Mediagazer: Darrell Issa probes staff; spokesman Kurt Bardella at center of controversy (The Politico)

2:35 PM ET, March 1, 2011

Top News:

Frank Rich Joins New York Magazine — Frank Rich is joining New York Magazine, beginning in June. Rich will be an essayist for the magazine, writing monthly on politics and culture, and will serve as an editor-at-large, editing a special monthly section anchored by his essay.

Michael Barbaro / New York Times:

After Business and Politics, Mayor Tests Opinion — Over the last year, representatives of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg quietly reached out to a handful of the country's top journalists with an intriguing job offer: Divine and distill his unique brand of political philosophy and disseminate …

Discussion: Poynter, On Media's Blog, City Room, The Wire, The Big Picture, FishbowlNY and The Empire

Jodi Enda / American Journalism Review:

The Bloomberg Juggernaut — While many news organizations are struggling and retreating, Bloomberg News keeps adding talented journalists, expanding its empire and elevating its ambitions. Posted: Wed, March 1, 2011 — Jodi Enda (jaenda@gmail.com) writes about politics and government from Washington …

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: TMZ.com, Broadcasting & Cable, Speakeasy, TVNewser, AdAge, Mediaite, TIME Healthland, The Wire, Inside Cable News and Yahoo! News

Julie Moos / Poynter:
Media acting as enablers with excessive coverage of “Two and a Half Men” star Charlie Sheen

Discussion: The Wire, msnbc.com and The Huffington Post

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Recommendation Is Still the Holy Grail For News — If you count all the different media-related apps for the iPhone and iPad, there are almost an infinite number of ways to consume the news — some are specific to a particular newspaper or magazine, while others try to aggregate different sources of news for you.

Discussion: PC World

Chris Atkins / Media Standards Trust:

Fuel to the fire — Chris Atkins, the independent film maker who played a number of news hoaxes to help raise awareness about churnalism, writes a guest post describing what he did and how he did it — It was just under a month ago when the Media Standards Trust challenged me to raise awareness …

Discussion: Richard Sambrook … and Media Law Journal

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: Guardian, Company Town, Mashable!, hypebot and paidContent

John Cook / New York Observer:

Was a Vanity Fair Editor Secretly Working for the Church of Scientology? — Gawker.com, where the author is employed a staff writer, declined to publish this story. — Did the Church of Scientology use a Vanity Fair contributing editor to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the cult's enemies in the media?

Discussion: @jeffbercovici

Gregory Ferenstein / Fast Company:

Google's Journalism Prize and the 5 Groups Who Should Win It — Google's running a $2.7 million contest for innovative online journalism and we rounded up 5 models to inspire the contestants. — Google's philanthropic spending spree has just dropped another $2.7 million to fund innovative uses …

Discussion: CyberJournalist.net

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: The Huffington Post, Slate, Gawker, @weareyourfek, The Daily Caller, Washington Wire, The Wire, CNN, On Media's Blog, TPMMuckraker, New York Magazine, Washington Post, Poynter, The New Yorker Blog and FishbowlDC, Thanks:gnagesh

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Facebook Comments Platform Brings Media Partners Into Users' News Feeds — Facebook is relaunching its commenting plugin that will promise to insert media partners into users' news feeds. Previously, when a user made a comment on another site with their Facebook profile, the comment remained with that outside site.

Discussion: TechCrunch, WebNewser, Facebook Developer Blog, TechCrunch, Inside Facebook, Search Engine Land and ReadWriteWeb, more at Techmeme »

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.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Emma Barnett / Telegraph:

Watchdog clamps down on web adverts — The UK's advertising watchdog is going to vet sites like Twitter and Facebook for the first time after receiving thousands of complaints about misleading online adverts. — The ASA will clampdown on misleading free ads on Twitter.

Discussion: Noted

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Boxee's Backers Bet Big On Web Video, With A $16 Million Round — Here's that big funding round for Boxee I told you about last fall: The Web video software company has raised another $16.5 million. Previous investors General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures are all back …

Discussion: Boxee Blog, VentureBeat, Venture Capital Dispatch, paidContent, GigaOM, The Wire, NYConvergence.com and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Get the gray out of America's newspapers — In 1995, the Society of News Design counted a dozen American newspapers as among the best-looking in the world. By 2010, there were none. — Though it may not be fair to judge the problems of American newspaper publishers strictly by their covers …

Discussion: Matters of Varying …

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

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.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

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, SocialTimes.com, 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: eMedia Vitals and Poynter, Thanks:jaredbkeller