Mediagazer: Alt Text: Going Undercover at an Unregulated Content Farm (Lore Sjöberg/Underwire)

3:25 PM ET, March 4, 2011

Top News:

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

New York Times online pay model details coming in ‘matter of weeks’ — If you were the executive editor of one of the world's most prestigious and widely read newspapers, how would you justify billing a reader for a print version that he's no longer reading?

Discussion: LA Observed, The Wire, TVNewser, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, Gawker, UnBeige, On Media's Blog and Poynter

MediaPost: NYT: All The News That's Fit To Mint

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Baseless speculation! Frank Rich and the price of paywalls for writers

Discussion: Felix Salmon, The Huffington Post and Future of Journalism

PR Newswire:

Jim Lanzone Named President of CBS Interactive … CBS Interactive to Acquire Clicker.com — Jim Lanzone, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clicker Media Inc., has been named President of CBS Interactive, it was announced today by Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation.

Discussion: CNET News, TechCrunch, The Wrap, Lost Remote, Beet.TV, New York Magazine, Pulse2, @hunterwalk, WebProNews, Search Engine Land, @jlanzone, @brianstelter and SAI, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:

CBSi Buys Clicker; Lanzone Replaces Ashe As New President — CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) is acquiring Clicker, the self-styled “TV Guide” for online video, and is installing Jim Lanzone, Clicker's co-founder and CEO as its new president, succeeding Neil Ashe.

Discussion: Mediaweek, MediaPost, ReadWriteWeb, Multichannel, WebNewser, Broadcasting & Cable, AdAge, Company Town, GigaOM and Media Buyer Planner

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

AOL Buys Outside.In, Less Than $10 Million — AOL will announce today that it has acquired “hyper-local” blog aggregator startup Outside.In, an industry source tells us. — We don't know if AOL will announce how much it is paying for the company — probably not — but we're told that it is less than $10 million.

Discussion: TechCrunch, FishbowlNY, Mashable!, paidContent, Digital Trends, Noted, NYConvergence.com, MediaMemo and Pulse2

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Hyperlocal Heartbreak: Why Haven't Neighborhood News Technologies Worked Out? — Neighborhood news aggregator Outside.in has been acquired by AOL, according to multiple reports this morning. Apparently it's being bought for less than the big pile of money that high-profile investors put into it, back when hopes were high.

Discussion: Lost Remote

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

No More Digital Discount: Conde Nast Raises Prices For Two iPad Magazines — iPad magazines haven't been huge hits. At least in part because readers say they're too expensive. — So this one's a bit of a head-scratcher: Conde Nast is going to raise the prices of two of its tablet titles.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, The Next Web, Poynter and FishbowlNY

Thomas Catan / Wall Street Journal:

Web Video Rivalry Sparks U.S. Probe — The Justice Department is investigating whether a group representing some top technology firms is unfairly trying to smother a free rival technology for delivering online video that is backed by Google Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Law Blog, Techdirt, Fortune, CNET News, GigaOM, Guardian, paidContent and Post Tech, more at Techmeme »

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Arianna Huffington: We Won't “Mess with” TechCrunch or Engadget: Tim Armstrong Has Big Plans for Video — As the Huffington Post merges with AOL, the company will leave its successful brands to operate as independent entities. Arianna Huffington, who will be editorial chief of the new company …

Discussion: paidContent, NYConvergence.com and WebProNews

Nicholas Carlson / The Business Insider:
How AOL's Patch Can Win And Prove Us Wrong When We Say It's A Horrible, Doomed Idea

Discussion: CNET News, Poynter and SAI

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:
CEO Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington Reveal AOL's Ambitious Hollywood Strategy

Discussion: GigaOM

James Wolcott / Vanity Fair:

It's Morgan In America — Where did Piers Morgan come from? And is there any way to send him back? Reviewing the debut “gets”—Oprah! Rudy! Condoleezza!—of Larry King's blustery British heir, the author examines the failures behind Morgan's success. — If you're going to go in, go in big.

Discussion: TVNewser, Mediaite, New York Magazine and Yahoo! News

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Current TV Building New York Studio For Keith Olbermann Show — As it readies for the debut of the Keith Olbermann show, Current TV is building a studio in Manhattan, says co-founder Joel Hyatt in this interview with Beet.TV. — Hyatt says that the studio will have additional uses beyond …

David Kaplan / paidContent:
@ pC2011: Keith Olbermann: I'm Not Crazy For Joining Current Media

Discussion: The Wire, Mixed Media, The Wrap, Yahoo! News and FOK News Channel

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Why “Bloggers vs. Journalists” is Still With Us — A pre-conference post. Ideas in motion. These are notes in preparation for my talk at South by Southwest in Austin next week. You can help me make it better! — I am going to be doing a solo presentation at South by Southwest in Austin this year.

Discussion: Poynter

Jack Shafer / Slate:

Credit Score What's with the New York Times Magazine adding editor credits to the end of features? — The March 6 issue of the redesigned New York Times Magazine will contain—among many other changes—this new wrinkle: credits at the end of features that name the piece's editor.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter and Editors Weblog

Lore Sjöberg / Underwire:

Alt Text: Going Undercover at an Unregulated Content Farm — Google has declared war on content farms. Controversy rages over what's best for Google, for business, for the honest, hard-working porn-seeker. But who's worrying about what's best for the content?

David Kaplan / paidContent:

@ pC2011: Denton: The Internet Is A Mass Medium, Not A Niche One — In a very amiable dialogue about the nature of “internet success,” Gawker founderNick Denton told Reuters' finance blogger Felix Salmon that revenues were expected to be flat this year. Though Salmon floated a number ("It's about $2 million a month, right?")

Discussion: Between the Lines Blog, The Wrap, CJR, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Beet.TV, Soup, Yahoo! News and Felix Salmon, more at Techmeme »

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

TBD has made mistakes, but we understand our community(ies) — It is against my nature to hold my tongue. Or my keyboard. — I have refrained from saying much publicly about the recent cutbacks at TBD because ... well, because. The reasons are complicated and I still work here.

Discussion: AAN

Bill Reader / E.W. Scripps School of Journalism:
TBD is CTD: The fast rise and fall of a CJ startup

Discussion: The Buttry Diary and Poynter

Bloomberg:

Murdoch's News Corp. May Have to Pay $17.4 Billion for Its BSkyB Purchase — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWSA) may have to raise its bid for British Sky Broadcasting Plc to as much as 10.7 billion pounds ($17.4 billion) to win over the pay- television operator's shareholders.

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian and Company Town

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Downloads for The Daily are in ‘hundreds of thousands’

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Felix Gillette / Business Week:

Ben Silverman, Advertainer — The TV dealmaker is selling a new entertainment vision in which advertising and content are inextricably mixed. Is anyone buying it? — On his recent honeymoon in India, Ben Silverman sold an idea to his wife. Any tourist could go sightseeing …

Discussion: Company Town

Kim Zetter / Epicenter:

TED 2011: Junk Food Algorithms and the World They Feed Us — LONG BEACH, Calif. — With the birth of the internet came the promise — or so the myth goes — of broadened horizons and fantastic new ways to connect people and viewpoints in ways we could not have imagined.