Mediagazer: Facebook Pushes Comments Upgrade, But Will Publishers Bite? (MediaShift)

9:40 AM ET, March 3, 2011

Top News:

BBC:

Rupert Murdoch to sell Sky News for takeover approval — Mr Murdoch hopes that his offer to sell Sky News will be enough to get the nod from Mr Hunt — Rupert Murdoch has agreed to sell off the loss-making Sky News. — The move is likely to be enough to win government approval …

Discussion: New York Times, The Wire, Telegraph, Guardian, Adweek, Media Week and TVNewser

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Hunt approves News Corp plan for Sky News — Sky News to be spun off into new company to pave way for News Corp takeover of BSkyB — The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has approved News Corporation's plan to spin off Sky News, clearing the way for its proposed £8bn purchase of the 61% of BSkyB it does not already own.

Discussion: Department for Culture Media …, Press Gazette and Jon Slattery

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

NY Times vs. Bloomberg News: It's War! — The stated goal of Bloomberg News is to be “the world's most influential news organization.” That's unsettling to The New York Times, which currently holds that distinction, or at least likes to think of itself that way.

Discussion: Poynter, SAI and New York Observer

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why Did It Take So Long for Newspapers to Copy Groupon? — Word leaked out today about a new service the New York Times is planning to launch soon called TimesLimited, which is expected to provide readers with special offers on travel and other lifestyle items via email.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and digiday:DAILY, Thanks:jeremiahkastner

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:
New York Times Launching Groupon-Like Daily Deals Service

Discussion: New York Observer, paidContent, MediaMemo, Marketing Pilgrim, Fast Company, From the Reporters, Digital Trends, FishbowlNY, The Tech Trade and SAI, Thanks:laureni

The New York Times Company:
The New York Times Company Updates its Outlook Ahead of Morgan Stanley Conference Presentation

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Reuters, Runnin' Scared, The Wrap, Yahoo! News, Poynter and The Wall Blog

Mandy / Zombie Journalism:

Four key things TBD did right — There's been all kinds of stories, analyses and blog posts written by journalism thinkers about “why TBD failed” or “things that went wrong at TBD”. While these have made some valuable notes for those who want to launch or work for startups in the future …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

David Pogue / New York Times:

Memo From Comcast: Embrace the Web in All Forms — Destroy this top-secret strategy document after reading. It could be devastating to our business interests if it fell into the wrong hands — like The New York Times or something. — Fellow Comcastians, this is a difficult time for the cable TV business.

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

How Charlie Sheen Got His Twitter Account Verified So Fast — Ad.ly Helped Take Handle From Squatter — Only 24 hours after Charlie Sheen got started on Twitter with @CharlieSheen, he had amassed more than 900,000 followers, easily one of the fastest follower roll-ups the service has seen.

Discussion: de.tech.ting, Hollywood Reporter, the Econsultancy blog, The 6th Floor, Fortune, PopWatch, Local Media Watch, digiday:DAILY, The Wrap, TechCrunch, The Big Picture, Best of the Wire and Gawker, more at Techmeme »

Neal Ungerleider / Fast Company:

Al Jazeera in Talks With Comcast, Time Warner — Al Jazeera English may be coming to American television screens. The Qatar-based network is currently in talks with cable giants Comcast and Time Warner, creating a groundswell of enthusiasm among American news junkies and a collective groan from right-leaning conservative activists.

Gus Lubin / The Wire:
Hillary Clinton Says Al Jazeera Is Putting American Media To Shame

Discussion: MarketWatch, Mediaite, Bloomberg, MediaPost and C-SPAN Video Library

MediaShift:

Facebook Pushes Comments Upgrade, But Will Publishers Bite? — Bit by bit, feature by feature, Facebook is making inroads into sites that live outside of Facebook.com. Major publishers now sprinkle their sites with Facebook plug-ins, from fan page widgets to friend recommendations to the ubiquitous “Like” thumbs-up.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Reflections of a Newsosaur, eMedia Vitals, Cision Blog, Scobleizer, Quora and Search Engine Land

David Cohen / mediabistro.com:

Debut Time for Aol News Real-Time — Aol News is looking to enforce the concept that news is real-time with its launch of Aol News Real-Time, which adds real-time badges to its 100 most active articles, as well as highlighting the top six stories being read at that moment, complete with reading counts.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and Echo

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Takeaways for journalists from today's Apple announcement: Better reporting tools and an ebook boom — Apple's Steve Jobs just left the stage after a surprise appearance to announce the new iPad 2. Check Engadget's liveblog if you want to relive the whole event, but I noticed a few takeaways …

Discussion: Engadget, Speakeasy, eMedia Vitals, Wall Street Journal, Mashable!, Gadget Lab, TechCrunch, MacStories, TUAW, Subtraction.com, Geekosystem, VentureBeat, paidContent, CNET News, The Evolving Newsroom, The Daily Beast and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

March Madness Comes to the iPad, for Free — Big sports events generally shy away from the Web, because they're still worried-with good reason-about trading analog dollars for digital dimes. — One exception to the rule has been the annual March Madness NCAA college basketball tournament …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, GigaOM and Multichannel, more at Techmeme »

Mark S. Luckie / 10,000 Words:

MSNBC: Pushing the envelope of design — Most news websites are pretty much designed in the same style: lots of links arranged into columns with smaller visual elements sprinkled throughout the page. MSNBC, however, frequently breaks out of that mold with webpages and web tools that defy traditional design.

Discussion: UnBeige

Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:

HBO Doubles Down On TV Everywhere — HBO has been one of the biggest proponents of TV Everywhere, eschewing online distributors like Netflix and instead committing to authenticated digital offerings from cable and IPTV providers. But Netflix's loss will be Comcast, Verizon and AT&T's gain …

Discussion: TheFutonCritic.com

Hugo Lindgren / The 6th Floor:

The Way We Blog Now — Hello? Hello! — You're reading The 6th Floor, the new blog of The Times Magazine, launched in advance of the redesigned print edition, which is out this Sunday, March 6. The first column by The Times's executive editor, Bill Keller, is already online, and other articles will be soon.

Discussion: Capital New York and FishbowlNY