Mediagazer: TV Networks May Punt if NFL Football Is Lost (Brian Steinberg/AdAge)

1:05 PM ET, March 15, 2011

Top News:

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Here's a Washington Post Story With All the Editor's Notes In It — If you spend more than five minutes talking to an editor, you're sure to hear about how some story or other was a total piece of s**t before said editor got his hands on it. Now you can judge for yourself!

Discussion: CJR

Robminto / Online Journalism Blog:

When is an online comment defamatory? — Rob Minto looks at two recent cases that leave the field of libel online as confusing as ever. — For several years, newspapers, bloggers and other online publishers have been waiting for a landmark case to clarify defamation online.

Discussion: Media News

Marisa Guthrie / Hollywood Reporter:

Cable News Viewership Declines Double Digits in 2010 … After years of audience growth, cable news may have hit a wall. — According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report, cable news viewership for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News fell substantially in 2010 …

Discussion: paidContent, The Atlantic Wire, TVNewser, Editors Weblog, Yahoo! News, Kirk LaPointe's …, J-Source, Inside Cable News, FishbowlNY and MediaPost

The Huffington Post:

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Signing Former Sen. Evan Bayh As A Contributor — UPDATE: Fox News officially announced on Monday afternoon that former Democratic Senator Evan Bayh is becoming a contributor to the network. — Michael Clemente, the network's senior vice president for news, announced the move in a statement.

Discussion: Yglesias, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Salon, The Atlantic Wire, Gawker and TPMDC

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

CNN Live ‘TV Everywhere’, New HD Video Player On The Way — The launches are still months away but CNN Digital has a pair of announcements from SXSW tonight that mark significant advancements for the network's online and mobile video offerings. In early summer, CNN plans to flip the switch …

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:

“The News Industry Is No Longer In Control Of Its Destiny” — And other findings of the Pew State of the Media Report — Today the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism released its annual “State of the Media” report, and it's a mixed bag of good and bad news.

Discussion: Journalism.org and Broadcasting & Cable

Jennifer Saba / Reuters:
Online readership and ad revenue overtake newspapers

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

Tommy Christopher / Mediaite:

MSNBC Alters Lawrence O'Donnell ‘Shooting Fish’ Michele Bachmann Segment in Online Version — In our earlier write-up of Lawrence O'Donnell's Michele Bachmann-themed “Rewrite” segment, I completely missed the possibly controversial nature of O'Donnell's “shooting fish in a barrel” reference …

Discussion: The Wire

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

YouTube's Premium-Content Strategy Starts to Take Shape — Talks of Providing $2M-$5M Seed Funds to Agents and Producers Who Commit to Episodes — How do you get professional video if you don't want to do big money deals with Hollywood studios? You go straight to the creators.

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

LAT publisher on how bankruptcy has hurt Tribune — Los Angeles Times publisher and Tribune co-president Eddy Hartenstein testified Monday that bankruptcy has prevented Tribune from keeping up with the rest of the publishing industry by consolidating operations, and has prevented the company …

Discussion: Bloomberg

Brian Steinberg / AdAge:

TV Networks May Punt if NFL Football Is Lost — Some Ad Dollars to Go to Other Sports; Could Prime Time Benefit? — Will the TV networks be sacked by the current NFL showdown? — A recent legal ruling means they can keep the billions of dollars in rights fees they'd otherwise owe …

Discussion: Company Town and Media Money …

Jennifer Mascia / New York Times:

Charlie Sheen Helps Make a Name for Ustream — His last job was on a network sitcom that drew 15 million viewers a week. Now Charlie Sheen, fallen television star, delivers nonsensical, expletive-laced rants before an audience of roughly three million on a live video-streaming Web site called Ustream …

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:

Walking Out on 60 Minutes: A Time-Honored Tradition — This past weekend, 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon was interviewing “Curve Ball,” the notorious Iraq defector whose fabrications about his country's supposed “weapons of mass destruction” played a large part in the US decision to go to war.

Discussion: CBS News

Ben Parr / Mashable!:

Google's Blogger Is About to Get an Overhaul — Blogger, the 11-year-old blog publishing service acquired by Google in 2003, has begun teasing a complete revamp of its blogging platform. — Blogger is one of the world's top 10 biggest websites, far larger than WordPress.com, Tumblr or Posterous.

Discussion: Blogger Buzz, The Next Web and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Deadline.com:

AMC Entertainment Trying Again With IPO — This will be the second try at going public for the national theater chain, which withdrew a filing back in the fall of 2008. The updated effort involves raising $450 million by offering common stock to be used to pay off debt, Reuters says.

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: Newsonomics, eMedia Vitals and Poynter

David Carr / New York Times:

Gains for NPR Are Clouded — The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism will issue its annual State of the Media report on Monday, and you will be unsurprised to learn that journalism remains in broad retreat. — News is still on the march: for the first time ever, more people consumed their news on the Web than with newspapers.

Discussion: TeleRead, Reportr.net, Editors Weblog, News for Digital Journalists and TVNewser