Mediagazer: Q & A with Overheard in the Newsroom's Kevin Cobb (Robert Hernandez/Online Journalism Review)

12:25 AM ET, March 24, 2011

Top News:

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

AOL HuffPost To Freelancers: We Want You On Staff, But Real Journalists Only Need Apply — In the reorganization of AOL and the Huffington Post into the Huffington Post Media Group, the company succumbed to layoffs and consolidated AOL news sites into the Huffington Post, folding or shutting down thirty properties.

Discussion: Mixed Media, Mediaite, Marketing Pilgrim, FishbowlNY, MetaFilter, NYConvergence.com, eMedia Vitals and Mixed Media, more at Techmeme »

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

Huffington's cultural revolution: Destroying the old world to forge a new one, for a while — Here's a short play, set in 1997: — Scene: Journalist, applying for a job, is seated across a table at a moderately priced Italian restaurant from an editor who's just taken over the Arts …

Discussion: Poynter and FishbowlNY

Erik Sherman / BNET:
AOL's Brewing Conflict: Brand Versus Journalism

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, The Wire and MediaJobsDaily

Kelly McBride / ESPN:

Straight to the point — Poynter Review Project aims to help fans understand ESPN, and vice versa — Since Poynter and ESPN announced that we would partner to create a review project as the next evolution of the ESPN ombudsman, the general reaction from you, the fans, has been: What is The Poynter Institute anyway?

Discussion: Poynter

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Bloomberg: Personalizing the News for 20 Million People — Mining through terabytes and zettabytes of data isn't just for hardware companies and database-service providers — media companies like Bloomberg are also trying to make use of the oceans of information they have about their users …

Discussion: Betabeat

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Magazines' New Rules for Counting Digital Sales — IPad Editions No Longer Need to Include Every Print Ad to Count Toward Circulation Guarantees — Magazines can now count iPad and other digital-edition sales toward their paid-circulation guarantees even if those digital versions don't include …

Discussion: paidContent, Canadian Magazines, BtoB Magazine and accessabc.com

David Bauder / Associated Press:

CNN trying to take advantage of newsgathering — NEW YORK — CNN sent 11 crews to cover Japan's earthquake and tsunami, including headliners Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta. Anchors Wolf Blitzer and Piers Morgan were elsewhere last week: Blitzer hosting his evening newscast from France …

Discussion: New York Times, Mediaite and TVNewser

Frederic Lardinois / NewsGrange:

Think Quarterly: Google Launches Its Own Online Magazine — We hear a lot about Google's relationship with publishers, but this week the search giant also quietly launched its own online publication based in the UK. Think Quarterly, which calls itself a “a breathing space in a busy world” …

Discussion: Search Engine Land, Mediaite and FishbowlNY

Irina Slutsky / AdAge:

Facebook Test Mines Real-Time Conversations for Ad Targeting — Offering Marketers the Ability to Target Swells of Sentiment, Much Like Twitter — This month — and for the first time ever — Facebook started to mine real-time conversations to target ads.

Discussion: All Facebook, ClickZ and New York Magazine

Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:

USA Today rewrites strategy to cope with Internet — McLEAN, Va. - USA Today, a newspaper created nearly 30 years ago to appeal to people who grew up watching television, is revising its formula to try to counter the Internet's threat to its survival. — The nation's second-largest newspaper …

Discussion: Poynter and On Media's Blog

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

Being Mrs. Keller — Sometimes it's convenient to have a newsroom at your fingertips. — When returning to the states from a trip to the U.K., Emma Gilbey Keller, spouse of New York Times executive editor and 50th most important person in the world Bill Keller, asked the Twitterverse, “Exactly what is the snow situ in NYC?

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

McClatchy, a Groupon Partner, Starts Selling Its Own Daily Deals, Too — Will Still Use Groupon, but Becomes Latest Publisher to Try Social Coupon Game for Itself — After teaming up with Groupon to get daily deals on its websites last summer, McClatchy Co. has decided to also get into the business on its own.

Discussion: Screenwerk and @r

Simon Owens / Nieman Journalism Lab:

How CNN's iReport enhanced the network's coverage of the Japan earthquake and its aftermath — When the ground began to vibrate in Fukushima, Japan on March 11, Ryan McDonald thought it was just a “normal earthquake.” But the fear in his voice as the vibrations escalated was palpable.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Sulzberger: App Sales Prove News Consumers Are Willing To Pay — The rise of tablets and apps has helped pave the way for the New York Times and potentially many other newspapers to charge for content, said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the company's chairman and publisher, in an interview …

Discussion: Mixed Media, iMediaConnection Blog, 9 to 5 Mac, The Wire, mediabistro.com, NetNewsCheck Latest and Yahoo! News

Chris Ariens / mediabistro.com:

Fox Business Network to become Full Service Client of Nielsen — Breaking: Beginning Monday, Fox Business Network will become a full service client of Nielsen Media Research. This means the network's ratings will be accessible to all subscribing Nielsen clients on a next-day basis for the first time since launch.

Discussion: rbr.com, Inside Cable News, Talking Biz News and MediaPost

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

What The Collapse Of The Google Books Deal Really Means — For all the growth in the digital book market over the last few years, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Books is still the only project with the outsize ambition of scanning every book, and it's not an exaggeration to say the deal it reached …

Discussion: Techland, O'Reilly Radar, TeleRead and Brave New World, more at Techmeme »

Robert Hernandez / Online Journalism Review:

Q & A with Overheard in the Newsroom's Kevin Cobb — By Robert Hernandez: For folks that have left the newsroom, it's become the source of our newsroom culture fix. For those in newsrooms, it's the place that confirms you are not alone and, yes, the newsroom is crazy. Awesome and crazy.

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Glenn Beck Contemplates Starting Own Channel — The possibility that Glenn Beck will exit the Fox News Channel at the end of the year has prompted a big question in media circles: if he leaves, how will he bring his considerable audience with him? — Two of the options Mr. Beck has contemplated …

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: At Neon Tommy, the reporters are responsible for delivery too — The workings of USC Annenberg student-run news website illustrate the new reality for journalists. — A conversation this week in the offices of Neon Tommy, a USC student-run online news outlet, went something like this …

Discussion: Poynter and smays.com

Chris O'Shea / mediabistro.com:

The Atlantic Pulls Unflattering Jay-Z Article — Yesterday The Atlantic ran an excerpt from a book on Jay-Z that shows the rapper in some rather unflattering light. Now that article is nowhere to be found (here's a reposting of it). The author, Zack O'Malley Greenburg …

Discussion: HYUNINC and New York Press

Leslie Horn / PC Magazine:

Q&A: The Person Who Demolished the Times Paywall Via Twitter — “The New York Times has the power to create a viable online model, but they need to start thinking more like Google and less like the RIAA.” — When the New York Times announced its plans for an online subscription model …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Pretty Flipboard Fundraising at an Even Prettier $200 Million Valuation — Flipboard, the high-profile and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, is out raising another round of funding at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

Discussion: SAI, more at Techmeme »