir Square …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Yahoo! News, Journalism.co.uk and Aljazeera

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Center for Public Integrity, NewsBeast sign content deal — Romenesko Misc. — Under the agreement, Newsweek/Daily Beast will pay the Center for Public Integrity for exclusive stories. It's the Center's first pay-for-content deal in more than two decades, says a release.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu and @mathewi

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

NewsBeast and CPI: A mutualization made in heaven — Newsweek/The Daily Beast — the entity most of us know as NewsBeast — announced earlier today that it's struck a deal with the Center for Public Integrity: It's paying CPI for exclusive investigative stories.

Discussion: WebNewser

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Newsweek and Daily Beast Hire Two More — Tina Brown's Newsweek-Daily Beast hybrid continues to add to its roster of writers as it prepares to start a completely reconfigured magazine this year. — Wayne Barrett, a former Village Voice investigative reporter, and Peter J. Boyer …

Discussion: Poynter, Gawker, LA Observed, On Media's Blog, MediaPost, FishbowlNY and The Empire

CBS News:

Julian Assange, The Man Behind WikiLeaks — Talks To Steve Kroft About The U.S. Attempt To Indict Him And The Criticism Aimed At Him For Publishing Classified Documents — (CBS) Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a Web site called WikiLeaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange.

Discussion: The Awl, The Firewall, The Wire, Fast Company, The Nation, TechCrunch, kateoplis and New York Times, more at Techmeme »

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:
WikiLeaks: The Guardian's role in the biggest leak in the history of the world

Discussion: On Media's Blog and Media News International, via:sdkstl

Evan Rudowski / paidContent:UK:

A News Corp. Digital History Lesson For The Daily — Evan Rudowski is co-founder of SubHub, a paid content platform. He was previously an online manager at Newsday and business development director at News Corp.'s iGuide. — As I watch the coverage of Rupert Murdoch's upcoming iPad publication …

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur: Why The Daily will succeed - or not

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Exclusive: Ex-Gawker Guy Snyder to Head Atlantic Wire, New Manhattan Staff — Former Gawker editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder has been tapped to run The Atlantic Wire and build up a news aggregation staff in New York, as the 154-year-old magazine continues to carve out a home on the web.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, The Wrap, Poynter, Mediaite, Yahoo! News, @gabrielsnyder, FishbowlNY, @annaholmes and @nicksumm

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:

Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service ... I must apologize to Dave Winer. He warned me about supporting services that aren't the open web and I wasn't willing to listen to him a month ago, because I was infatuated with a cool new service that lots of insiders were supporting.

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Quora Review, broadstuff, parislemon and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: KIT digital Acquires KickApps, Kewego AND Kyte For $77.2 Million — TechCrunch exclusive - If you'd never heard about KIT digital before, you will after today. — The provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions has acquired not one, not two but three social software and video companies.

Discussion: KIT digital, Online Video News, paidContent, Broadcasting & Cable, MediaMemo, @rafat, GigaOM, VideoNuze and NYConvergence.com, more at Techmeme »

Benjamin Wallace / New York Magazine:

The Geek-Kings of Smut — After once being the best thing that ever happened to porn, the Internet is now wreaking havoc: destroying some fortunes, making bigger ones, and serving as a stimulus plan, in more ways than one. — For one brief moment here at the 2011 Adult Video Awards in Las Vegas …

Discussion: SAI and @iwantmedia

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Independent's i ‘has hit 170,000 sales’ — Publisher says circulation of cut-price daily is ‘continuing to climb’ as multimillion-pound campaign kicks in — Circulation of the Independent's 20p spin-off i hit an average of more than 170,000 a day last week, according to the first sales figures revealed by the publisher.

Douglas Quenqua / Media Decoder:

A Phish Fan's Secret Smile — CNBC may not have known it, but last week, the financial news network ran one of the greatest Phish shows in recent memory. — The band itself was nowhere to be seen. But Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Company and an occasional commentator …

Discussion: @myersnews

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Director: NYT film has A- average rating from critics — Some critics at Sundance complained about “Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times” lacking focus, but director Andrew Rossi tells Romenesko that others have raved about the documentary. “The movie now has an ‘A-’ average rating based …

David Card / GigaOM:

Demand Media: Search Spam or the Future of Content? — Demand Media may have announced a successful IPO, but that didn't quite dispel the air of controversy surrounding the company. After all, Demand has never been profitable as a business. The company and its content farm brethren …

Eric Pfanner / DealBook:

Hearst to Buy Lagardere's Magazine Unit for $889 Million — Lagardère, the French media conglomerate, said on Monday that it had agreed to sell its international magazine business, including titles like Car and Driver and non-French editions of Elle, to the American publishing company Hearst for 651 million euros.

Discussion: The Wrap, MinOnline, The Fix, Press Gazette, Media News International, Folio, Gawker and Fashionista

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

IntoNow Can Hear What You're Watching On TV. The Media Check-In Game Just Changed. — “The problem was that no one wanted to type in the bar they were at,” Adam Cahan told us when we met with him last week to see his latest venture, IntoNow. He wasn't talking about his startup.

Discussion: Lost Remote, The Next Web, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, NetworkEffect, Mashable! and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Political Blogs Are Ready to Flood Campaign Trail — MANCHESTER, N.H. — Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who is flirting with a bid for president, has none of the usual campaign accoutrements. No tour bus, campaign manager or yard signs. Few Americans, in fact, even know his name.

Discussion: CJR, Yahoo! News, Cision, FishbowlDC and Crikey

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

iPad Mags Need A New Blueprint — Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they've just been stumbling over themselves. — They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay …

Discussion: TeleRead and Canadian Magazines

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

‘Modern Family’ Overexposed Online? ABC Exec Disagrees — When Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent suggested earlier this month that the syndication-market value of the ABC (NYSE: DIS) comedy Modern Family was diluted by overexposure online, nary a peep came in response from the broadcast network.

Discussion: Lost Remote

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

News of the World: a year of Andy Coulson's editorship in data. Visualised | Alan Rusbridger — Andy Coulson's editorship of the News of the World examined in a year of celebrity stories. By Alan Rusbridger — • Get the data — A mole has sent in this data …

Mike Shields / Mediaweek:

Pay Walls Crumble — The New York Times is ignoring the deep flaws in its online business model, say industry observers, blowing a chance to transform online publishing by instead opting to earn a few quick bucks. — Based on the details that have emerged, the Time's meek metered approach …

Discussion: Noted

Davidw / Joho the Blog:

We are the medium — I know many others have made this point, but I think it's worth saying again: We are the medium. — I don't mean this in the sense that we are the new news media, as when Dan Gillmor talks about “We the Media.” I cherish Dan's work (read his latest: Mediactive) …

Bloomberg:

Sienna Miller Hack Attack May ‘Poison’ News Corp.'s BSkyB Deal — Sienna Miller's phone-hacking claims against Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid threaten to tarnish News Corp.'s reputation just as it seeks government approval for the purchase of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc.

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:

AOL Europe Acquires Branded Video Network goviral For $96.7 Million — AOL Europe has lead an acquision of video distribution network Goviral today, to the tune of $96.7 million. Goviral distributes branded video content for mainstream brands, as well as content producers and advertising agencies.

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Another reverse for the fake sheikh as victim's conviction is quashed — The News of the World phone-hacking scandal has been something of a boon for the paper's investigations editor Mazher Mahmood. It has diverted press attention from his fake sheikh activities.