Mediagazer: Facebook threatens to sue Daily Mail over paedophile story (Dan Sabbagh/Guardian)

9:40 AM ET, February 23, 2011

Top News:

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

Demand Media's Rosenblatt Defends His Company's Content — Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) CEO Richard Rosenblatt used his company's first earnings conference call as a public company in part to defend it against criticism that the content it produces is shallow and of poor quality …

Discussion: VentureBeat and eMedia Vitals

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Demand Media's First Earnings Report Includes an Actual Profit

Discussion: BoomTown and Folio, more at Techmeme »

The Atlantic Wire:

It's War of the Silicon Valley Boosters — The battle between Silicon Valley's two biggest boosters has flared up again, The Atlantic Wire has learned. It's an industry that takes its conferences very seriously: the conferences are where much of the business of launching, financing and selling new companies take place.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, @jason and Silicon Valley Watcher

Mike Taylor / New York Observer:

Huff? Nooo! As Longtime Huffington Hands Cash In, Others ‘What If?’ — A certain amount of grumbling is par for the course in the media business these days—an ambient hum so pervasive you almost forget it's there. But that disconsolate keening seems to have reached a new pitch …

Discussion: Poynter and SAI

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Blogging Is Dead Just Like the Web Is Dead — Blogging is on the decline, according to a New York Times story published this weekend — citing research from the Pew Center's Internet and American Life Project — and it is declining particularly among young people, who are using social networks such as Facebook instead.

Discussion: Switched, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Wired, SAI, newsplexer and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver adjusts to New York Times, 6 months after joining the newsroom

Discussion: The Copy Box

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: Committee to Protect …, Poynter, Guardian, Future of Journalism and TVNewser

Sam Gustin / Epicenter: Al-Jazeera in Talks With Comcast Over U.S. Distribution

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:
Al Jazeera English in talks with US cable providers

Discussion: Al Jazeera Blogs, mediabistro.com, Time, CJR, This Just In, GigaOM, The Atlantic Wire and L.A. Times Tech Blog

John Eggerton / Multichannel:

Judge Enjoins Ivi TV From Streaming Station Signals — Says Ivi Was ‘Extraordinarily Unlikely’ To Be Deemed A Cable System Under Copyright law — A U.S. District Court Judge has granted a preliminary injunction blocking Ivi TV from streaming TV station signals without consent of retrans payments.

Discussion: Online Video News, paidContent, Media Decoder, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap and GigaOM

Joelle Tessler / Associated Press: Court bars streaming of TV programming online

Jun Yang / Bloomberg:

Google's YouTube Says It's in Negotiations to Stream Live NBA, NHL Games — Google Inc.'s YouTube said it's in talks with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League to broadcast live games, building on the popularity of cricket's Indian Premier League last year.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Switched, SAI and Online Video News, more at Techmeme »

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

Harper's Bizarre: How the House of Twain Became a House of Pain — On a bright winter morning last January, John R. “Rick” MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, walked into editor Roger D. Hodge's office and fired him. It was so unexpected that when Mr. Hodge told the magazine's literary editor …

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

A taxing question — The Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on the challenges of practising what you preach — In April 1932, a small boat sailing on Lake Windermere was hit by a sudden squall and capsized. There were two people in the boat. One, Ted Scott, was drowned.

Discussion: Guy Fawkes' blog and Jon Slattery

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, Switched and The Next Web

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

News site tries charging with Google One Pass, and it might just work — If you won't pay for news, would you pay for useful articles? That's what German news website Focus is attempting to discover. The Guardian today reports on the site's experiments with Google's new One Pass payment system for publishers.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Guardian and Fortune

Jeff Israely / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Building a news org in order to support good journalists — Editor's Note: Jeff Israely, a Time magazine foreign correspondent in Europe, is in the early stages of a news startup called Worldcrunch. He occasionally describes and comments on his startup process here at the Lab. Read his past installments here.

Discussion: Worldcrunch Blog

Mark Joyella / Mediaite:

Keith Olbermann Re: Current TV: “I'm In Charge” — Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann may have lost his perch in cable news primetime, but-if quotes attributed to him are to be believed-he hasn't lost any of his, um, confidence. The Current TV-bound Olbermann is quoted by Cindy Adams …

Discussion: The Wire, Chickaboomer and New York Post

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Exclusive: Apple Halves Minimum iAd Buy — Apple set the bar high for its debut in the mobile advertising business, demanding a minimum spend of $1 million from advertisers looking to hawk their wares from its iAd platform. — It was a daunting premium for a nascent system, and one that limited its appeal to big-name companies.

Discussion: paidContent and MacStories

Jordan Kasteler / Search Engine Land:

How Niche Social Media Sites Are Shaping Online Communication — Sure, everyone has heard of Facebook and Twitter, but what about Feed the Bull or Tweako? Yes, you can talk about sports on your old college roommate's Facebook wall, but what about squaring off with strangers on a site like YardBarker?

Discussion: AdPulp

Mike Hendrickson / O'Reilly Radar:

The future of the book — During lunch at TOC last Wednesday, we had a roundtable discussion that centered on the future of the book. The conversation touched on many different areas, as you would expect. From distribution and inventory, to pricing and formats, to audience ownership and engagement.

Liz Shannon Miller / GigaOM:

CBS Picks Netflix Over Hulu to Stream Classic Shows — Netflix's dominance when it comes to streaming films is unquestioned, but in early April it'll have an edge on Hulu, its chief competitor in the TV streaming business. That's because CBS announced that in early April “dozens” …