Mediagazer: Will Girl Walks Into a Bar Lead Indie Films to the Web? (Liz Shannon Miller/GigaOM)

5:00 PM ET, March 14, 2011

Top News:

John Montorio Joins HuffPo: Journalism vs Churnalism Battle Rages On — TechCrunch has learned that John Montorio has been named Culture and Entertainment Editor for Aol's Huffington Post Media Group content division. — Montorio is a 30-year veteran of two of the country's biggest newspapers …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Bloggasm, Mediaweek, Media Buyer Planner, paidContent, Editors Weblog, The Wire, On Media's Blog, L.A. Times Tech Blog, FishbowlNY, SAI and LA Observed, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Layoffs Are Last Week's AOL News. This Week: “Giving Back,” Starring Twitter's Biz Stone — Last week's AOL news: Major layoffs in the wake of the Huffington Post acquisition. — This week's AOL news: All sorts of let's-move-ahead-and-get-on-with- it pronouncements from CEO Tim Armstrong and content head Arianna Huffington.

Discussion: New York Observer, Mixed Media, SAI, PC Magazine, New York Magazine and Marketing Pilgrim, more at Techmeme »

Reuters:

Online readership and ad revenue overtake newspapers — * Newspaper newsrooms have shrunk 30 pct since 2000 — For the first time, online readership and advertising revenue has surpassed that of print newspapers. — Online advertising revenue in the United States is projected …

Discussion: PewResearch.org, Media Buyer Planner and eMedia Vitals

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

State of the News Media 2011: New revenues have not arrived, but new challenges have — A year ago, co-authoring the “State of the News Media” chapter on newspapers, I thought 2010 would be a year of rebound — and a test of whether newspapers would reinvest in “developing new lines of business and rebuilding skimpy news reports.”

Discussion: paidContent, TVNewser, Journalism.org and Yahoo! News

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

The News, in Bright Bits — Somewhere along the line, utility became a bad word at news magazines. And that's where The Week saw an opening. — While magazines like Time and Newsweek published heavy essays, distinguished guest columnists and artful photo spreads, The Week embraced magazine journalism …

Discussion: Mixed Media, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal: British Publisher Buys Mental Floss

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Going Rogue on Ailes Could Leave Palin on Thin Ice — Before Sarah Palin posted her infamous “Blood Libel” video on Facebook on January 12, she placed a call to Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. In the wake of the Tucson massacre, Palin was fuming that the media was blaming her heated rhetoric …

Discussion: The Politico, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Outside the Beltway, The Wire, The Atlantic Wire, TVNewser, The Raw Story, FishbowlNY and Gawker

Mark Memmott / NPR:

NPR: O'Keefe ‘Inappropriately Edited’ Video; Exec's Words Still ‘Egregious’ — An update on our post from Sunday about the questions that have been raised regarding conservative political activist James O'Keefe's editing of his secretly recorded video of then-NPR chief fundraiser Ron Schiller slamming conservatives.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Political Punch, Etaoin Shrdlu, TVNewser, New York Magazine, Poynter, The Atlantic Wire, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, The Raw Story, The Empire and Tuned In

Simon Dumenco / AdAge:

A Month With The Daily — Is It Actually Worth Paying for? — Our Media Guy Has Some Unsolicited Advice for News Corp. — While plenty of critics piled on iPad newspaper The Daily within hours of its launch on Feb. 2, I held off because I wanted to give it a fair shot by really living with it for a while.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Bloggasm, Poynter and Crikey

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Virginia is for (news) lovers: How a Charlottesville newspaper and non-profit make their relationship work — A year and a half ago, neither The Daily Progress nor Charlottesville Tomorrow were quite sure their marriage would work. One's a daily newspaper, the other a nonprofit focused on land use and development issues.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Paper erects pay wall - and traffic goes up! — They (including me) said it couldn't be done, but the Augusta Chronicle put up a pay wall without losing traffic. — In fact, page views rose a nifty 5% in the three months since the Georgia newspaper installed a metered system similar …

Discussion: Poynter

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Founder of a Provocative Web Site Forms a New Outlet — AUSTIN, Tex. — For most entrepreneurs, running a Web site that is rife with pornography and frequently criticized as a menace to society would not be considered a résumé booster. Many venture capitalists would head in the opposite direction.

Discussion: Underwire, Fortune and Inc.com

Mike Shields / Adweek:

Hulu Video Gets Original — Development comes as Facebook integration nears — Hulu is planning a major push into original content. The video hub—long a destination for TV and movie content on the Web—is looking to expand beyond its present audience, and perhaps protect itself against a possible partner defection down the road.

Discussion: MediaMemo

Phil Rosenthal / Tower Ticker:

Tribune Co. ‘NewsFix’ in Houston: With no anchor, TV news reels — Sight unseen, for all the talk of reinventing TV news, the revamp of the nightly news at KIAH-TV in Houston sounds less like a revolution than a revival. — The anchorless newscast set to launch in Texas at the end …

Discussion: TVSpy

Frank Rich / New York Times:

Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist — THE first political columnist I ever encountered, after a fashion, was Walter Lippmann. It happened on a snowy afternoon when I was a kid of 11 or 12 growing up in Washington during the J.F.K. years. My wallet had somehow slipped out of my pocket …

Discussion: MediaPost, Yglesias and The Wire

Sebnem Arsu / New York Times:

In Turkey, Thousands Protest a Crackdown on Press Freedom — ISTANBUL — Thousands of people marched in central Istanbul on Sunday to protest a crackdown on the press in Turkey after the arrest of more than a dozen journalists this month. — In the most prominent case, two investigative journalists …

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google to Help Broker Video Ads — Google Inc., trying to become a middleman for selling video ads on the Internet, will soon test a service that matches advertisers with website publishers, including Google's own YouTube video site. — The Silicon Valley company is creating …

Discussion: AdExchanger.com