Mediagazer: Newspaper Guild calls on HuffPo's unpaid writers to withhold their work (Jim Romenesko/Poynter)

11:50 PM ET, March 17, 2011

Top News:

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

The Times Announces Digital Subscription Plan — The New York Times rolled out a plan on Thursday to begin charging the most frequent users of its Web site $15 a month in a bet that readers would pay for news they have grown accustomed to getting free. — Beginning March 28 …

Discussion: New York Times, Nieman Journalism Lab, Nieman Journalism Lab, The New York Times Company, yelvington.com, Epicenter, paidContent, SteveOuting.com, Online Journalism Blog, Mashable!, The Wire, DealBook, paidContent, Recovering Journalist, Yahoo! News, Techdirt, NPR, Mashable!, Mediaite, Poynter, SAI, Mixed Media, @rafat, The Daily Dish, Yahoo! News, @howardkurtz, @penenberg, AdAge, @pkafka, @natives, Vanity Fair, The Wrap, Technologizer, 10,000 Words, HighTalk, @dannysullivan, Daggle, VentureBeat, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Marketing Pilgrim, CJR, Pulse2, Change of Subject, Engadget, @chanders, Wall Street Journal, Understanding Google …, MediaShift, @stevenjayl, MediaFile, MediaFile, CNNMoney.com, Gizmodo, @learmonth, @tim, DigiDave, Gannett Blog, Deadline.com, TUAW, WebNewser, Switched, Electronista, TVbytheNumbers, Media Buyer Planner, Gothamist, ReadWriteWeb, The Register, FishbowlNY, Tuned In, Gawker, @iwantmedia, @cressman, eMedia Vitals, Joho the Blog and Scripting News

Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:

New York Times paywall: wishful thinking or just crazy? — The New York Times just announced a new paywall that will let you see 20 articles a month and thereafter redirect you to a signup for paid access. However, if you follow a NYT link from some search engines and services like Twitter …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, VentureBeat, @scottros, CJR and GalleyCat, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of The New York Times' pay fence — 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. — It's official — and the world still turns.

Discussion: New York Times, TechCrunch, Mediaite, MediaPost, Techdirt, paidContent, The Wire, Mediaweek, News for Digital Journalists, Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter, Signal vs. Noise, Editors Weblog, rbr.com, tag me with a spoon, Talking Biz News and Technologizer, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Apple Gets Its First Big Publisher: New York Times Subscriptions Will Be Sold Through iTunes — The New York Times has finally unveiled its paywall plans, a year-plus in the making. — And with the Times' announcement, Steve Jobs gets his first big publisher to announce it is signing …

Discussion: New York Times, The Wire, App Advice, Betabeat, Yahoo! News, Fast Company, The Atlantic Wire, New York Magazine, MacStories, Switched, NYConvergence.com and NetNewsCheck Latest, more at Techmeme »

Lois Beckett / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“Please stop calling it a wall”: First thoughts on the Times' pay plan — Editor's Note: Now that we know the details of The New York Times' long-awaited paywall plan, what's the reaction to it? We asked some of our favorite media thinkers — including, of course, some of those who made predictions …

Discussion: Media Nation and Online NewsHour

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A promoted New York Times Twitter trend for paywall talk — If you're a journalist on Twitter today, it's probably an understatement to say this morning's announcement of The New York Times' digital subscription plan is blowing up your Twitter stream. But here's something interesting we noticed …

Discussion: Publishing Executive …, MediaPost, Betabeat and New York Times

Nat Ives / AdAge:

New York Times CEO on Pay Meter: Possible Slight Dip in Traffic Will be Short Term — About 15% of Times Online Visitors Will Hit Gate, Janet Robinson Says in Q+A — The New York Times on Thursday announced its long-gestating plan to charge the heaviest users of its web site …

Discussion: Poynter, Epicenter, @johngapper, FishbowlNY, MediaPost and CJR

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
All You Need To Know About The NYTimes.com Paywall

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Google Loophole Has Become The Facebook/Twitter Loophole

Discussion: paidContent and Guardian

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Newspaper Guild calls on HuffPo's unpaid writers to withhold their work — Romenesko Misc. — A Guild release says: “In response to the Huffington Post's refusal to compensate its thousands of writers in the wake of its $315 merger with AOL, the Newspaper Guild has requested a meeting …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:

Should unpaid writers for The Huffington Post go on strike? — The Newspaper Guild of America, which represents 26,000 media employees across the country, released a statement yesterday, encouraging all unpaid writers at The Huffington Post to stop working. — The Guild writes,

Discussion: CJR, The Daily Caller, Mixed Media and Extra!, Thanks:m4tt

MediaShift:

A Twitter Chat About Writer Pay Rates in the Digital Age — Business content on MediaShift is sponsored by the weekend MA in Public Communication at American University. Designed for working professionals, the program is suited to career changers and public relations or social marketing professionals seeking career advancement.

Discussion: Soup

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Scribd's HTML5-Based Document Viewer Is Now Portable, Retroactively Upgrades 20M+ Embeds — Last May, document sharing hub Scribd launched one of its biggest features yet: a document reader based entirely in HTML5. Up until then Scribd had presented its documents using …

Discussion: MacStories and VentureBeat

Mike Webb / ProPublica:

Watch The ProPublica Long-Form Storytelling Event — Last night, ProPublica and the New School sponsored a public conversation on “Long-Form Storytelling in a Short-Attention-Span World.” The event featured This American Life's Ira Glass, The New Yorker's David Remnick, Frontline's Raney Aronson-Rath …

Discussion: Nieman Storyboard and Poynter

Jonathan Seitz / Nieman Reports:

British Libel Law: Its Ripple Effect on Journalists Worldwide — Germany's Duke of Brunswick was an overweight, autocratic paranoiac who was kicked out of his fiefdom by a peasant uprising. — A statement like that might be the reason why the United Kingdom has come to be considered the libel capital of the world.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

The Atlantic Wire:

Anna Holmes: What I Read — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is from a conversation with Anna Holmes …

Thanks:jaredbkeller

Arab Media & Society:

Can Al Jazeera English Leverage its ‘Egypt Moment’ into an American Audience? — Introduction — Al Jazeera English (AJE)1 entered the competitive global news field in late 2006, claiming to give a “voice to the voiceless” as the “world's first English language news channel to have its headquarters in the Middle East.”

Discussion: TVNewser and Media Network