Mediagazer: At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs (David Carr/New York Times)

8:25 PM ET, February 14, 2011

Top News:

At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs — Some of the fizz, if not a great big bubble, seems to have returned to media, depending on how you define “media.” — There have been reports in The New York Times and elsewhere that Facebook is now valued at $50 billion, and The Wall Street Journal reported …

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Huffpo Editor: Facebook Doesn't Pay You, So Why Should We?

Discussion: Mediaite, Poynter and Soup

Daniel D'Addario / New York Observer:
Come Work for Me, Darling!: Arianna Huffington Sings Siren Song to Journo-Kids

Discussion: CJR and Future of Journalism

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:
Arianna's Nearly Silent Partner

Discussion: New York Observer

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Condé Nast Newsstand Tries Convergence of Technologies — LONDON — A newsstand set to open here next week will sell more than a dozen international editions of Vogue magazine, in languages including English, Russian and Chinese. More than 100 other titles from around the world …

Discussion: MediaPost and Noted

John C Abell / Epicenter:

Wired and The New Yorker for Android Coming This Spring — Android versions of Wired and The New Yorker will be available in the spring, Condé Nast announced Monday. The two publications have been available for the iPad for months, but only now are tablets running Google's competing …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

John Reinan / MinnPost:

RIP, USA Today — One of the great media innovations of our lifetime is dying. — USA Today launched in 1982 as the first truly national newspaper. With its colorful design and a heavy emphasis on light news, it was often mocked as a shallow “McPaper,” but I've never been among the mockers.

Discussion: Poynter, @lavrusik and MediaPost

New York Observer:

Local Politics Guru Azi Paybarah Returns to The Observer … Azi Paybarah will rejoin the staff of The New York Observer, editor-in-chief Elizabeth Spiers announced today. — “Azi Paybarah is a prolific political reporter and I look forward to the dynamism and energy he'll bring to the Observer newsroom,” she said.

Discussion: The Wire and FishbowlNY

Alex Moore / Death and Taxes:

Radiohead's New Album Addressing Plight of Newspapers? — Radiohead has announced that their new album “The King of Limbs” will be the first ever “newspaper album.” What, exactly, is a newspaper album? — Radiohead became the first truly post-modern band with “OK Computer” …

Discussion: PC Magazine, Mashable! and Time Out Chicago Blogs

Caspar Llewellyn Smith / Guardian:
Will Radiohead's The King of Limbs save the music industry?

Discussion: The Register, The Wrap, paidContent:UK, Guardian and hypebot

Time Out Chicago:

Can the News Licensing Group save journalism? An interview with AP CEO Tom Curley — Earlier this month, those following journalism news heard that this year global news network the Associated Press would launch a new agency to allow publishers to license digital news content.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Eight trends for journalism in 2011: A Nieman Lab talk in Toronto — A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being asked to speak at the Canadian Journalism Foundation's speaker series at the University of Toronto. (I also had the pleasure of being introduced by Nora Young, host of the CBC's excellent program/podcast/site Spark.)

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Twitter Feed Evolves Into a News Wire About Egypt — While people debated whether Web sites like Twitter were important in organizing protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Andy Carvin was organizing information about the protests in an innovative way. — Mr. Carvin's Twitter account was transformed …

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

War for the Observer: Management Battles With Legacy — Real estate scion, right-hand man leave elite paper shell of former self — When Jared Kushner bought The New York Observer in 2006 from its benefactor and owner, Arthur Carter, New York City's salmon-colored staple had been losing about $2 million dollars a year.

Discussion: Poynter, FishbowlNY, Spiersblr and New York Magazine

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Reuters staffers unhappy with union letter likening contract dispute to Egypt uprising — Did the Newspaper Guild of New York go too far in likening a Thomson Reuters contract dispute to the recent social uprising that toppled Egypt's authoritarian government?

Discussion: Poynter

Martin Langeveld / News after Newspapers:

Tackable aims to become the social network for user-generated news — Facebook and Twitter may be a great way to organize revolutions, but as we saw during the last few weeks of checking #Egypt and #Jan25 hashtags, following them on Twitter can mean a frustrating hunt through lots of chaff to find a few grains of wheat.

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

Tablet options proliferate for publishers, but Apple maintains control — In mostly separate announcements over the past two weeks, Google, Motorola, Time Warner, HP and Yahoo have all taken aim at Apple and its growing dominance of the digital tablet and mobile publishing markets.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, paidContent and Editors Weblog

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Google to Users: Tell Us Which Content Farms You Hate — Google's Matt Cutts. He's no Spam fan. Image via Wikipedia — Google has been promising to take action against producers of low-quality, keyword-gaming content producers that spam up its search results, and now it's making …

Discussion: The Official Google Blog, The Next Web, Mashable!, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Fast Company, CNET News, SAI, Geek.com, Search Engine Land, Techie Buzz, Domain Name Wire, ReadWriteWeb, @pkedrosky and DailyFinance, more at Techmeme »

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Hey Grammys, you can't tape-delay social media — While viewers in most of the U.S. were wrapping up the live broadcast of The Grammy Awards, viewers on the West Coast were just getting started with the tape-delayed version, airing at 8 p.m. PT. As is customary for many viewers now …

Discussion: Speakeasy, Media & Entertainment, GRAMMY.com, Media Decoder and Multichannel

MediaShift:

Egyptian ‘Sandmonkey’ Blogger Unmasks Himself in Cairo — CAIRO, EGYPT — I have been following the Egyptian pro-democracy blog, Rantings of a Sandmonkey, for years now. I have long wondered about the identity of its author, who describes himself as “a micro-celebrity, blogger, activist …

Discussion: Mediaite