Mediagazer: Medill and McCormick launch a news innovation lab with $4.2 million … (Megan Garber/Nieman Journalism Lab)

4:10 PM ET, February 3, 2011

Top News:

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Jon Stewart's Hulu Price Tag: At Least $40 Million — Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were two of Hulu's biggest draws until they left the video site last March. And it will cost Hulu at least $40 million to get them back. — That's according to people familiar with the new deal …

Discussion: New York Times, paidContent, Mediaweek, rbr.com, VentureBeat, Lost Remote, TVNewser, Company Town, Gothamist, Electronista, The Wire and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

Jason Kilar / Hulu Blog:

Stewart, Colbert, and Hulu's thoughts about the future of TV — We are extremely happy to announce a broad content agreement between Viacom and Hulu that brings The Daily Show and The Colbert Report back to Hulu and now also to Hulu Plus, beginning this morning.

Henry Blodget / The Wire: Hulu CEO Jason Kilar Infuriates TV Bosses/Partners With Unapproved …

Hollywood Reporter: Hulu, Viacom Announce Content Partnership

Waxy.org:

The Daily: Indexed — Anybody else think it's weird that The Daily, News Corp's new iPad-only magazine, posts almost every article to their official website... but with no index of the articles to be found? They spent $30M on it, but apparently forgot a homepage! — So I went ahead and made one for them!

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:
“Serendipity and surprise”: How will engagement work for The Daily?

Discussion: The Next Web, Poynter, The Huffington Post, Company Town and tag me with a spoon

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Fake, unofficial Daily Tumblrs terrorize Murdoch's iPad pub

Discussion: TechCrunch, USA Today and John Gapper's blog

Rex Hammock / Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com:
The Daily isn't as bad as Virgin's Project

Discussion: Media Nation, Gannett Blog, contentious.com, Editors Weblog, Product Reviews, bookforum.com, GigaOM and magCulture.com/blog

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Who is The Daily trying to reach? What problem is it trying to solve?

Discussion: Poynter, Magtastic Blogsplosion, New York Times, Garcia Media, GigaOM, CJR, TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, Mashable!, SAI, News Corporation, Company Town, paidContent, The Daily, Mediaite, Nieman Journalism Lab and Innovation in College Media

New York Times:

Gangs Hunt Journalists and Rights Workers — CAIRO — Security forces and gangs chanting in favor of the Egyptian government hunted down journalists at their offices and in the hotels where many had taken refuge on Thursday in a widespread and overt campaign of intimidation aimed at suppressing reports from the capital.

Discussion: The Wrap, Mediaite, Yahoo! News, Big News Network.com, Broadcasting & Cable, BlogPost, The Daily Dish and New York Times

Committee to Protect Journalists:

Journalists under physical assault in Egypt — Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak have begun violently attacking journalists reporting on the streets of Cairo today, a shift in tactics from recent media censorship, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Quarterly Income Fell 26% for The New York Times Co. — Reflecting a slow advertising recovery across the newspaper industry, The New York Times Company reported on Thursday a 26.2 percent drop in net income in the fourth quarter from the period a year before.

Discussion: Guardian, The New York Times Company, Gawker, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, Poynter and Media Buyer Planner

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
New York Times will release paywall details in ‘near future’

Discussion: Poynter

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

MTV UK Tries Charging For Online Catch-Up TV — If you thought that pay-per-view online catch-up TV had been replaced by the free, ad-supported model, think again - MTV has launched a dedicated UK VOD portal, MTV OD, costing £1 ($1.61) a day or £2 ($3.24) a week.

Discussion: The Next Web, Pocket-lint and WatchingTV Online

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

Apple, Campbell's Say iAds Twice as Effective as TV — A Nielsen Study Shows iPhone Users Are Paying Attention, While TV Viewers Not so Much — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It's been seven months since the first iAds — Apple's bid to reinvent mobile advertising — started popping up on iPhones and iPods …

Discussion: TechCrunch, iLounge and Fortune

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Medill and McCormick launch a news innovation lab with $4.2 million in Knight funding — In 2009, while announcing that year's Knight News Challenge winners at a conference at MIT, Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen mentioned the foundation's desire to launch “test kitchens” …

Discussion: Tower Ticker, Knight Foundation News … and KnightBlog

Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:

Appeals Court: free Internet porn isn't unfair competition to pay sites — One day in March of 2009, the proprietors of Redtube.com were minding their own business, streaming free pornographic videos to the public, when they received notice of a lawsuit against them in the mail.

Discussion: Techland, Indecision Forever and The Daily Caller

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Viacom Ad Gains Canceled Out By Lower Home Video Sales — Viacom's cable properties benefitted from the advertising recovery of the past year, but lower DVD sales erased any of its gains in the last quarter. The poor earnings performance comes a day after its MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) …

Joe Grimm / Poynter:

Ongo.com CEO: Centralized subscription removes ‘high frustration walls’ between readers & news — Some early observers of Ongo.com may be missing the point. — The subscription site, which launched Jan. 25, is intent on being a great “personal news experience.”

Discussion: paidContent

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

The AP's Digital News Licensing Agency Will Launch This Summer — The Associated Press is moving ahead with a plan to establish an independent digital news licensing agency to help news organizations make additional money off their digital content. The AP initially announced its intention …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Storify Gets Funding From Khosla Ventures to Reinvent Media Online — Storify, a San Francisco-based startup that launched a social-media aggregation service for journalists last fall, announced today that it has closed a $2-million Series A round of funding from Khosla Ventures …

Discussion: TechCrunch, paidContent and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:

News Corp sees profits rise — News Corp chief refuses to talk about issue at press launch for the Daily, and misses quarterly reports Q&A — Rupert Murdoch dodged questions about the widening phone-hacking scandal yesterday. The chairman and chief executive of News Corp …

Discussion: CNET News, Media & Entertainment, Media News International, WWD Media Headlines, Broadcasting & Cable and Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard

AdAge:

Groupon Snags Last-Minute Super Bowl Ad Time — Social-Shopping Phenom Had Been Relegated to Pre- and Post-game Spots — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Groupon's got game time. — Less than a month ago, the online company was shut out of the Super Bowl and was planning on only pre-game and post-game commercials.

Discussion: The Wire, rbr.com, CNET News, newsfeed.time.com and AdFreak

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

3 new resources for data journalists — There have been a raft of new sites for data launched in the past couple of months which I haven't had time to blog about, so here's a quick round-up: — Tim Davies' Open Data Cookbook aims to collect “step by step recipes for practical ways to use open data” …

New York Post:

Now, the real work begins at Brown's NewsBeast — The NewsBeast is ALIVE! — But it has problems aplenty, not the least of which is surviving Tina Brown's star system — great if you're enjoying most-favored reporter status and hell if you are not. — The inevitable result is staff discord …

Discussion: New York Observer