Mediagazer: AOL Fourth-Quarter Profit Tops Analysts' Estimates (Alex Sherman/Bloomberg)

10:25 AM ET, February 2, 2011

Top News:

The End of Blogging … “I don't really see a blog business,” said Nick Denton over gchat. He still wasn't sold on the idea of an interview regarding his sites' redesign, scheduled to debut tomorrow, and seemed to be attempting an escape. “I should find you that old post …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Poynter, Fimoculous, NetNewsCheck Latest, @sdkstl, @rachelsklar, @mathewi, @fredwilson, @anildash, @chanders, @editorialiste and @mathewi

Ben Popper / New York Observer:

Nick Denton on Gawker Redesign: Only Facebook Matters — Gawker went live with its redesign on two of its web sites this morning, io9 and Jalopnik. — Interestingly, the Gawker redesign has stripped out Twitter and Stumble Upon—which used to sit next to each article …

Discussion: The Next Web, The Social, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Wire, New York Observer and Village Voice

Ray Wert / Jalopnik:
Welcome to the new Jalopnik 5.0! — You'll notice Jalopnik's …

Discussion: Boing Boing, Gawker.TV, @antderosa and @raywert

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

LEAKED: AOL's Master Plan — Two years into his tenure as AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong is stepping on the gas. — By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000. — He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

I Worked on the AOL Content Farm & It Changed My Life — Five years ago this week I began writing for AOL's blog network Weblogs Inc. I wrote 5 technology news stories each day and was paid a mere $5 per article. It was grueling, that was just one of 3 jobs I had at the time - and it was great.

Discussion: SAI, The Next Web, CNET News and Future of Journalism

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

New York Times Staffers Using Apple iPhone 4 for Video News Gathering, “A Huge Game Changer” Says Paper's Video Chief — WASHINGTON, DC — The New York Times is providing reporters with the Apple iPhone 4 to record and upload videos via an Aspera App to the paper's server.

Mark Milian / CNN:

A peek at The Daily's iPad news app — (CNN) — News Corporation owns several publications that are more than a century old. On Wednesday, the company will announce and then begin distributing its brand-new take on a news outfit built for the 21st century.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Poynter, Poynter, @joshhalliday, @daily, The Loop, Faster Forward, CNET News, App Advice, MacStories and TelecomTV

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

The Daily Is Doomed! the Daily Is a Hit! — The Daily's formal debut is in a few hours, at which point we'll have no shortage of pro/con opinions about News Corp.'s new iPad newspaper. — But until then, here are the reasons the Daily won't work, followed by the reasons it will.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Telegraph, @clayman, Poynter, Garcia Media and NYConvergence.com

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine: The Daily Columnists Will Include Dan Wolken, Soo Yoon, and Jessica Valenti

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:
The Daily staffers we identified came from NY Post, AP, The Atlantic …

Discussion: Guardian, Newsonomics, eMedia Vitals, Fortune, bookforum.com, Sky News, Yahoo! News, The Wrap, @pkafka, VentureBeat, New York Observer, Runnin' Scared, MediaPost, Fox News, @romenesko and MediaMemo

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily — Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the launch of News Corp's iPad newspaper The Daily, but huddled away in a downtown loft in New York City's meatpacking district a team from betaworks and the New York Times …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, NetNewsCheck Latest, Fortune, MacStories, IntoMobile, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Comcast, Time Warner Expand TV Everywhere — It's been approximately 18 months since Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) first talked up TV Everywhere, but their authentication strategy has finally come to pass: a multi-year commitment to put hundreds of hours …

Discussion: Multichannel, Company Town and Future of Journalism

Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Two Hints at Stepped-Up Media Rivalry in Online Streaming

Discussion: Company Town, Ars Technica and Technologizer, more at Techmeme »

The Huffington Post:

Anderson Cooper Attacked By Pro-Mubarak Mob — Anderson Cooper and his crew were attacked by supporters of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday. CNN's Steve Brusk tweeted that Cooper was punched in the head ten times. — The incident came as pro-Mubarak supporters attacked protesters calling for the Egyptian president to step down.

Discussion: TVNewser, The Wire, Yahoo! News, CNN, Examiner, TPMMuckraker, newsfeed.time.com and Tuned In

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Al Jazeera Finds New Paths In U.S. — New ways to watch Al Jazeera English in the United States keep popping up — but not on cable or satellite systems. — On Monday, YouTube started promoting a live stream of the channel, supplementing the channel's own Web stream.

Discussion: BrauBlog, B&C, ReadWriteWeb, Poynter, Market Wire, Stop Big Media News and LA Observed

Steve Safran / Lost Remote:
Al Jazeera now streaming on TV in U.S. via Roku

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, SpringBoardMedia, War in Context and Technologizer

Matea Gold / Los Angeles Times:
Through Egypt, Al Jazeera English has an American moment

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Al Jazeera Blogs, Political Punch, ArtsBeat, Hot Air, On Media's Blog, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Times, Knight Digital Media Center …, ReadWriteWeb and NPR

Robert Niles / Online Journalism Review:

Two authors' stories illustrate why some journalists profit online, and others fail — By Robert Niles: An e-mail and a tweet last week pointed me to two blog posts that expressed completely different ways that two writers have addressed the challenge of a changing media marketplace.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Bloomberg:

Apple Rejects Sony's E-Reader Software Amid Concerns About Sales Erosion — Apple Inc. rejected a proposed digital-book application by Sony Corp. amid concerns that the software's payment-handling system would erode Apple's sales. — Sony's e-reader application wasn't allowed …

Discussion: thebookseller.com/news …

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales

Discussion: Brave New World, GigaOM, IntoMobile, Kindle Review, NewsGrange, eBookNewser and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:

A Hacking Case Becomes a War of the Tabloids — LONDON — It was a classic tabloid scoop: a young woman's account of a two-year affair with the actor Ralph Fiennes, spiced up with racy details of what he liked to do and how he liked to do it. Three newspapers — The Sunday Mirror …

Discussion: Guardian

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

The Power Booker: Katie Thomson Is Piers Morgan's New Fixer — When The Observer met Katie Thomson at Landmarc restaurant in Columbus Circle, we wanted to congratulate her. We were beaten to it. — “Monica Lewinsky sent a note saying congratulations,” she said.

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

AOL Fourth-Quarter Profit Tops Analysts' Estimates — AOL Inc., the Internet company spun off from Time Warner Inc., posted fourth-quarter profit that exceeded analysts' estimates on reduced costs. — Net income climbed to $66.2 million, or 61 cents a share, from $1.4 million, or 1 cent …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Online Video News, Business Wire and Associated Press

David Cohen / WebNewser:

Super Sunday for Hulu AdZone — Super Bowl XLV will mark AdZone IV for Hulu, as each Super Bowl commercial will be streamed via the video site immediately after airing during Fox's telecast of the game. — Fans can vote on this year's top ads, follow the voting via a real-time leader board …

Discussion: AdAge and Gothamist

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

AOL Sells Content Recommender Surphace to Content Recommender Outbrain — Tim Armstrong has disposed of another asset that AOL bought before he showed up: The company has sold Surphace, its content recommendation engine, to Outbrain, which does the same thing.

Discussion: paidContent:UK, Future of Journalism, paidContent and SAI

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Time Warner Cable Buys Enterprise Hosting And Cloud Services Company NaviSite For $230M — Time Warner Cable has just announced that it has acquired NaviSite, a provider of enterprise-class hosting, managed application, messaging and cloud services, for $5.50 per share in cash, or $230 million.

Discussion: Multichannel, Business Wire and All Things Digital

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Interview: John Menzies Reboots Its Digital Publishing Business — John Menzies is returning to digital publishing by launching a consultancy agency to jump aboard booming publisher interest in digital editions. — In 2008, the UK newspaper and magazine distributor launched John Menzies Digital …

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Talk To Me, Malcolm Gladwell! — “I think in the last year I've done, I want to say—it's tough—a few dozen? Thirty to forty would be my guess?” — Jonah Lehrer, a contributing editor at Wired, was on the phone from Los Angeles Monday evening, trying to recall how many paid speeches he had delivered in 2010.

Discussion: Poynter

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“You are what you read”: NYT CTO Marc Frons on the paper's new article recommendation engine — The New York Times has been talking for a while about how it wants to create a more personalized, engagement-oriented user experience. And quietly, late last week, the paper took another step in that direction …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

Tracking Egypt with Tweets on TV — If you've been following the news from Egypt on TV, chances are good you've seen some Tweets on air. If you haven't, here's a quick sampling of segments to give you a sense of how Twitter is being used to tell the story.

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:

David Shuster launching new investigative Web site — Is there a space on the internet for a political Web site focused on long-term, manpower-heavy investigative projects at a time when Web-based news orgs are racing faster and faster in the battle to maximize clicks with attention-grabbing but perishable micro-scoops?

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Big Journalism, Poynter, Gawker, On Media's Blog and The Huffington Post