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

7:55 PM ET, February 8, 2011

Top News:

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, Future of Journalism, Runnin' Scared, Mediaite and PE Hub Blog

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: Washington Post, New York Observer, SAI, FishbowlNY, The Informer and AdScam/The Horror!

Drudge Report:

ARIANNA: $18 MILLION WOMAN! — Hard work and endless media lifting has finally paid off for Arianna Huffington — after she personally scores nearly $20 million in a sale to AMERICA ONLINE! — Top sources close to the deal reveal Huffington will bank $18 million, after all is said and done …

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

David Kaplan / paidContent:

AOL-HuffPo: A Lot Of Scale—But Will Advertisers Care? — The surprise $315 million union of AOL (NYSE: AOL) and The Huffington Post offers some truly monumental scale, with the new Huffington Post Media Group boasting a reach 117 million American internet users and 270 million globally.

Discussion: AdAge, Burst Media Company Blog, CJR and SAI

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:
AOL-HuffPo: Acquisition of means of production without being revolutionary at all

Discussion: Slate, DealBook, Mixed Media, @ariannahuff, Fortune, eMedia Vitals, Guardian, Scocca, AmSpecBlog, The Awl, Salon and Poynter, more at Techmeme »

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

Discussion: SAI

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

Discussion: BoomTown, The Huffington Post, GigaOM, The Daily Beast and The Wrap, more at Techmeme »

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

Discussion: John Battelle's Searchblog

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:
The New HuffPo-AOL Combo: The Free, Anti-Murdoch Alternative?

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, The Wire and SAI

Jason Pollock / The Huffington Post: HuffPo AOL Deal is A Gigantic Step Forward for Social Media

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
AriannaOL — They laughed when Arianna sat down to the keyboard.

current.com:

Keith Olbermann to Host Major New Nightly Primetime News and Commentary Show on Current TV — Keith Olbermann, the acclaimed broadcaster and writer whose verbal pyrotechnics and moral passion have outraged, informed, and dazzled viewers of “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” for the past eight years …

Discussion: New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Wire, Lost Remote, Moneywood, The Wire, The Marquee Blog, @howardkurtz, Chickaboomer, rbr.com, Yahoo! News, @laceyvrose, Tuned In, LA Observed, Politics Daily, AOL News and paidContent

Media Decoder:

Olbermann Said to Be Going to Current TV — Keith Olbermann, the former top-rated host on the news channel MSNBC, will announce his next television home on Tuesday, and people on Monday familiarwith his plans pointed to a possible deal with the public affairs channel Current TV.

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

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

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Twitter promoted tweets - the AdWords for live news? — Remember all that fuss about newspapers bidding on Google Adwords to drive traffic to their site? Well here's a Web 2.0 twist on the idea: Al Jazeera using sponsored tweets to raise awareness of their Egypt coverage. — Twitter itself has the background.

Discussion: Lost Remote, Media Research Center and Twitter Media

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:
How Egypt's uprising is helping redefine the idea of a “media event”

Discussion: Future of Journalism and BBC

Media Decoder:

Jeff Fager to Be Named Chairman of CBS News — 4:00 p.m. | Updated Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” will be named chairman of CBS News on Tuesday, with Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports, returning exclusively to the sports division as chairman, the network said.

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

David Cohen / mediabistro.com:

Social Media Week: The Internet and Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already in a Post-Social-Media World? — The Science and Technology Hub at Google's New York outpost was the site of Monday afternoon's The Internet and Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already in a Post-Social-Media World? …

Discussion: NYConvergence.com

Ben Popper / New York Observer:
The Pied Piper of Social Media

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Media News International

ADM / Fimoculous.com:

Ghost, Blogging — I thought it would be funny. — So I walked into Fimoculous on Christmas and started blogging anonymously, without telling Rex, the owner, beforehand. Which — you guessed it — means that pretty much everything posted here since then is by me, not him.

Discussion: Fimoculous and Snarkmarket

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!, Thanks:lavrusik

Stephen Coles / Fonts In Use:

The Daily - Design trumps content in launch of first major tablet newspaper. — Founded by the world's most notorious media magnate, preceded by months of speculation and fanfare, and backed with unusually strong support from Apple, The Daily is the most anticipated digital publication since publications went digital.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, TeleRead and MacStories

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: New York Post and The Wire

Jay Yarow / The Wire:
Nick Denton Makes A Cash Bet Gawker Media Won't Lose Pageviews With New Format

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, The Next Web, Digits and Fimoculous

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

How private is a tweet? — The PCC has made its first rulings on a complaint over newspapers republishing a person's tweets. The background to this is the publication in The Daily Mail and the Independent on Sunday of tweets by civil servant Sarah Baskerville.

Discussion: Guardian, pcc.org.uk, paidContent, Anglophenia blog, Jon Slattery and Press Gazette

BBC:

Newspaper publishers warn Apple over iTunes sales — Apple is being warned against trying to squeeze cash out of the newspaper industry by controlling subscriptions for iPads and iPhones. — The European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA) says it is concerned by the company's plans to direct online sales through iTunes.

Discussion: TechCrunch

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Meebo Acquires Psychographic Ad Targeter Mindset — Social content sharing and IM platform Meebo is putting last fall's $25 million funding round to work: the company is buying online ad measurement and targeting firm Mindset Media. As an online branding specialist that has a particular focus …