Mediagazer: At Comcast, No Fear of Web Video (Jessica E. Vascellaro/Wall Street Journal)

12:35 AM ET, March 1, 2011

Top News:

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: Poynter, Nieman Journalism Lab, Gawker, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, FishbowlDC, Washington Wire, Epicenter, newsfeed.time.com, Runnin' Scared, Mediaite, Salon, Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and MetaFilter

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, @nicksumm and The Wrap

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, Crikey, MediaMemo, TeleRead, Poynter, Mediaite, @michaelwolffnyc, @scottros, On Media's Blog and New York Magazine

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: Rebooting The News

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, The Wire, TV Tattle, Fortune and Chickaboomer

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.

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

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: On Media's Blog and FishbowlDC, Thanks:gnagesh

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 …

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, Techland, Company Town and Fortune

David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Random House switches to e-book agency model; little bookseller chagrined — Random House Inc. on Monday ended its long stand against the so-called “agency model” for sales of e-books, a move that could pave the way for the publisher to join its competitors on Apple's iPad.

Discussion: Jacket Copy and The Next Web, 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: SAI

Steve Hewlett / Guardian:

The YouView revolution will not be televised just yet — A picture emerges of BBC boffins spending huge amounts of money trying to create an all-singing, all-dancing box — There's a lot riding on YouView. BBC director general Mark Thompson has described it as nothing less than the …

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.

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

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

Justin Elliott / Salon:

The story behind the “Roger Ailes indictment” story — On Sunday morning, the economics analyst and TV commentator Barry Ritholtz dropped a bombshell on his blog: Roger Ailes, the powerful president of Fox News, will be indicted in connection with allegedly telling a News Corp. executive …

Discussion: The Big Picture, FishbowlNY and The Wire

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

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

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 …

Thanks:sohear

Scott Rosenblum / NYConvergence.com:

Independent NJ Hyperlocal News Site Takes on AOL's Patch at MIT NY Forum (#hyperlocal) — Hyperlocal news can be truly local, serve the community and also be profitable, the CEO and publisher of New Jersey's TheAlternativePress.com told attendees at an MIT Enterprise Forum of New York City held …

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

One Minute News wants to corner the millennial media market — There's no shortage of websites offering condensed snippets of ADD-friendly news for the overstimulated masses. But it also seems that there's always room for one more. — The latest is One Minute News …

Discussion: @rafat and The Awl

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

DailyCandy Poaches Hearst's Queen Of The (Digital) Lady Mags — NBCU Digital just hired Ashley Parrish to be the new editorial director of DailyCandy. — Emails just went out to DailyCandy's staff. — At her old job, Parrish was content director for the women and teen networks at Hearst Digital Media.