Mediagazer: BBC World Service Arabic cuts not as ‘severe as planned’ (John Plunkett/Guardian)

1:25 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 …

Discussion: TechCrunch, BoomTown, paidContent, The Wrap, VatorNews, Wall Street Journal, Poynter, Bloggasm, VentureBeat, p2pnet, TechEye, @mathewi, @edmundlee, @semilshah, Pluggd.in, SAI, New York Magazine and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

THE GORY DETAILS: Tim Armstrong's Layoffs Memo — UPDATE: We've been covering AOL's layoffs all morning long. Below is a memo from CEO Tim Armstrong detailing what's happening. — Other stories we've covered: — AOL is planning a big re-org in its tech division, with HuffPo's people getting a bigger role.

Discussion: Mediaite and MediaNama

Nicholas Carlson / The Wire:

AOL To Slash More Destination Sites And Media Brands Than Expected — As a part of today's layoffs and the integrations with the Huffington Post, AOL is going to shut down many more of its media brands than previously expected. — A source close to company tells us the decisions on which sites …

Discussion: SAI

David Kaplan / paidContent:

@ Media Summit: AOL's Armstrong: Layoffs Today, Hiring Tomorrow — AOL (NYSE: AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong took the stage at Bloomberg Media Summit and confirmed last night's big news: the company would be laying off 900 staffers, with be 400 layoffs in India, 300 jobs outsourced and 200 left.

Discussion: Mediaweek and FT Tech Hub

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of AOL/Patch buying Outside.in — Editor's Note: Each week, Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of news for the Lab. — There are two ways to be local, we've learned.

Discussion: Bloggasm

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, Washington Post, Online NewsHour, The Atlantic Online, Current.org Blog, The Future of Capitalism, Boing Boing and New York Times

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

Discussion: Pressthink, The Atlantic Online, 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, The Atlantic Wire, Weigel 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

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: VentureBeat, The Wire, GigaOM, NetworkEffect and Bloggasm, more at Techmeme »

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, Jezebel and New York Magazine

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

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: Yahoo! News, New York Times, Time, Lens, AOL News, Guardian, The Lede, War in Context and 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: TVNewser, 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.

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC World Service Arabic cuts not as ‘severe as planned’ — Africa and Middle East political crises force change but wholesale reversal of alterations to Arabic operations ruled out — The BBC's global news director Peter Horrocks has indicated a further U-turn over planned cuts …

Discussion: Media Network

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.

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, TUAW, Engadget and MacRumors