Mediagazer: Help Spot.Us Find a Path to Financial Sustainability (MediaShift Idea Lab)

6:10 PM ET, February 22, 2011

Top News:

Al Jazeera English in talks with US cable providers — Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera English, is holding talks with US cable providers about carrying the network in the US for the first time. — According to a release from Al Jazeera, the first meeting is scheduled for today in New York with Comcast.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Al Jazeera Blogs, CJR, Time, This Just In, The Atlantic Wire, Mother Jones and Big Journalism

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Journalists start arriving in Libya — With foreign journalists banned in Libya, it's been very difficult to confirm the reports emerging by phone and social media that the government is brutally cracking down on protesters demanding the ouster of the country's staongman leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter, Future of Journalism, TVNewser, The New Yorker Blog and BBC

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Syrian blogger jailed as social media helps protestors in Middle East — A veteran blogger in Syria was jailed Sunday — yet another example of just how important to demonstrators, and threatening to government regimes, the Internet can be. — The blogger, Ahmad Abu Khair …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Rothenberg Leaves Time Inc., Returns To IAB Following Griffin's Ouster — Despite a concerted effort by Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Randall Rothenberg is leaving his new job as chief digital officer to return to his job heading the Interactive Advertising Bureau, paidContent has learned.

Discussion: MediaMemo, Poynter, AdAge, MediaPost, Media Decoder, mediabistro.com, @srabil and @koblin

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Telegraph plans some digital content charges from September — Payment system described as ‘very light touch’, with a ‘very generous allowance’ before users forced to pay — Telegraph Media Group is understood to be planning to introduce charging for some of its digital content from September.

Discussion: Jon Slattery, Editors Weblog and Press Gazette

Guardian:

Will the Telegraph's online charging plan work? — The Telegraph's generous metered charging plan aims to retain casual browsers, reward the paper's print subscribers and create a club of loyal readers. But will it create revenues? — Getting a fix on the Telegraph's business strategy is always tricky.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Next Question: What's A Publishing App? … There's been so much confusion in the wake of Apple's new subscription billing policy for apps that Steve Jobs felt the need to issue the proclamation above via his preferred method, a personal email. (It's his version of the burning bush).

Discussion: Marco.org, MacRumors, Nieman Journalism Lab, GigaOM, MacStories, NewsGrange and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Steve Jobs: Only publishers are bound by new in-app subscription rules

Discussion: New York Observer, VentureBeat and Ars Technica

Tim Stevens / Engadget:

Amazon launches Prime Instant Video, unlimited streaming for Prime subscribers — We heard it was coming and now here it is. Amazon has flipped the switch on its “free” video streaming for Prime members, the service we've been hearing about for the past month or so.

Discussion: MediaMemo, The Next Web, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, SAI, /Film, Techland, Neowin.net and New York Magazine, more at Techmeme »

MediaShift Idea Lab:

Help Spot.Us Find a Path to Financial Sustainability — Spot.Us recently launched a new design, so this is an opportune time to write a “State of the Spot” post — something we haven't done since the website was six months old. I hope to lay out how far we've come and what's on our plate …

Discussion: Poynter and DigiDave

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver adjusts to New York Times, 6 months after joining the newsroom — Until six months ago, Nate Silver had never worked in a newsroom. Now he's at The New York Times, building his brand, strengthening his writing skills and developing new audiences for his FiveThirtyEight blog.

Discussion: The Copy Box

Nat Ives / AdAge:

‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold’ Is Buying In — Product Placement Is Explored, Not Bashed, in Latest Morgan Spurlock Film — Will Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” turn product placement into the greasy fast food of the marketing world?

Megan Carpentier / Guardian:

Why women hit the media glass ceiling — Anne Hays's complaint to the New Yorker about the lack of female bylines has brought to the fore a wider media debate — The writer and editor Anne Hays recently penned an open letter to the New Yorker on Facebook, demanding her money back for the most recent issue.

Discussion: Yahoo! News

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Facebook threatens to sue Daily Mail over paedophile story — Social networking site unhappy with being named in story about a paedophile gang operating in Devon — Facebook is threatening legal action against the Daily Mail amid a dispute over the headline of a front page story that named …

Discussion: The Next Web

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

CNBC, Institutional Investor to swap content — Business news network CNBC and magazine Institutional Investor announced a content sharing deal on Tuesday that also includes running an annual investor conference. — Institutional Investor will provide CNBC with customized content for distribution across CNBC's platforms.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and TVNewser

Judy Battista / New York Times:

N.F.L. Labor Dispute Plays Out on Twitter — A few hours after N.F.L. owners filed a complaint against the players union last week alleging that it was not bargaining in good faith, Houston Texans right tackle Eric Winston took to his keyboard to react. — “The NFL has reached that point …

Discussion: Techland and Venture Capital Dispatch, more at Techmeme »

Long Island University:

LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2010 GEORGE POLK AWARDS IN JOURNALISM — Rolling Stone honored for its history-making dispatch on the war in Afghanistan; — Associated Press wins for its extraordinary coverage of the Gulf oil spill — Long Island University has announced …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Big News Network.com, Journalism.co.uk, The Wire, On Media's Blog, LA Observed and New York Times

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Why journalists should learn to love data — Journalists are notorious for hating anything to do with math. If we'd been any good with numbers, I often joke, we might have chosen a different career. But it's essential for today's journalists to get comfortable working with data, and the good news is that more and more of them are.

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Why feds should not fund public broadcasting — There is no logical reason for the federal government to continue funding public broadcasting. — Fortunately, public broadcasters can afford to tell the feds to get lost. Thanks to nearly $9 billion of sometimes-grudging federal support since 1969 …