Mediagazer: DirecTV poised to launch premium video-on-demand as theater executives voice outrage [Updated] (Ben Fritz/Company Town)

CEO Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington Reveal AOL's Ambitious Hollywood Strategy … The following story appears in the upcoming issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine on newsstands Thursday. — On the set of a photo shoot at a Los Angeles studio, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong settles into salesman mode …

Discussion: GigaOM and Company Town

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

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

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: Future of Journalism, The Huffington Post, Scocca, MediaPost and Poynter

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: Folio, Runnin' Scared, On Media's Blog, Media Buyer Planner and FishbowlNY

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, Fortune, New York Magazine, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Post Tech and The Tech Trade, more at Techmeme »

Bill Reader / E.W. Scripps School of Journalism:

TBD is CTD: The fast rise and fall of a CJ startup — Just six months after it launched to much fanfare, the Washington, D.C., area community journalism site TBD.com (short for, it is suggested, “To Be Determined") is CTD (short for “circling the drain"). Some suggest it was too ambitious …

Discussion: The Buttry Diary and Poynter

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, Soup and The Wire

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: Poynter, MarketingVOX and MediaShift

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, The Charlotte Observer, VentureBeat, GigaOM, Time, paidContent and Adweek, more at Techmeme »

TMZ.com:

Charlie Sheen: I Twitter for Cash! — Featured Blogs — Celebritology- Drudge Report- Essence- Evil Beet Gossip- Hollyscoop- I'm Not Obsessed- Perez Hilton- TooFab- Why Fame- WWTDD — Megan Fox Net Curtain Fetish Porn for Armani — Was Christina Aguilera's Mug Shot Photo Stolen?

Discussion: The Wire, Mediaite, Dealbreaker and AdFreak

MediaShift Idea Lab:

Kachingle is Overrated, So Let's Stop Writing About It — As someone developing a new online ad platform for newspapers and magazines (NowSpots), I read a lot of news about the news industry. Waking up and reading the latest industry headlines on MediaGazer is always a highlight of my morning …

Discussion: Mashable!

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: paidContent and TVWeek.com

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch — The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. The line is fading between social media and traditional media. IDG's Matt Yorke talks about the rise of social and how IDG helps marketers create social campaigns. Read more.

Kim Zetter / Epicenter:

TED 2011: Al Jazeera Director on Power of Middle East Revolutions — LONG BEACH, California — “I am here to tell you that the future that we were dreaming for [in the Middle East] has eventually arrived,” Wadah Khanfar, director general of the Al Jazeera network, told the audience …

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Randall Rothenberg Talks About Coming Back to IAB — And What He Found at Time Inc. — At the Interactive Advertising Bureau's conference on Feb. 28, Randall Rothenberg could barely get a bite or a word out before someone in attendance came up to quickly offer thanks for his return.

Discussion: Poynter