Mediagazer: Comcast Seeking to ‘Destroy’ Writers Guild, Members Say (Dominic Patten/The Wrap)

4:15 PM ET, February 21, 2011

Top News:

Verne G. Kopytoff / New York Times:

Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter — SAN FRANCISCO — Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, SAI, Stowe Boyd, Rebooting The News, toni.org, Marx Layne, Latest Open Salon Blog, @rklau, Adotas, Teds Take, Mark Evans Tech, Soup and @mathewi, more at Techmeme »

Matt Mullenweg:

Blogging Drift — The New York Times has a pretty prominent article today called Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter. The title was probably written by an editor, not the author, because as soon as the article gets past the two token teenagers who tumble and Facebook instead of blogging …

Discussion: Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard and Gatekeeper

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Libya: journalists prepare for ‘floodgates to open’ — Newspaper journalists and broadcasters descend on Libyan border as uprising threatens Muammar Gaddafi's 41-year rule — Journalists from newspapers and broadcasters across the world, including ITV News and the New York Times …

Discussion: New York Times, hrw.org, Washington Post, On Media's Blog, allAfrica.com and The Daily Dish

Jack Shenker / Guardian:

Egypt's media undergo their own revolution — Does the political upheaval in Egypt spell the end of state-controlled media? — It was a front page few thought they would ever see. After weeks of dismissing pro-change Egyptian protesters as traitors, anarchists and malevolent foreign agents …

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Jon Williams / BBC:
The difficulty of reporting from inside Libya

Discussion: Mediaite, New York Times, Future of Journalism and Online NewsHour

New York Times:
Cellphones Become the World's Eyes and Ears on Protests

Discussion: Guardian, Seattle PostGlobe, New York Times and VentureBeat

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Tina Brown's Quiet Restart of Newsweek — There will be no celebrity-studded gala with fireworks over New York Harbor this time. No brash predictions of upending the magazine business. — The debut of Tina Brown's Newsweek will, in fact, look nothing like the opening of her last magazine …

Discussion: Publishing Executive News, @lavrusik, SAI, The Huffington Post, New York Observer, eMedia Vitals, @editorialiste, @gabrielsherman and New York Magazine

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

TV Industry Taps Social Media to Keep Viewers' Attention — By the time the first ballot is opened at the Academy Awards next Sunday, millions of people will be chatting about the awards show on the Internet. And ABC will be ready. — Trying to exploit viewers' two-screen behavior …

Discussion: Jezebel

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

DST About To Lead Huge Spotify Funding — European streaming music startup Spotify is in the process of closing a very large financing, say multiple sources. DST, the venture firm that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is said to be leading the deal, which values Spotify at around $1 billion.

Discussion: GigaOM, SAI, VentureBeat, Music Ally and paidContent:UK, more at Techmeme »

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Key departures suggest 4 factors critical to the future of programming and journalism — PolitiFact's 2009 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting recognized its straightforward approach to politics, and it also validated the work of a little-understood, emerging type of journalist: the news app developer.

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

The Washington Post's Trove targets news personalization, digital innovation — Describing the personalized aggregation service Trove as a “next generation” news experience, The Washington Post's Vijay Ravindran figures it probably won't save journalism on its own, but it's a start.

David Carr / New York Times:

2 Platforms, With 2 Sets of Problems — Digital subscriptions, a grail for the mainstream media that often seemed more like a mirage, took on some firm if not altogether friendly dimensions last week. — Traditional print publishers have spent the past few years cast in the role …

Discussion: Mediactive, Technology Liberation Front, MediaPost, Media Buyer Planner, MacStories and Monday Note, more at Techmeme »

Patrick Thornton / Poynter:

How journalists are using metrics to track the success of tweets — When I first started on the BeatBlogging.org project almost three years ago, very few journalists and news organizations were using social media. In fact, you were considered kind of strange if you used social media.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Kristen Schweizer / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Agrees to Purchase Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine for $673 Million — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. agreed in principle to buy his daughter's U.K.-based television production company, Shine Group Ltd., for 415 million pounds ($673 million). — Elisabeth Murdoch is expected to join …

Discussion: The Wrap, DealBook, paidContent:UK, News Corporation, FishbowlNY, Guardian, Canadian Press, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and C21Media

Dominic Patten / The Wrap:

Comcast Seeking to ‘Destroy’ Writers Guild, Members Say — Comcast want “to destroy” the Writers Guild of America, say WGAW board members Chip Johannessen and Patric M. Verrone. — Johannessen (pictured right) and Verrone, in a statement posted on the Guild's website Sunday …

Anthony Crupi / Mediaweek:

Can Piers Punch Back? — Shaw had it half right: Not only are England and America two nations separated by a common language, but we're also forever riven by custom. Perverse contrarians, the Brits revel in doing things the wrong way 'round, steering from the passenger's seat, adding the letter …

Discussion: Mediaite, TVNewser, Inside Cable News and The Wrap