Mediagazer: Tales from the Echo Chamber (Connie Loizos/PE Hub Blog)

4:10 PM ET, March 3, 2011

Top News:

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Plum TV's Lehman Named NBCU's President, Digital Networks — Nicholas Lehman, formerly CEO of lifestyle Plum TV, has joined NBC Universal (NSDQ: CMCSA) as president of Digital for NBCUniversal's Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media division (E&DN/IM).

Discussion: MediaMemo

David Kaplan / paidContent:

@ pC2011: Zalaznick: Don't Blame Hulu For Lack Of Cable Programming Streams — The lack of cable programming that's available for online streaming on Hulu isn't the video JV's fault, said Lauren Zalaznick, Chairman, NBCUniversal Entertainment & Digital Networks & Integrated Media …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Facebook comments: Friend or foe for pubs? — In its highly successful effort to insinuate itself into every aspect of our lives, Facebook now is offering publishers the opportunity to outsource comments on their websites to the social networking juggernaut.

Discussion: MarketingVOX

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

Discussion: TechCrunch, Poynter, eMedia Vitals and Cision Blog

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Gawker Media traffic down 25 percent since redesign — A few weeks ago, Gawker Media disputed reports that its traffic had plummeted due to the redesign recently implemented across its blog network. And Gawker boss Nick Denton had even recently made a cash bet that the relaunch wouldn't cost him page views.

Discussion: paidContent, The Wrap, SAI and Soup

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Demand Media Buys Liveblogging Tool CoverItLive — On the heels of its entry to the public market, content farm Demand Media has just acquired CoverItLive, a liveblogging tool. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. — CoverItLive provides an extensive tool one can use …

Discussion: Investor Relations, VentureBeat, paidContent, The Charlotte Observer, Time, Adweek, Journalism.co.uk and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Newsweek's 'not your Grandpa Jon's magazine anymore' — Tina Brown has been shopping her redesigned Newsweek prototype to advertisers for weeks. But on Wednesday, the rank-and-file workers at Brown's recently integrated Newsweek-Daily Beast operation finally got a peek.

Discussion: mediabistro.com and FishbowlNY

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, FishbowlNY, On Media's Blog and New York Observer

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: Press Gazette, Media Week, Department for Culture Media …, The Wrap, Jon Slattery, Company Town, FishbowlNY and Editors Weblog

BBC:
Rupert Murdoch to sell Sky News for takeover approval

Discussion: New York Times, Guardian, The Wire, Fortune, Mediaweek, Telegraph, Reuters, TVNewser and Media Week

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Baseless speculation! Frank Rich and the price of paywalls for writers — Jack Shafer summed up Frank Rich's upcoming move from The New York Times to New York magazine like so: “Unless the deal came with Bloombergian bags of cash, it makes no sense.” — True.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Scocca, Runnin' Scared and MediaPost

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

The Twitter Story Fail — It's amazing to me how wrong The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were on their Twitter fundraising stories last week. All claimed multiple independent sources, but everyone got the story wrong in the same way.

Discussion: Reuters, Best of the Wire and Fortune, more at Techmeme »

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

Ben Fritz / Company Town:

DirecTV poised to launch premium video-on-demand as theater executives voice outrage [Updated] — DirecTV is in advanced talks to be Hollywood's first partner for early video-on-demand, a plan that is putting it in the cross hairs of the nation's top theater chains.

Discussion: TVWeek.com and paidContent

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: Online Video News, TUAW, GigaOM and Multichannel, more at Techmeme »

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:

Instapaper's Arment: Seek Money From Customers, Not VCs — Marco Arment, the former chief technology officer of the Tumblr blog platform, is best known these days for his time-shifting reading app Instapaper. But he could start a side-job as a financial advisor to start-ups.

Discussion: New York Observer and Bloggasm, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of roll-up — Editor's Note: Each week, Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of news for the Lab. — Pity the poor news publisher. Amid all the hoopla about wringing digital revenue …

MediaShift:

Will Righthaven Copyright Lawsuits Change Excerpting Online? — Is it an infringement of copyright to post an excerpt from an online news article — including a link to its source — on a website, a blog, or an online forum? This practice is ubiquitous in online journalism …

Discussion: citmedialaw.org