Mediagazer: How Niche Social Media Sites Are Shaping Online Communication (Jordan Kasteler/Search Engine Land)

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

The Daily's Apple-Only Days Are Numbered: Android Coming This Spring — Rupert Murdoch leaned heavily on Apple to launch the Daily, and for now the iPad is the only place you can read News Corp.'s new digital newspaper. — But that exclusivity will end in a few months …

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, The Wire and The Corsair

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

Discussion: BoomTown and Folio

Jun Yang / Bloomberg:

Google's YouTube Says It's in Talks to Show Live NBA, NHL Games — Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) — 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: VentureBeat, paidContent, Guardian, ReadWriteWeb, Bloomberg, Mashable!, Click Here Blog, The Consumerist, Switched, SAI, Online Video News and GigaOM, 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

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: Editors Weblog, Switched, Wired, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Scripting News, SAI and newsplexer

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

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, GigaOM, paidContent, Media Decoder, Broadcasting & Cable and The Wrap

David Kaplan / paidContent:

WaPo's Print Picture Improves Slightly, As Digital Grows Stronger — Like most newspaper publishers last year, The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) was able to arrest the declines in revenue, though the print business is far from stable. Digital's growth served as even more of a contrast …

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, TUAW, 9 to 5 Mac, SAI and MacStories, 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 …

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, eMedia Vitals 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: Big News Network.com, Guy Fawkes' blog and Jon Slattery

Sbotelho / Folio:

Forbes Launching Digital Ad Platform — ‘FMX’ rolls up content networks, segmentation and custom units. — Forbes is launching an ad platform that combines the Forbes Media Network with a new audience segmentation effort called FAST and offers custom units that blend advertising with content according to user preferences.

Discussion: Talking Biz News and Audience Development

Jim O'Neill / Online Video News:

Brightcove partners with LG Electronics Partner to grow online video distribution to connected TVs — Online video platform Brightcove is taking advantage of what analysts say is a growing trend that will have greater penetration into the home than any other over-the-top delivery device …

Discussion: GigaOM

freemedia.at:

IPI News Innovation Contest: International Press Institute and Google announce 2.7 Million Dollar Grant — Project aimed to create “breakthrough ideas with the potential to create lasting impact” — The International Press Institute (IPI) today announced that it has been awarded $2.7 million …

Discussion: TechCrunch and The Next Web

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.

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

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, Online Video News, Broadcasting & Cable, VideoNuze, The Wrap, MediaPost, Company Town, Tech Trader Daily and NetNewsCheck Latest

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