Mediagazer: Roger Ailes Caught on Tape Urging Ex-Employee to Lie to Federal Investigators (Hamilton Nolan/Gawker)

1:10 AM ET, February 25, 2011

Top News:

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Pre-HuffPo Merger Changes At AOL; Eun Leaving, Brod To Be Arianna's COO — Regulatory approval of AOL's $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post is still pending but CEO Tim Armstrong already has a new structure for the evolving company. The changes were set off by the plan …

Discussion: TechCrunch, AdAge, Epicenter, SAI, MediaPost, Wall Street Journal, @rafat, SAI, SAI, Mixed Media, NetNewsCheck Latest and The Wrap, more at Techmeme »

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

AOL Exec David Eun Out - Here's His Email To Staff — Update: Here's AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's email to staff about the exec team reshuffling. — David Eun, my boss's (Heather) boss since the acquisition, will shortly be leaving AOL. As President of AOL Media and Studios he oversaw …

Discussion: WebNewser, Mediaite, @rafat, GigaOM, MediaFile, Digital Trends and SAI, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Post-Huffpo, an AOL Reorg; Here's the Internal Memo

Discussion: SAI, Editors Weblog and Adotas

Edmund Lee / AdAge:
AOL's First Big Change for Huffington Post: Bigger Ads

Discussion: Poynter, Adotas, SAI and NetNewsCheck Latest

Russ Buettner / New York Times:

Affidavits Say Fox News Chief Told Employee to Lie — It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation …

Discussion: The Raw Story, Guardian, TVNewser, Runnin' Scared, Yahoo! News, New York Magazine, The New Republic, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, The Wrap, On Media's Blog, FishbowlNY, Adweek, CJR, Inside Cable News, TPMDC and The Wire

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Roger Ailes Caught on Tape Urging Ex-Employee to Lie to Federal Investigators — Think back five long years ago, when hot shot publisher-to-the-stars Judith Regan was embroiled in a huge scandal that was the talk of the media world: after HarperCollins fired her, Regan sued them.

Discussion: Media Matters for America

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Hyperlocals like TBD: More hype than hope — The rapid implosion of the high-profile TBD news site is further evidence that hyperlocal journalism is more hype than hope for the news business. — Launched with considerable fanfare and generous funding only six months ago by Allbritton Communications …

Discussion: Digital First, Poynter, The Politico and On Media's Blog

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Six business lessons from TBD's early demise — TBD, one of the most ambitious local online launches of 2010, turns out to be a victim of crib death, reduced to an arts and entertainment mini-site barely six months after its launch last August. — Sure, hindsight is 20-20, but looking back …

Discussion: Digital Man, The Buttry Diary, Washington Post, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, LocalNewser, Editors Weblog, eMedia Vitals and City Desk

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

You Can't Play a New Media Game By Old Media Rules — If there's one aspect of the media business that has been disrupted more completely than any other, it's the whole idea of “breaking news.” Just as television devalued the old front-page newspaper scoop, the web has turned breaking news …

Thanks:mathewi

Joe Mullin / paidContent:
‘Hot News’ Has MMC Steaming At TheWrap In Cease-And-Desist Letter

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Om Malik / GigaOM: Old Media Is Being Unbundled, Just Like Telecom Was

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:
Deadline.com's Parent Company MMC Sends ‘Cease & Desist’ Letter To TheWrap

Discussion: The Wire, Mediaweek, Mediaite, The Wrap, LA Observed and Future of Journalism

Eric Spiegelman / The Awl:

How to Watch Al Jazeera on Your Television — Al Jazeera is putting every American news channel to shame with its amazing coverage of the revolutions across the Middle East. But most cable systems in this country won't carry it! If you live in Toledo, Ohio, or Burlington, Vermont, or Washington D.C., you might have it.

Discussion: The Next Web

Mark Joyella / Mediaite:
Pushing For U.S. Cable, Al Jazeera English Exec Claims They Are ‘Anti-Nothing And Pro-Nothing’

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

ESPN MediaZone:

The Poynter Review Project to Launch With ESPN — ESPN and The Poynter Institute today announced a new step in media transparency—The Poynter Review Project—in which a panel of Poynter faculty will review ESPN content across all platforms and publicly comment on ESPN's efforts.

Discussion: New York Times, The Wire, Company Town, The Wrap, Poynter and Broadcasting & Cable

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update — In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.

Discussion: The Official Google Blog, paidContent, TechCrunch, Bits, NewsGrange, SAI and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:

National Magazine Awards To Include Magazine Apps This Year — It's an honor just to be nominated, the saying goes, and less than a year after major publishers rolled out magazine apps, tablet-based periodicals are among the finalists for the second annual National Magazine Awards for Digital Media—aka the “Digital Ellies”—this year.

Discussion: MPA, MediaPost and FishbowlNY

Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:

Enjoying the Oscar Awards on Several Small Screens — Sports fans make high art of the multiscreen experience, with TV broadcasts, laptop news feeds and a wide range of mobile apps for trivia, fantasy contests and kitchen runs. — For others, though, the biggest spectator sport comes with the Academy Awards.

Discussion: SocialTimes.com, CNET News and MinOnline

Bill Carter / New York Times:

Couric Assembles a Book of Essays to Raise Money for Scholarships — It is not, she assured, in any way a statement about her future career plans, but Katie Couric will take a step this spring into a different media arena with the publication of her first book.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Poynter, Company Town and TVNewser

Patrick Smith / TheMediaBriefing:

Paywall Strategies 2011: Forrester Analyst Nick Thomas on ‘monetising the user, not the content’ — Forrester analyst Nick Thomas kicked off our inaugural conference Paywall Strategies 2011. Nick's a long-time observer of digital content and its place in the consumer economy, so we invited him to get us going.

Henry Blodget / SAI:

Glam Media Is Picking Bankers For An IPO — Glam Media is listening to the sales pitches of about 14 Wall Street banks in preparation for an IPO, a source familiar with the situation says. — Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and others are vying for the coveted “book-running” lead position.

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Libyan government likens journalists to Al Qaida — Despite a ban on foreign media, journalists started entering Libya on Monday to cover the week-long uprising against strongman leader Muammar Gadhafi. — Libya's deputy foreign minister Khalid Khaim said yesterday that the Libyan government …

Discussion: Agence France Presse and MIJE.org