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

2:10 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 — Social Network Starts Movie Rentals, Threatening Apple, Netflix, Hulu — A big, powerful wild card just entered the movie distribution business. Warner Bros. Entertainment announced today it will begin distributing movies for sale and for rent through Facebook …

Discussion: Company Town, MediaMemo, Lost Remote, Multichannel and Broadcasting & Cable, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Newspapers Hope Readers Will Throw Money Over the Wall — As the financial screws continue to tighten on traditional media companies, more and more are choosing to throw their eggs into the basket labeled “paywall,” despite a conspicuous lack of evidence that erecting barriers to non-paying readers …

Thanks:mathewi

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: Editors Weblog, WebNewser and @jayrosen_nyu

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

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.

John Shaughnessy / Thomson Reuters:
THOMSON REUTERS LAUNCHES NEXT-GENERATION PROFESSIONAL NEWS OFFERINGS

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

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, Stowe Boyd, Howard Lindzon, Engadget, NBC Bay Area, The Huffington Post, Technologizer and SAI

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, The Next Web, 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

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: Editors Weblog, J-Source and MediaPost

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, MediaMemo, @pkafka, NYConvergence.com and Beet.TV

James Fallows / The Atlantic Online:

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 …

Michael Shain / New York Post:

OWN reboots — Oprah's new cable network — which has not been able to get much traction since its blockbuster opening week — is getting the “reboot.” — Network officials have quietly been telling worried advertisers that OWN, Oprah's new channel, will begin reshuffling its lineup …

Discussion: TVWeek.com and The Wire

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

Joseph J. Kolb / EditorandPublisher.com:

Losing the War on Reporting the Mexico Narco Violence — When a 9-year-old student in an El Paso, Texas after-school program asked staff member Abril Holguin if he could call his parents to see where they were, Holguin saw the expression of fear on his face and knew what it meant.

Discussion: CJR and Editors Weblog

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.

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 …

Discussion: The News About The News