Mediagazer: Atlantic building new online brands with Sullivan heading out the door (Joe Pompeo/Yahoo! News)

8:05 PM ET, March 8, 2011

Top News:

Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media — EVERYONE FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA TO TED KOPPEL IS BEMOANING A DECLINE IN JOURNALISTIC SUBSTANCE, SERIOUSNESS, AND SENSE OF PROPORTION. BUT THE AUTHOR, A LONGTIME ADVOCATE OF THESE VALUES, TAKES A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DIGITAL-MEDIA WORLD …

Discussion: The Wire, @scottros, @romenesko and @chanders, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Daniel D'Addario / New York Observer:

What Does ‘The Atlantic’ Know About Its Own Aggregation? — Say this, good or bad, for The Atlantic—its left hand does not seem to know what its right hand is doing. The magazine's new story about Gawker—getting buzz already for Nick Denton's note that he wouldn't have clarified …

Gregg Kilday / Hollywood Reporter:

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, MediaPost, Media & Entertainment, Multichannel, Lost Remote and Broadcasting & Cable

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: Poynter, Guardian, Editors Weblog, Noted and Gannett Blog

Alex Himel / Facebook Developers:

Real-Time Analytics For Social Plugins — Over the past year, social plugins have become an important and growing source of traffic for millions of websites. Today we're releasing a new version of Insights for Websites to give you better analytics on how people interact with your content …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, The Next Web, Inside Facebook, Techie Buzz, VatorNews, Marketing Pilgrim, All Facebook and WebProNews, Thanks:malliegator

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.

Discussion: WebNewser and Mike Orren

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Newspapers Hope Readers Will Throw Money Over the Wall

Thanks:mathewi

Matthew Boyle / The Daily Caller:

NPR executives caught on tape bashing conservatives and Tea Party, touting liberals — A man who appears to be a senior National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement. — “The current Republican Party …

Discussion: Weigel, Current.org Blog, James O'Keefe's Project …, Salon, Media Decoder, Yahoo! News, The Wire, CJR, Mediaite, Runnin' Scared, Big Journalism, Indecision Forever, AOL News, mediabistro.com, The Atlantic Online and FishbowlDC

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Comments, Video, Push Slate Ad Revs Up 33 Percent In '10 — The Slate Group, The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) Co.'s online-only unit house Slate.com, The Root.com, and ForeignPolicy.com, says that combined ad revenue from all those sites gained 33 last year.

Discussion: Poynter

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

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A perpetual motion machine for investigative reporting: CPI and PRI partner on state corruption project — There is a flaw in the investigative reporting model and it has to do with longevity. Follow me on this for a second: A reporter works months at a time scouring documents, meeting sources …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and Future of Journalism

Evgeny Morozov / Guardian:

Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go | Evgeny Morozov — Cyber-utopians who believe the Arab spring has been driven by social networks ignore the real-world activism underpinning them — Tweets were sent. Dictators were toppled. Internet = democracy. QED.

Discussion: Mark Follman

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

Publishers must focus on the open Web, not Android, to gain upper hand with Apple — The launch of the Motorola Xoom tablet last month has rekindled hopes that Android tablets may take a bite out of Apple's dominance of mobile publishing. But for media companies, “Apple vs. Android” is a false choice.

Dan Frommer / The Wire:

Google Really, Officially, Finally Is A Media Company — In case you still had any doubts, Google is now OFFICIALLY a media company. — YouTube just finally closed its acquisition of Next New Networks, a NYC-based startup in the online video production industry. — (Click here to flip through NNN's most famous videos.)

Discussion: Engadget, AdPulp, Techie Buzz, Pulse2, SAI and Company Town

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Happy Birthday Mediagazer: Congrats to Megan McCarthy, the New Doyenne of the Media Scene — On a freezing Manhattan night in February, virtually all of the media industry's top reporters, blogger and editors showed up for drinks with a newly arrived California woman who was unknown just a few months earlier.

Discussion: Mediagazer News, @edmundlee, @madlid, @owenthomas, @ekrangel, @kunur, @lostremote and @mikepilarz

Meg James / Los Angeles Times:

‘Tosh.0’ turns Internet videos into laughs, cash for Comedy Central — The hit TV show that features comedian Daniel Tosh has caught on with young male viewers, becoming a must-buy for advertisers. — Comedian Daniel Tosh appears on the set of Comedy Central's hit TV show “Tosh.0” before taping.

John Shaughnessy / Thomson Reuters:

THOMSON REUTERS LAUNCHES NEXT-GENERATION PROFESSIONAL NEWS OFFERINGS — Reuters powers new services for science, legal, tax and accounting pros — Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, is launching a suite of news products designed …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, paidContent and Journalism.co.uk