Mediagazer: The Fading Power of Beck's Alarms (David Carr/New York Times)

12:15 PM ET, March 7, 2011

Top News:

The Fading Power of Beck's Alarms — Almost every time I flipped on television last week, there was a deeply angry guy on a running tirade about the conspiracies afoot, the enemies around all corners, and how he alone seemed to understand what was under way.

Tim MacMahon / ESPN:

Mark Cuban, Charlie Sheen in talks — DALLAS — Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, and controversial actor Charlie Sheen could soon be business partners. — Cuban confirmed Sunday evening that he's had several conversations with Sheen recently …

Discussion: USA Today, AOL News, Gawker, The First Post, @thefamousjay, @espn and PopEater

New York Times:

Sheen Is Surrounded by a Coterie of Enablers — LOS ANGELES — Since getting sober more than two decades ago, Tom Arnold, the actor and comedian, has been a quiet force in Hollywood's recovery community, helping stage a number of interventions for drug-addicted executives and alcoholic stars.

Discussion: Company Town and Deadspin

Henry Blodget / SAI:

BUSINESS INSIDER: The Full Monty — Most private companies zealously protect details about financial and operating performance, refusing to release so much as a revenue number. — The logic for this secrecy varies. Sometimes, the information is “competitive.” Sometimes it's “confidential.”

Discussion: TechCrunch and mediabistro.com

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

AOL-HuffPo Deal Officially Closes Today-More Big Media Hires Signal New Content Direction Under Arianna — AOL will officially close its $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post today, according to several sources close to the situation. — The culmination of the deal-which has already …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Poynter, paidContent, SAI, Softpedia News, New York Post, CNET News, Poynter and Fortune, more at Techmeme »

Felix Salmon:

The FT's decline — I had a hard-to-follow Twitter debate yesterday about the FT's paywall, where a couple of FT types — Alan Beattie and John Gapper — told me that the latest numbers for digital subscribers show that I was wrong when I criticized the FT's strategy in October 2007.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, blogs.ft.com and @jayrosen_nyu

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Digital Media Milestone: News Consumption via Mobile Reaches Nearly Half for Financial Times

Discussion: WebNewser, Talking Biz News, Big News Network.com, Journalism.co.uk and Future of Journalism

Eric Pfanner / New York Times: Financial Times Digs Gold Out of Data

Atlantic Wire:

Eric Schmidt: What I Read — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is from a conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online

New York Times:

China Tracks Foreign Journalists — BEIJING — Western journalists have lately been tolerated in China, if grudgingly, but the spread of revolution in the Middle East has prompted the authorities here to adopt a more familiar tack: suddenly, foreign reporters are being tracked and detained …

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, AOL News and Big News Network.com

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

TV's Next Wave: Tuning In to You — The television is channeling you. — Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people's TV-viewing behavior with other personal data—in some cases, prescription-drug records obtained from insurers—and using …

Verne G. Kopytoff / New York Times:

Sites Like Twitter Absent From Free Speech Pact — SAN FRANCISCO — When Google, Yahoo and Microsoft signed a code of conduct intended to protect online free speech and privacy in restrictive countries, the debate over censorship by China was raging, and Internet companies operating …

Discussion: Free Press, more at Techmeme »

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

MSNBC's Newest Pit Bull — Lawrence O'Donnell seems indifferent about his new career as a cable anchor. Howard Kurtz talks to him about his unlikely rise, why people hate him—and why O'Reilly can't get under his skin. — Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't sound like he wants to be talking about himself or his prime-time cable show.

Discussion: Mediaite and The Huffington Post

John Koblin / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: Joanne Lipman's Newsweek Debut — JOANNE LIPMAN RETURNS: Joanne Lipman, the former Portfolio editor in chief — who has held a relatively low profile since the business magazine was shut down 23 months ago — will write regularly for Tina Brown's new Newsweek.

Discussion: Grids, Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Newsweek, Poynter, Editors Weblog, Talking Biz News, mediabistro.com, The Daily Dish, ABCNEWS, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Yahoo! News and The Wire

Jeremy Peters / Media Decoder:

Glamour's iPad Series to Let Viewers Buy Clothes From Gap — The ability to buy products strategically placed on television programs — a handbag clutched by the actress Blake Lively on “Gossip Girl” or a suit worn by the actor Jon Hamm on “Mad Men” — with the click of a button has always …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

‘Today’ Show Moves to Today.com and Stresses Video Clips — The “Today” show on Tuesday morning will produce a second show just for the Web — something that seems inherently competitive with its main telecast. — But the webcast, called “The Today.com Show,” is largely a promotional affair …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and TVNewser

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Squall Hits ‘The Atlantic’ — Andrew Sullivan's exit puts mag's turnaround in peril — Less than three months ago, The Atlantic had a lot to celebrate. Thanks to an infusion of digital ad revenue, 2010 had been a good year for the magazine, one in which it turned a profit for the first time in at least a decade.

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Facebook Comments Have Silenced The Trolls — But Is It Too Quiet? — As you've noticed by now, we're about a week into our latest experiment in troll-slaying with Facebook Comments. So far, the reactions have been very mixed and very interesting. Publicly, many of the reactions were initially negative.