Mediagazer: How Gawker's redesign subverts the scannable culture of the Internet … (Latoya Peterson/Poynter)

8:45 AM ET, February 9, 2011

Top News:

Mahalo's Calacanis: Time To End The Content Farm Arms Race — No stranger to controversy, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis threw down a gauntlet at his “content farm” competitors, arguing they're polluting the web and angering Google, to the detriment of searchers and their own companies.

Discussion: SAI, more at Techmeme »

Associated Press:

Newspaper stocks jump on content hopes — Newspaper stocks jump after AOL deal shows content still matters — Related Quotes … NEW YORK (AP) — Newspaper stocks jumped Monday after AOL agreed to buy online news site Huffington Post for $315 million, the latest in a string of deals …

Discussion: blogs.journalism.co.uk and Mediaite

Felix Salmon:

Why the NYT will lose to HuffPo — Tom McGeveran asks an important question, in his analysis of the AOL-HuffPo deal: … The answer to this question, I think, is also a key part of the reason why the NYT paywall is a bad idea. — It's worth using a specific example here …

Discussion: Mixed Media, Runnin' Scared and Future of Journalism

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Biz Stone: Twitter Drives “Let's Watch It When It's On” Viewing — Twitter doesn't claim to have caused the biggest Super Bowl viewing audience in history, but maybe it helped, says Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. Stone sees Twitter as helping drive live viewing by creating a shared experience.

Keith Richman / AdAge:

Now That AOL Has Huffpo, Where's the Video? — AOL's Leaked Planning Document Says Video Is the Game, but Huffington Post Won't Help Them Get There — As everyone now knows, AOL agreed yesterday to acquire The Huffington Post. There has been a lot of solid analysis as to the rationale of the deal …

Discussion: The Wire, GigaOM and LA Observed

David Kaplan / paidContent:
AOL-HuffPo: A Lot Of Scale—But Will Advertisers Care?

Discussion: Burst Media Company Blog, SAI and The Wire

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Demand Media & Being “The Best Click” On Google

Laura Kusisto / New York Observer:
HuffPo Bloggers to Invade Dial-Up Daddy's ‘Funhouse’

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Kempton and paidContent

Drudge Report:
ARIANNA: $18 MILLION WOMAN!

Discussion: The Wire, New York Observer, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine, Screenwerk, Gawker and Fimoculous

Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:
Huffington is to AOL as AOL was to Time Warner

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Media & Entertainment, BoomTown, The Wrap, The Huffington Post and LA Observed

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Live Blogging: Aol's Tim Armstrong & Arianna Huffington At Signal LA

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Media Decoder:

For Current TV, Adding Olbermann Is Way to Gain an Identity — The small cable channel Current TV hopes that Keith Olbermann can do for it what he did for MSNBC: give it a clear identity. — The channel, co-founded by Al Gore five years ago, said Tuesday that Mr. Olbermann would start producing …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Media & Entertainment, Inside Cable News, Deal Journal, Fortune, Poynter and MediaPost

current.com:
Keith Olbermann to Host Major New Nightly Primetime News and …

Discussion: Lost Remote, The Wire, Moneywood, Yahoo! News, LA Observed, Chickaboomer, @laceyvrose, @howardkurtz, The Marquee Blog, rbr.com, GigaOM, NY Daily News, The Wire, Tuned In, Gothamist, paidContent, Politics Daily, AOL News and Media Decoder

Keith Olbermann / @keitholbermann:
Greetings from Keith Olbermann, Chief News Officer of Current Media! And awayyyyyy we go! #FOK

Discussion: @howardkurtz, @algore, @brianstelter, Gawker, Faster Forward, Moraes on TV and AOL News

Andrea Morabito / Broadcasting & Cable:

New CBS News Chair: 'I Don't Know Whether' Couric Wants To Stay — Jeff Fager says splitting news and sports jobs represents a recommitment to news by the network — On the day his new position as Chairman of CBS News was announced, Jeff Fager says he doesn't know yet whether Katie Couric wants …

Discussion: Poynter, On Media's Blog, B&C, mediabistro.com, The Huffington Post, Company Town, Yahoo! News and Chickaboomer

Media Decoder:
Jeff Fager to Be Named Chairman of CBS News

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, The Daily Beast, Company Town, mediabistro.com, Broadcasting & Cable, MediaPost, Multichannel, Poynter, Moraes on TV, The Wrap, rbr.com, Mediaite, Talking Biz News, On Media's Blog, The Wire and New York Magazine

Elisa Lipsky-Karasz / Harper's BAZAAR:

ARIANNA VS. TINA? — As founders of influential news sites the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown seem like natural Darwinian enemies. But anyone hoping for a juicy media catfight will have to get their kicks elsewhere.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Huffington Post, Poynter, New York Observer, FishbowlNY and SAI

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Search engine optimization won't work forever. — Are you wondering, “will AOL's acquisition of the Huffington Post be successful?” I bet you are, as that's been a common search engine query since the announcement earlier this week that AOL will buy the Huffington Post.

Discussion: Washington Post, The Informer, eMedia Vitals and AdScam/The Horror!, more at Techmeme »

Latoya Peterson / Poynter:

How Gawker's redesign subverts the scannable culture of the Internet it helped create — It's only Tuesday, and already it has been a tough week for Gawker Media. — The popular blogging house announced its plans for a brand refresher back in December, part of Nick Denton's grand vision to move “beyond the blog.”

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, The Atlantic Online, The Wire, Nieman Journalism Lab and New York Post

Matt Brian / The Next Web: Why has Gawker disappeared from Google News? [Updated]

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Charlotte Observer shows how news orgs should mix journalism and business — Editors at the Charlotte Observer have taken some heat for using the North Carolina public records law to seek the e-mail addresses of about 23,000 people who signed up for alerts related to city services.

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Techmeme Opens the Door to Twitter Commentary by Select People — Technology news aggregator Techmeme sent an email today to a select group of readers it has put on a whitelist of Twitter users whose short commentary about news of the day will appear automatically on the site.

Discussion: Podcasting News, more at Techmeme »

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

How Egypt's uprising is helping redefine the idea of a “media event” — In the fall of 1989, television screens in Wenceslas Square in Prague broadcast the massive rallies of the Velvet Revolution to the protesting public. It was a media event where television served as an intermediary, unveiling change as it took place.

Discussion: TVNewser, BBC and Future of Journalism

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:
Twitter promoted tweets - the AdWords for live news?

Discussion: Lost Remote and Media Research Center

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Mashable, tackling info overload, launches a Follow function keyed to user networks and interests — Mashable currently boasts 12 million unique visitors per month — making the social media-focused news site the largest independent tech news site on the web. It churns out huge quantities of stories, every day.

Discussion: Mashable! and NetNewsCheck Latest, Thanks:lavrusik

Daniel Danker / BBC:

BBC iPlayer apps, coming soon to Android and iPad — There's been a lot of speculation over the last 24 hours about BBC iPlayer apps for mobile, so I wanted to clarify our plans. — BBC iPlayer app on an iPad — As Erik Huggers announced at Mobile World Congress last year …

Discussion: Guardian, GigaOM, The Next Web and paidContent:UK

Josh Kalven / CJR:

Stock, Flow, and My Entrepreneurial Origin Story — The founder of newsbound.tv steps off the hamster wheel … I know, I know. I wrote last week that I'd devote my second Launch Pad column to the story of how I came to form Newsbound as a for-profit company.