Mediagazer: Can HighGear Media Turn Lousy Blog Economics into a Huge Exit? (TCTV) (Sarah Lacy/TechCrunch)

9:10 PM ET, March 18, 2011

Top News:

David Kirkpatrick / New York Times:

Libya Says It Will Release Times Journalists — TRIPOLI, Libya — Four New York Times journalists missing in Libya since Tuesday were captured by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and will be released Friday, his son, Seif Islam el-Qaddafi, told Christiane Amanpour in an ABC News interview.

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Lincoln Ad Offers Free Access to New York Times Online for Rest of 2011 — One More Loophole in Pay Scheme, to the Benefit of an Advertiser — The New York Times built in one more loophole to its online pay meter scheme than it mentioned yesterday: Interstitial ads from Lincoln …

Discussion: paidContent, Poynter, Felix Salmon, Future of Journalism and The Wire

LAT Blogs / The Big Picture:
The war between Fox News and the New York Times hits the bestseller list

Discussion: Poynter and Mediaite

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
New York Times Paywall Workaround Springs Up Already

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Guardian, Online Journalism Review, Yahoo! News and Change of Subject

Bill Mitchell / Poynter:
New York Times subscription plans all about one challenge: Reader migration

Discussion: New York Times, American Journalism Review and Subtraction.com

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

CEO says Hollywood Reporter, Adweek and sister mags not for sale — The Hollywood Reporter and its sister magazines Adweek, Billboard and Backstage are up for sale again, according to sources who leaked an item to Claire Atkinson in Friday's New York Post. — Not so, insists Richard Beckman …

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, New York Post, MediaPost, FishbowlNY, paidContent, TVWeek.com and New York Magazine

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Confirmed: The Hollywood Reporter IS for Sale (updated) — The Hollywood Reporter and its four sister publications — Billboard, AdWeek, MediaWeek and Brandweek — are up for sale, an individual with knowledge of the proposed transaction told TheWrap on Friday.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Huffpo Claims Its Bloggers Aren't Writers. Is That True? — Accused by the Newspaper Guild of undermining journalism and victimizing journalists, the Huffington Post says it's not the case. No surprise there. What's interesting is how the news-and-blogs site chose to justify itself …

Discussion: Poynter and Future of Journalism

Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:

Faced with a strike, The Huffington Post says: “Our bloggers are happy.” — The Newspaper Guild of America, which represents 26,000 media employees across the country, released a statement this week, encouraging all unpaid writers at The Huffington Post to stop working.

Discussion: CJR, Cision and The Daily Caller, Thanks:cbm

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

Discussion: Runnin' Scared and New York Magazine

Ian Cobain / Guardian:

US spy operation that manipulates social media — Military's ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda — Jeff Jarvis: Washington shows the morals of a clumsy spammer — The US military is developing software that will let it secretly …

Discussion: Mediaite, The First Post, Crikey, Boing Boing, Yahoo! News, CrunchGear and SAI

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Netflix Bets Big On “House Of Cards” But Swears It's Not a Strategy Shift: Q&A With Content Boss Ted Sarandos — Netflix has bought its first TV show which doesn't exist yet. The company has finalized a deal to distribute two seasons of “House Of Cards”, a yet-to-be produced political drama directed …

Discussion: The Official Netflix Blog, GigaOM, TechCrunch, rbr.com, paidContent, Media Decoder, VideoNuze, Electronista, Technologizer, The Wire, Multichannel, AdPulp and parislemon, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Q&A: New York Times Digital Czar Martin Nisenholtz on the Paywall, Pricing, Google and Apple — A lot of you have done a lot of reading, and a lot of writing, about the New York Times' digital paywall/subscription plans. And if any of you who care about this stuff haven't read Ken Doctor's dissection …

Discussion: paidContent, Media & Entertainment, MediaJobsDaily, Adweek, Nieman Journalism Lab and Press Gazette

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Apple Gets Its First Big Publisher: New York Times Subscriptions Will Be Sold Through iTunes

Lois Beckett / Nieman Journalism Lab:
“Please stop calling it a wall”: First thoughts on the Times' pay plan

Discussion: RJI, Slate, The Buttry Diary, Reinventing the Newsroom, The Evolving Newsroom, The Huffington Post, Media Nation and Online NewsHour

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Using Facebook for a TV investigation — Want more proof that social media are great reporting tools? Look no farther than “Keys to the Castle” an investigative story Jace Larson reported for KUSA in Denver that picked up a 2011 duPont-Columbia Award. The story uncovered a housing scam …

Discussion: Lost Remote

Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:

AP Stylebook Finally Changes “e-mail” to “email” — The AP Stylebook, the de facto style and usage guide for much of the news media, announced on Friday that the abbreviated term for “electronic mail” is losing a hyphen, and with it, a relic of a simpler time when Internet technology needed to be explained very carefully.

Discussion: ap.org, The Huffington Post, The Wire, Poynter., @10000words and Switched

Andrew Damstedt / American Journalism Review:

Digging Beneath the Surface — McClatchy's new Washington bureau chief is a champion of aggressive reporting. Posted: Fri, March 18, 2011 — Andrew Damstedt (adamstedt@ajr.umd.edu) is an AJR editorial assistant. — When he took over as chief of McClatchy's Washington, D.C. …

Discussion: Poynter

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Can HighGear Media Turn Lousy Blog Economics into a Huge Exit? (TCTV) — Earlier today, we posted an interview with Matt Heist, CEO of HighGear Media, an auto blog that hit four million uniques last month. That may not sound too jaw-dropping but gearheads are a surprisingly neglected online audience …

Thanks:jbirk

Gillian Reagan / Capital New York:

To make a long story ... long? Remnick, Glass and friends see a big future in long-form journalism — Recently, New Yorker editor David Remnick was talking to one of his writers about “this three-dimensional notion” of the magazine story enabled by the iPad—a promise very much on the minds …