Mediagazer: Mother Jones web traffic up 400+ percent, partly thanks to explainers (Megan Garber/Nieman Journalism Lab)

5:45 AM ET, March 5, 2011

Top News:

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 and Local Media Watch

Chris Ariens / FishbowlNY:

Outside.in's Josephson ‘Thrilled’ to Join AOL; Patch Produces a Piece of Content Every 15 Seconds — Fresh off the news this morning that AOL had acquired hyperlocal aggregator Outside.in for $10 million, representatives from both companies appeared this morning on a panel …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL Buys Outside.In, Less Than $10 Million

Discussion: TechCrunch, Mashable!, paidContent, GigaOM, MarketingVOX, Pulse2, WebProNews, NYConvergence.com, Digital Trends, MediaMemo, Noted and The Wire, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:

CBSi Buys Clicker; Lanzone Replaces Ashe As 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. As CEO of CNET Networks …

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

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, New York Magazine, Pulse2, @hunterwalk, WebProNews, SocialTimes.com, @jlanzone, @brianstelter, MediaPost, Lost Remote, Search Engine Land and Beet.TV, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Newspapers Need to Be Of the Web, Not Just On the Web — The secret to online success for newspapers doesn't depend on the choice of technology, or decisions about content, or even specific kinds of knowledge about the web, says Emily Bell — the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism …

Dana Lacey / J-Source: How the Guardian went digital — and survived

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: The Wire, LA Observed, Best of the Wire, TVNewser, Gawker, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post and UnBeige

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

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Mother Jones web traffic up 400+ percent, partly thanks to explainers — February was a record-breaking traffic month for Mother Jones. Three million unique users visited the site — a 420 percent increase from February 2010's numbers. And MotherJones.com posted 6.6 million pageviews overall — a 275 percent increase.

Discussion: Mother Jones, Runnin' Scared, FishbowlDC, digiday:DAILY and Future of Journalism

Piers Morgan:

More than just winning: Why Charlie Sheen is news, like it or not — In the tiger blood-fueled media blitz of the last week, which has seen Charlie Sheen show up everywhere from TMZ to Howard Stern, from sports radio to network news, in only one appearance did he directly admit to violence against a woman (video above).

Discussion: The Wire, AlterNet.org and Most Recent Home Page Posts …

James Wolcott / Vanity Fair:
It's Morgan In America

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

Tim Molloy / The Wrap:

Top Programming Exec Mitch Metcalf Leaving NBC — Mitch Metcalf, NBC's top programming executive, is leaving the network. — The decision is mutual, a network insider tells TheWrap. It comes as new NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt looks to assemble his own team and reinvigorate the network.

Discussion: Company Town and Broadcasting & Cable

blogs.journalism.co.uk:

From alpha users to a man in Angola: Adventures in crowdsourcing and journalism — Yesterday's Media Standards Trust data and news sourcing event presented a difficult decision early on: Whether to attend “Crowdsourcing and other innovations in news sourcing” or “Open government data, data mining, and the semantic web”.

Discussion: Media Standards Trust

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, Scocca, The Book Bench, Poynter and Editors Weblog

Fast Company:

Hey Jimmy Wales, What Do You Think of Content Farms? — Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and CultofMac.com editor Leander Kahney discuss Google, content farms, and Demand Media (plus a personal account of how the tweaked algorithm almost ruined Kahney's business) in our latest edition of The Cold Call.