Mediagazer: March Madness Comes to the iPad, for Free (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

2:40 PM ET, March 3, 2011

Top News:

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, Soup and The Wire

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

BBC:
Rupert Murdoch to sell Sky News for takeover approval

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

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

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, Journalism.co.uk, Time, GigaOM and Adweek, 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

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

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: New York Observer, Marketing Pilgrim, Fast Company, digiday:DAILY, Future of Journalism, NetNewsCheck Latest, From the Reporters, Digital Trends and MediaMemo, Thanks:jeremiahkastner

Mark Lisheron / American Journalism Review:

Raft World — CBS and ESPN basketball analyst Bill Raftery is widely known for his colorful catchphrases. But it's his reporting skills and penetrating insights that really make him special. Thurs. March 3, 2011 — AJR Senior Contributing Writer Mark Lisheron (mark@texaswatchdog.org) …

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 …

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 and CNET News

Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:

Tales from the Echo Chamber — I'm constantly amazed by how short news cycles have become and the extent to which the Twitter echo chamber now defines how we judge a hot startup. Valuation news is regularly leaked, for example, then relentlessly retweeted, seemingly providing instant validation …

Discussion: New York Magazine and Fortune