Mediagazer: Exclusive: Apple Halves Minimum iAd Buy (John Paczkowski/Digital Daily)

2:10 PM ET, February 23, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Clabaugh / bizjournals:

Most TBD.com jobs being eliminated — Two weeks after Allbritton Communications' WJLA Channel 7 assumed operations for its startup TBD.com website, the company is eliminating the majority of TBD.com's jobs, according to an employee with knowledge of the cuts.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, Poynter and @mthomps

Michael Schaffer / City Desk:

TBD's Night of the Long Knives — Allbritton Communications is giving up on its efforts to reinvent local news for the online era. — Staffers at TBD.com, launched with great fanfare by Politico's parent company last summer, were informed one at a time this morning by editor Erik Wemple …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Washington Post, @schoolofold, The Huffington Post and Poynter

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 …

Discussion: Poynter, VentureBeat, Electronista, Gizmodo, MacStories, The Next Web and New York Observer, more at Techmeme »

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Libya calls western journalists ‘outlaws’ — Warning made as reporters enter Libya through eastern border with Egypt as Muammar Gaddafi loses grip on country — Journalists from the BBC, CNN and other western media who have entered Libya will be “considered outlaws”, the country's deputy foreign minister warned on Wednesday.

Discussion: News: News blog and Libya February 17th, Thanks:joshhalliday

Reporters Without Borders:
Middle East & North Africa - Media continue to be targets as governments crack down on protests

Discussion: Committee to Protect … and Jon Slattery

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

Discussion: Al Jazeera Blogs and The Daily Dish

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:
Journalists start arriving in Libya

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter, Future of Journalism, Journalism.co.uk and L.A. Times Tech Blog

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, On Media's Blog, The Wire, The Corsair and @lavrusik

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: paidContent, MediaPost, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, ReadWriteWeb, Guardian, Mashable!, Click Here Blog, 901am, Switched, The Consumerist, SAI, Online Video News and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

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, eMedia Vitals and Wired In Blog| BNET

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

Discussion: BoomTown and Folio

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: paidContent:UK, TechCrunch, The Official Google Blog and The Next Web

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Journal Register CEO: We Will Beat AOL's Patch and Huffington Post — The Journal Register Company, the big local newspaper chain with nearly 324 publications serving over 900 communities in 10 states, will beat AOL's Patch or the Huffington Post in its home markets, says CEO John Paton in this interview with Beet.TV.

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: 24/7 Wall St., MacRumors, TUAW, MacStories, 9 to 5 Mac, paidContent and SAI, more at Techmeme »

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

Elissa Strauss / Forward.com:

New Yorker, Harper's, NYRB and TNR Editors on the Dearth of Female Bylines — After my post last month about the gender disparity in magazine publishing, which was followed by VIDA's much more thorough and ultimately conclusive study, I, perhaps naively, expected to see a comment …

Discussion: Poynter and Runnin' Scared

Lisa Belkin / New York Times:

Queen of the Mommy Bloggers — O.K., then, I say, almost begging at this point, almost to the point of tears, is there anyone I can talk to who might see what I've been through and understand? And here's where I say: “Do you know what Twitter is? Because I have over a million followers on Twitter.

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: TechCrunch, Silicon Valley Watcher, @jason and NetNewsCheck Latest

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

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.

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, Electronista and The Wrap

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

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 …

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Joe Mandese / MediaPost:

Rentrak Cracks Donovan: Deal Is First To Bring TV Set-Tops To Agency Desk-Tops — In a move that could make planning and buying via digital TV set-top data a reality for many big agencies and their clients, Rentrak has cut a deal to integrate its set-top-based audience estimates into Donovan Data Systems …

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: Audience Development