Mediagazer: Does Arianna Huffington Have Enough Magic Touch Left to Save AOL? (Sam Gustin/Epicenter)

3:40 PM ET, March 7, 2011

Top News:

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, MediaPost, BW: GUEST HOME, Poynter, paidContent, VatorNews, Mixed Media, GMSV, New York Post, Softpedia News, CNET News, The Wire, Fortune, DealBook and Black Web 2.0

Sam Gustin / Epicenter:

Does Arianna Huffington Have Enough Magic Touch Left to Save AOL? — In this photo provided by Earl Gibson III, Arianna Huffington appears as a panelist for Tavis Smiley's 'America's Next Chapter' on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011 in Washington. (AP Photo/Earl Gibson III)

Discussion: Mixed Media and WebProNews

Henry Blodget / SAI:

BUSINESS INSIDER SECRETS REVEALED: An Inside Look At Our Readership And Financial Performance — 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.

Discussion: Poynter, TechCrunch, @mathewi and mediabistro.com

Felix Salmon:

The economics of Business Insider — Henry Blodget has a great post about the Business Insider business model, in which he reveals that his mini-empire basically broke even in 2010 on $4.8 million in revenue. There was a pretty impressive profit in the fourth quarter of the year …

Jim Rendon / Mother Jones:

Dan Rather: Inside Mark Cuban's Gilded Cage — At 79, the former CBS anchorman is still kicking ass and winning Emmys. But with his exposés sandwiched between pro wrestling and Girls Gone Wild, is anybody watching? — Post Comment — DAN RATHER IS EBULLIENT, more so than usual …

Discussion: Poynter

New York Times:
Sheen Is Surrounded by a Coterie of Enablers

Discussion: Company Town and Deadspin

Tim MacMahon / ESPN:
Mark Cuban, Charlie Sheen in talks

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

David Carr / New York Times:

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.

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News: Will Fox News and Glenn Beck split up?

Dylan Tweney / Epicenter:

Al Jazeera English Plans Show Centered on Social Networking — As the Arab world reels with revolutions fomented in part online, Al Jazeera English is planning a new talk show that has social networking at its heart. — It's just lucky timing, says Ahmed Shihab-Eldin …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Guardian, Fast Company, The Wire, Examiner, Runnin' Scared, The Atlantic Online and @lavrusik

Robert Hernandez / Online Journalism Review:
Q & A with Al Jazeera Online Producer Bilal Randeree

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Future of Journalism

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: GMSV, Switched and Free Press, more at Techmeme »

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 …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Technology Liberation Front and @iwantmedia, more at Techmeme »

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: Editors Weblog, @erickschonfeld and The Atlantic Online

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: Lost Remote, TVWeek.com, @insidecablenews, New York Magazine, NetNewsCheck Latest and TVNewser

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: MediaPost and FishbowlNY

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

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.

Discussion: steve's blog, Scobleizer, broadstuff, Adam Sherk and Media News, more at Techmeme »

Matt Thompson / Poynter:

A 5-minute framework for fostering better conversations in comments sections — Last week, my news organization announced we were evolving our online commenting practices a bit to improve the quality of discourse on NPR.org. — Our comment threads drew some attention recently when a comment thread …

Discussion: @amichel, Ars Technica and @jayrosen_nyu

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

YouTube Grabs Another Hollywood Guy: Paramount's Alex Carloss — YouTube is still trying to figure out how to link up with Hollywood. Maybe Alex Carloss will help. — Until last week, Carloss was head of digital distribution at Viacom's Paramount. Now he's a Google employee, working on YouTube's content acquisition team.

Discussion: paidContent

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

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