Mediagazer: At Discovery, Pushing Back Against the ‘Content Farm’ (Brian Steinberg/AdAge)

12:10 PM ET, March 10, 2011

Top News:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Exclusive: AOL Will Lay Off Several Hundred Employees, Starting Tomorrow — The AOL layoffs are finally here, and they are smaller than some had been expecting. — According to several people close to the situation, the New York-based Internet giant will lay off up to several hundred …

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

THE GORY DETAILS: Tim Armstrong's Layoffs Memo — AOL is going to fire hundreds of people today following its merger with the Huffington Post. — We have the memo from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. — Highlights: — The severance package. “Affected employees will be notified today …

Discussion: Mediaite and MediaNama

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
AOL To Slash More Destination Sites And Media Brands Than Expected

Discussion: The Business Insider

David Kaplan / paidContent:
@ Media Summit: AOL's Armstrong: Layoffs Today, Hiring Tomorrow

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Bloggasm and FT Tech Hub

Wall Street Journal:

Video Kills the Radio Czar — CEO Is Second NPR Executive to Resign Following Activist's Sting Operation — The head of National Public Radio quit under fire as the organization became ensnared in a fresh scandal at a time when Congress is debating whether to pull its government funding.

Discussion: American Journalism Review, BoomTown, Hit & Run, NPR and Poynter

New York Times:

Resignation Comes at Sensitive Time for NPR — In the midst of a brutal battle with Republican critics in Congress over federal subsidies, NPR has lost its chief executive after yet another politically charged embarrassment. — Vivian Schiller, who joined NPR two years ago …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Company Town, Online NewsHour, Washington Post, Current.org Blog, The Atlantic Online, The Future of Capitalism, Boing Boing and Guardian

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
It's Time For NPR to Get Off the Government Payroll

Discussion: Washington Examiner, On Media's Blog, NPR, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Tuned In, rbr.com, MediaPost, GroundReport.com, Epicenter, The Huffington Post, Broadcasting & Cable, MediaFile, Weigel, The Atlantic Wire and Jezebel

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Why we need to get rid of anonymous comments. — Once or twice a week, I get a letter taking me to task for Slate's commenting policy. The reader wants to tell me that I suck, but he doesn't want to log in to Slate's comment system using his credentials for Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Twitter.

Thanks:malliegator

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

NY Times responds to backlash against portrayal of 11-year-old rape victim — The New York Times came under attack Wednesday from bloggers claiming that James C. McKinley Jr.'s disturbing March 8 article about the alleged gang-rape of an 11-year-old girl laid blame on the prepubescent victim.

Discussion: Mother Jones, mediabistro.com, New York Times, The Atlantic Wire and Jezebel

TechCrunch:

LinkedIn Is About To Make Headlines — Editor's note: The following guest post was written by Mrinal Desai, an early employee of LinkedIn who is also co-founder of CrossLoop and addappt. You can follow him on Twitter. — A lot has been written about social news and how Twitter and Facebook …

Discussion: The Wire and Bloggasm, more at Techmeme »

Martin Belam / currybetdotnet:

The Guardian's Paul Lewis on crowd-sourcing investigative journalism with Twitter … Last week I attended an event at the Royal Statistical Society looking at data and news sourcing, and one of the panel sessions was about crowd-sourcing using the internet.

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Hollywood Reporter:

Katie Couric Pursuing Syndicated Talk Show … The following story appears in the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine on newsstands Thursday. — With Katie Couric's contract set to expire in early June, the anchor is closing in on a decision about whether to stay at CBS News …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and TVWeek.com

Adam Bernstein / Washington Post:

David Broder dies; Pulitzer-winning Washington Post political columnist — David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Hearst's Carey: Tablets Will Provide 25 Percent Of Magazines' Circulation — The notion that the iPad was going to save newspapers and magazines had been diminishing somewhat lately, especially since publishers have tended to regard Apple's 70/30 revenue split for digital subscriptions coupled.

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, NetNewsCheck Latest, NYConvergence.com, MediaPost and Media Buyer Planner

BBC:

Gaddafi forces beat up BBC team — Goktay Koraltan and Feras Killani said other detainees had been badly beaten — Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi's security forces detained and beat up a BBC news team who were trying to reach the strife-torn western city of Zawiya.

Discussion: Lens, Guardian, AOL News, The Lede, War in Context and Jon Slattery

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

On Apple TV Special Apps, Sports, And The Slow Bleeding Of Cable — Buried today in the iOS 4.3 release is an unmentioned, but very interesting update for the Apple TV: access to both MLB.tv and NBA League Pass. Yes, the live sports are coming to the Apple TV!

Discussion: GigaOM, SAI, NetNewsCheck Latest, TUAW, Engadget and MacRumors

Chris Dary / Readability Blog:

Meet the New Readability Mobile — With the re-launch of Readability as a full-fledged reading platform, we made a commitment to deliver the best possible reading experience not only in your web browser but on mobile and tablet devices as well. — Today, we're excited to announce the release of the new …

Discussion: Download Squad, MacStories and The Orange View, more at Techmeme », Thanks:steverubel

Claire Cain Miller / Bits:

Need Advice on What to Read? Ask the Internet — Netflix uses a software algorithm to recommend movies and Zappos uses one to recommend shoes. Now Goodreads, the social network for book lovers, is introducing an algorithm to recommend books. — Goodreads was started in 2006 for people who wanted to talk about books online.