Top News:
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:
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 …
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, MediaMemo, TeleRead, Poynter, Mediaite, Crikey, On Media's Blog, @michaelwolffnyc, @scottros and New York Magazine
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 …
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
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
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
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
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.
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:
FishbowlDC and On Media's Blog, Thanks:gnagesh
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, paidContent, USA Today, Carpetbagger and Lost Remote, more at Techmeme »
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, TV Tattle, The Wire and Chickaboomer
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.
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
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.
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
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 »
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
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:
paidContent, more at Techmeme »
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
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch Europe:
Can Citizen Journalism work in the UK? Blottr thinks it has the formula — Arguably, in the age of Facebook and, to a greater degree, Twitter, the early excitement around so-called Citizen Journalism has been surpassed by social media. But that isn't stopping London-based Blottr …
Discussion:
Journalism.co.uk, Thanks:sohear
Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Charie Sheen: NBC interview ‘pure gold,’ ABC interview ‘slanted’ — Celebrity gossip site TMZ set up a live-streaming interview with Charlie Sheen Monday afternoon following his widely talked about interviews earlier that morning on the “Today Show” and “Good Morning America.”
Discussion:
TMZ.com, New York Times, doublex.com, The Wire, The Wrap, @jeffjarvis, @fromedome, Hollywood Reporter, @brianstelter and Brow Beat
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