Mediagazer: The Dictator's Wife Wears Louboutins (Wall Street Journal)

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: @jayrosen_nyu

Financial Times Digs Gold Out of Data — PARIS — For newspapers, connecting with readers is the ultimate challenge. At newsstands, many customers choose a paper only after they see the headline on the cover. The lady in hair curlers and a bathrobe might choose “Toe job to no job,” …

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

Discussion: Future of Journalism

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.

Discussion: The First Post, Guardian, @jayrosen_nyu, @drudge, @mlcalderone, Inside Cable News and Mediaite

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: New York Times, Gawker, @thefamousjay and @espn

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: Examiner, Runnin' Scared, @lavrusik and The Atlantic Online, more at Techmeme »

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, Poynter, Wall Street Journal, ABCNEWS, mediabistro.com, The Daily Dish, Mediaite, The Huffington Post and The Wire

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Mobile First, and a Mag — Two French journalists come to me with a question: which business model for their new project? They are about to resuscitate a fairly well-know trade journalism brand, planning to go mostly online — and marginally on dead trees.

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: Media News and Scobleizer, more at Techmeme »

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 …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Twitter's “Quickbar Uprising” Is Nothing: Wait Till The Ads Really Show Up — Some people hate Twitter's new iPhone app, and Twitter is listening: It's going to change the app slightly. — Which won't appease the people who hate Twitter's new iPhone app at all.

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Next Web, Examiner, Mashable! and Daring Fireball

Mike Swift / Mercury News:

In YouTube, Google finds a nimble model to compete with Facebook — Once derided as Google's folly, the home of cheesy cat videos and the money-losing stepchild of an otherwise wildly profitable company, YouTube is emerging as a model for the more nimble, faster-paced company Google co-founder …

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: Big News Network.com

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Writers Get Close on Web — Simon & Schuster Bets Authors' Video Interviews Can Build Readership, Sales — It's the kind of quirky fan question—"Would you ever shave your head?"—that authors might ignore. But teen novelist Lisa McMann, in a simulated Web-based video conversation …

Wall Street Journal:

The Dictator's Wife Wears Louboutins — Vogue magazine missed the trend: Middle Eastern tyrants are out this season. — Maybe it takes a fashion dictator to know a fashionable dictator. How else to explain Vogue editor Anna Wintour's decision this month to publish a 3,000-word paean to that …