Mediagazer: Happy Birthday Mediagazer: Congrats to Megan McCarthy, the New Doyenne of the Media Scene (Andy Plesser/Beet.TV)

5:10 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, Media & Entertainment, Lost Remote, Multichannel and Broadcasting & Cable

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 …

Discussion: New York Observer, @scottros, @romenesko and @chanders, Thanks:jaredbkeller

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

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 …, Media Decoder, Mediaite, CJR, Yahoo! News, AOL News, The Wire, Indecision Forever, mediabistro.com and FishbowlDC

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

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

Jim Romenesko / Poynter: Look out, TMZ!: Reuters to distribute ‘paparazzi-type footage’

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

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: Beet.TV, SAI and Company Town

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
YouTube Makes Acquisition to Move Beyond Home Videos

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: Future of Journalism and NetNewsCheck Latest

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, Guardian, Music Ally, VentureBeat, SAI, paidContent, CNET News, hypebot, GigaOM and louisgray.com, 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: Media Buyer Planner and Poynter

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.

Discussion: rbr.com and CNET News

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.

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

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.