Mediagazer: Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media (James Fallows/The Atlantic Online)

12:35 PM ET, March 8, 2011

Top News:

Warner Bros. to Rent Movies Digitally on Facebook, Starting With ‘Dark Knight’ … Warner Bros. is turning to Facebook, where it hopes to find an electronic audience interested in digitally renting The Dark Knight. — Warners said Monday that it is the first Hollywood studio to offer movies directly on Facebook.

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Meet Your New Media Company: Facebook

Discussion: Company Town and MediaMemo, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why Facebook Is Not the Cure For Bad Comments — There's been a lot of discussion recently about Facebook-powered comments, which have been implemented at a number of major blogs and other publishers (including here at GigaOM) over the past couple of weeks.

Discussion: BuzzMachine, TechCrunch, NBC Bay Area, Howard Lindzon, Engadget, Stowe Boyd, Technologizer, The Huffington Post, steve's blog, Scobleizer and broadstuff, more at Techmeme »

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

Gannett Considers Charging for Online Newspaper Content, CEO Dubow Says — Gannett Co., the owner of 82 newspapers including USA Today, is considering charging for its online content, Chief Executive Officer Craig Dubow said. — The company, which also owns television stations …

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter, Noted and Gannett Blog

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

Nine Questions on the Dallas Morning News Pay Plan — Don't mess with Texas, Lyle Lovett has advised us. That may be worth keeping in mind as publisher Jim Moroney turns a lot of conventional wisdom on its ear and launches a pay wall in America's fifth-largest metro area and eighth-largest city.

Mike Orren:
Paywall, ho! — It's official- the Dallas Morning News paywall goes live tomorrow.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu and WebNewser

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

YouTube Makes Acquisition to Move Beyond Home Videos — SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube, the video site owned by Google, formally announced on Monday that it had acquired Next New Networks, a Web video production company, in its biggest effort yet to move beyond short, quirky home videos to professionally produced content.

Alex Pham / Company Town:
Google's YouTube buys Next New Networks

Discussion: TVWeek.com, TechCrunch, Beet.TV, NYConvergence.com, MediaMemo, @pkafka and Beet.TV

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Spotify Toots Its Own Horn: One Million Paying Subscribers — Nope, Spotify still isn't in the U.S. yet. But the European streaming music service does have something to announce. It has a million paying subscribers, CEO Daniel Ek writes in a blog post. — Truth in blog posts about blog posts: The number isn't news.

Discussion: Spotify, VentureBeat, Guardian, paidContent, Music Ally, CNET News, Erictric, hypebot, GigaOM, louisgray.com and SAI, more at Techmeme »

Michael Oneal / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune Co. bankruptcy nearing finish line — Questions, answers as lawyers for media firm, creditors head to confirmation hearings in Delaware — After 27 months of legal wrangling, Tribune Co. and its creditors are finally headed into what could be the deciding chapter of the company's tangled bankruptcy saga.

Discussion: Poynter and Media Buyer Planner

James Fallows / The Atlantic Online:

Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media — THE NEWS BUSINESS has never been stable. Like everything else in American society, it has kept changing, often in dramatic and unforeseen ways. For instance, Time and Newsweek now seem like legacies practically from the age …

Thanks:jaredbkeller

Deena Higgs Nenad / EditorandPublisher.com:

Former AP Reporter Nears Profit After Starting a Paper From Scratch — Former Associated Press reporter Dan Robrish learned many valuable lessons when he started a newspaper from scratch in a small south central Pennsylvania borough one year ago. The most critical: Wrap up personal stuff …

Discussion: J-Source and MediaPost

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Look out, TMZ!: Reuters to distribute ‘paparazzi-type footage’ — Romenesko Misc. — Reuters says distributing Hollywood TV's footage of celebrities serves “a crucial role for entertainment programming needs” and complements the celebrity and entertainment coverage currently offered by Reuters.

Matt Waite / Nieman Journalism Lab:

To build a digital future for news, developers must be able to hack at the core of old systems — Editor's Note: Matt Waite was until recently news technologist at the St. Petersburg Times, where — among many other projects — he was the primary developer behind Politifact, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Discussion: Hot Type Consulting

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Mog, the Digital Music Service, Takes Aim at the TV and the Car — The next frontier for digital music is not a tablet or a smartphone, but two items that have been part of everyday life for decades: the car and the television set. — For years, digital music has been confined mostly to traditional computers and phones.

more at Techmeme »

John Cook / Gawker:

Talk Radio Is Fake Now — Premiere Radio Networks, the radio syndicator that brings you Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, knows better than anyone that its audience consists almost exclusively of mouth-breathing illiterates. That can make talk radio, which theoretically relies on the ability …

Discussion: Mediaite, Big Journalism, rbr.com, The Huffington Post and The Wire

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

New York Times' Kristof: To get social issues on the agenda, get them on the op-ed pages — When Nicholas Kristof travels the country giving talks, the first two questions he gets from the audience almost always come from men. — “This is true even at a women's college …

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Sheen On Ustream: A Wasted Opportunity — “The future of television is happening right now,” tweeted someone sitting pretty in the medium's present, Survivor host Jeff Probst. But from the looks of the video to which he linked, a live stream of the ubiquitous Charlie Sheen, the future is going to have to wait.

Discussion: The Wrap, B&C, Media News International, Company Town, Moraes on TV and VatorNews

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

WSJ Europe deputy editor departs — Iain Martin has quietly departed from the deputy editorship of the Wall Street Journal Europe. It follows the arrival of a new editor at the WSJE, Tracy Corrigan. — A spokeswoman confirmed that Martin had left, but did not comment further.

Discussion: Press Gazette