Mediagazer: News site tries charging with Google One Pass, and it might just work (Martin Bryant/The Next Web)

6:40 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

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Demand Media's First Earnings Report Includes an Actual Profit — Here's the first quarterly report card for the first big Web IPO of the year: Demand Media, dinged in the past for claiming profitability when that wasn't technically true, can now relax. The company earned a bona fide $1 million …

Discussion: BoomTown and Folio, more at Techmeme »

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: Wired, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, 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

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: @jason and Silicon Valley Watcher

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

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

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Al Jazeera Blogs, Time, CJR, This Just In, The Atlantic Wire and GigaOM

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog: Syrian blogger jailed as social media helps protestors in Middle East

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, SAI and Online Video News, more at Techmeme »

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

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

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

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
Telegraph plans some digital content charges from September

Discussion: Editors Weblog, Jon Slattery and Press Gazette

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: Media & Entertainment, Poynter, MediaMemo, AdAge, Publishing Executive …, Media News International, Publishing Executive News, MediaPost, MinOnline, Media Decoder, mediabistro.com, @srabil and @koblin

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.

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

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” …

Discussion: Netflix, Broadcasting & Cable, VideoNuze, The Wrap, MediaPost, Company Town and NetNewsCheck Latest

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 …

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: Guardian and Fortune

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

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).