Mediagazer: Facebook's Growing Role in Social Journalism (Vadim Lavrusik/Mashable!)

9:40 AM ET, March 1, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Exploiting Charlie — When I arrived in Detroit to intern at the Free Press many years ago, I saw a local character dressed in a bright yellow rain slicker, no matter the weather, theatrically directing traffic in front of the Cadillac hotel. He was there every day.

Discussion: msnbc.com, Mediaite and TIME Healthland

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Charie Sheen: NBC interview ‘pure gold,’ ABC interview ‘slanted’

Discussion: TMZ.com, New York Times, doublex.com, The Wire, @fromedome, @jeffjarvis, The Wrap, Hollywood Reporter, @brianstelter and Brow Beat

Alex Weprin / @alexweprin:
A quick thought on Charlie Sheen's TMZ intvw: This is the best TV I have seen in a long, long time. And it isn't on TV.

Discussion: New York Post, ABCNEWS, Hollywood Rag and @jbflint

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Denton: Gawker's redesign more bruising than it needed to be — “When the redesign first launched, a some key features simply did not work - which is no way to introduce readers to something new,” writes Gawker Media boss Nick Denton. After the jump, he describes the fixes made in response to reader complaints.

Discussion: Mediaite, paidContent, Gawker, The Wrap and @nicksumm

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel — It was the best fake Twitter account ever, deftly satirizing Rahm Emanuel, and elevating the Tweet and the f-word to the level of literature. But the mystery writer was never revealed - until now. — There were many storylines in Rahm Emanuel's romp …

Discussion: Gawker, TBD All News, Poynter, Nieman Journalism Lab, Washington Wire, Epicenter, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic Wire, daniel sinker's metablog, newsfeed.time.com, FishbowlDC, Salon, Mediaite, Runnin' Scared, Hotline On Call, Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and MetaFilter

The Politico:

Darrell Issa probes staff; spokesman Kurt Bardella at center of controversy — Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the powerful Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has launched an inquiry into whether spokesman Kurt Bardella improperly shared e-mails from other reporters …

Discussion: New York Magazine, FishbowlDC and On Media's Blog, Thanks:gnagesh

Benny Evangelista / San Francisco Chronicle:

Bloomberg TV goes live from West Coast Feb. 28 — The expanding San Francisco office of Bloomberg LP launches a new hourlong television show today aimed at beaming technology news with a Silicon Valley point of view to the rest of the world. — “Bloomberg West” will air weekdays at 3 p.m …

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org … and San Francisco Peninsula …

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

Your view from the #Oscars stage — The 83rd Annual Academy Awards captured the country's attention on Sunday night, but ABC's cameras didn't provide the only view. This year's show was a new kind of 360-degree event, with: — a camera-snapping, live-tweeting host; — an official hashtag on air; and

Discussion: TweetReach Blog, Search Engine Land, paidContent, USA Today, Carpetbagger, Lost Remote, Future of Journalism and Tuned In

John Hendel / The Atlantic Online:

Kachingle and the Limits of Tip-Jar Journalism — A two-year-old start-up has the best of intentions, but faces many obstacles and continues to struggle for acceptance — As the New York Times prepares to throw up its new subscription-based paywall in coming weeks, the news giant …

Discussion: Poynter and eMedia Vitals, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Exclusive: Thumbplay Gives Up On Music Subscriptions, And Clear Channel Steps In — After less than a year in the music subscription business, Thumbplay is giving up: The company is selling off the struggling service to Clear Channel Radio. — Thumbplay will hang on to its once-booming ringtone business …

Discussion: hypebot and paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Rachel Maddow Seizes Her Moment at Post-Keith Olbermann MSNBC — Keith Olbermann's sudden departure from MSNBC has created the biggest challenge of Rachel Maddow's broadcasting career—becoming the face of a cable network at an uncomfortable crossroads. — The woman at the whiteboard …

Discussion: TVNewser, Inside Cable News, Mediaite and On Media's Blog

DealBook:

Salon.com Merger Talks Collapse — Updated — Merger talks between Salon.com, a pioneer in online news and opinion, and Newser.com, a news aggregation Web site founded by a journalist, Michael Wolff, have collapsed, according to people involved in the discussions.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, TeleRead, MediaMemo, Poynter, Crikey, Mediaite, On Media's Blog, @michaelwolffnyc, @scottros and New York Magazine

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Ad Industry Group Picks Bigger Online Ads in Hopes of Attracting TV Dollars to Web — Winning New Ad Formats From AOL, YouTube, Unicast and Microsoft — Get ready for bigger online ads — everywhere. — In an effort to lure more lucrative brand advertising dollars to the web …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and iMediaConnection Blog

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: Your words, your real name — If people posting comments on websites had to use their true identity, they might be more civil. — Remember when you threw that raging party in high school? Being at the center of the action felt so good — until a couple of guests parked on your lawn.

Vadim Lavrusik / Mashable!:

Facebook's Growing Role in Social Journalism — A Facebook-only news organization? It was only a matter of time. — The Rockville Central, a community news site in the Washington, D.C., area, will move all its operations and news coverage to its Facebook Page starting on March 1.

Discussion: Crikey

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“Like,” “share,” and “recommend”: How the warring verbs of social media will influence the news' future — It appears that Facebook has settled on a central metaphor for the behavior of its 600 million users. — See an interesting article? Want your friends to see it too?

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Rebooting The News

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Yahoo's Anna Robertson: Streaming Videos on Facebook is a “Huge Opportunity for Us” — Facebook pages are becoming increasingly video rich and an increasing number of small and large video publishers are streaming more of their videos “in-line,” meaning having their player on Facebook pages, not just providing links.

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The cost of ProPublica's latest Kindle Single? $0.00 — I wrote a couple weeks ago about ProPublica's experiment with the Kindle Single format of story distribution. The sales of “Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: The Untold Story” seemed to offer some decent, if early …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Investors Are Drawn Anew to Digital Music — Since it emerged in the 1990s, digital music has been hugely popular with fans, but for online music companies and their investors it has almost never been profitable. — And yet the money has again started pouring in.

Discussion: SAI and hypebot

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Oprah's New Channel Struggles to Pull in the Viewers — Oprah Winfrey is finding out just how hard it is to build an out-of-the-way channel into a television destination. — OWN, her two-month-old channel, is attracting fewer viewers than the obscure channel it replaced, Discovery Health.

Discussion: Poynter, Fortune, The Wire, TV Tattle and Chickaboomer

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

At Comcast, No Fear of Web Video — Comcast Corp.'s chokehold on its subscribers' video consumption is slipping away as new video providers muscle in on the business. — But Brian Roberts, Comcast's 51-year-old chief executive, says he's still optimistic about the future …

Discussion: GigaOM, Engadget, VideoNuze, Company Town and Fortune, more at Techmeme »

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo's (and Associated Content Founder) Luke Beatty Talks About Google's Content Farm Putsch — Yahoo's Luke Beatty said he is not worried. — “We welcome the change,” he insisted about Google taking aim last Friday at so-called “content farms,” producers of low-quality content that spam up the Web and the search giant's results.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Guardian and SAI

The Atlantic Online:

James L. Brooks on Journalism, the Oscars, and ‘Broadcast News’ — The writer, director, and producer reflects on the film that brought him to the Academy Awards more than two decades ago — This is Academy Awards weekend in Hollywood, and James L. Brooks is a man who knows about Oscars.

Discussion: The Awl

Oliver Luft / Press Gazette:

FT Group operating profit rises 54 per cent — The FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times, recorded a 12 per cent year-on-year revenue increase last year, according to its parent company. — Pearson said this morning that FT Group drew £403m in revenue in 2010 …

Discussion: Media News, Journalism.co.uk, Guardian, Press Gazette and Editors Weblog