Mediagazer: The +1 button & AdWords — Word of mouth is powerful. (Dan Friedman/Inside AdWords)

12:25 PM ET, March 31, 2011

Top News:

On NBC, the missing story about parent company General Electric — Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press - The story that General Electric did not pay federal taxes last year was widely reported everywhere but NBC. — It's the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow …

Discussion: www.thetakeaway.org, Mediaite, ThinkProgress, TVNewser, Company Town, Yahoo! News and Poynter

Financial Times:

News Corp: keeping it in the family — Because it is not their fault, one of life's saddest spectacles is watching the offspring of the rich and famous trying to legitimise their success. Would Stella McCartney have made it to the top of the fashion world without her last name?

Discussion: Guardian

Katie Feola / Adweek:

What's the Real Reason for James Murdoch's Promotion? — New job at News Corp. gets heir apparent out of U.K., away from phone-tapping scandal — Is News Corp. getting James Murdoch the hell out of Dodge? — The media empire—run, of course, by James Murdoch's father Rupert …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and New York Observer

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:

HuffPo co-founder explains the secrets of viral content — Jonah Peretti, who co-founded both the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, has spent a lot of time thinking about what makes content go viral. Today, he shared some lessons on-stage at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco — and in the process …

Discussion: New York Observer, NetNewsCheck Latest and TechCrunch

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

When Media Giants Attack! Cease-and-Desist Letter to News Reader Zite Claims All Kinds of Copyright Damage — A panoply of big media giants sent a cease-and-desist letter today to Zite, the Apple iPad news reader app. — The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty Images, Time …

Discussion: paidContent, FishbowlNY, ReadWriteWeb, Techdirt and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Dan Friedman / Inside AdWords:

The +1 button & AdWords — Word of mouth is powerful. When you have a choice to make, it's common to turn to the people you trust. But what about word of click? How can getting a suggestion from a friend or co-worker when you need it be as simple as having a hallway conversation — or even simpler?

Discussion: The Official Google Blog, Search Engine Land, Social Web Blog, USA Today, Brave New World, Runnin' Scared, ReadWriteWeb, hypebot, ClickZ, VentureBeat, Fortune and Inside AdSense, more at Techmeme »

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:
Google Seeks Answer to Facebook With ‘Social Search’

Discussion: TechCrunch, Mashable!, The Next Web, Geekosystem and MarketingVOX

Lance Ulanoff / PC Magazine:

Why I Like the New York Times Paywall — The New York Times paywall model maybe be flawed, but so it is the ‘free content’ model that preceded it. — Just as I predicted two years ago, the free Web is going bye-bye. The New York Times decision to throw its content behind a paywall …

Los Angeles Times:

KCET-TV said to be in talks to sell landmark studio to Church of Scientology — KCET, which has been struggling to rebuild viewership after its split from PBS, plans to move to a smaller location, real estate brokers say. — The KCET building on Sunset Boulevard.

Discussion: Poynter., TVWeek.com, Gawker, LA Observed, The Atlantic Wire and Show Tracker

Jaclyn Schiff / Mediaite:

9 Questions For Tumblr Newsie Ernie Smith Of ShortFormBlog — ShortFormBlog — a news venture with the fitting tag line, “Read a little. Learn a lot” — seems like it was tailor-made for Tumblr. The punchy, personable text updates, bold graphics and unusual, yet newsy videos get to the heart of Tumblr users' news preferences.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and Soup

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of oblivion — So, how long do newspapers have? — Two years ago, that question was on the lips of many as newspapers cut back deeply — in staff, in number of pages, in the size of the page, and in selling their very headquarters and flagship buildings — in the depth of Deep Recession.

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

Pandora CEO: The Complexity Of International Copyright Law Is A Big Problem — When Pandora filed papers with the SEC earlier this year indicating its plans for an IPO, the company disclosed a variety of risks to investors. That included the fact that copyright royalties eat up half its revenue …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

If You Only Have Time To Read 5 Stories A Day, Let Summify Pick Them — As a person who consumes dozens, if not hundreds, of articles on the web each and every day, it's easy to remember that I'm an extreme outlier. Most people would prefer to read only a few articles a day — only the ones that they know are worth their time.

Discussion: Mashable! and GeekWire

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

How The Daily Is Doing So Far*: 500k Downloads, 75k Users — The Daily's editor, Jesse Angelo, introduces the new iPad-based publication at its launch event. — How many subscriptions to The Daily, News Corp.'s iPad-only multimedia newspaper, have been sold since the expiration of the free trial period last week?

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Brian Steinberg / AdAge:

Why ‘Mad Men’ Needs to Embrace More Advertising, Not Shun It — Tuning In: Clever Show Needs to Consider Its Business Plan — You'd think the people who write a show ostensibly about the advertising industry would want to have more to do with it, not less.

Discussion: Company Town

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Richard Holbrooke's Papers Entrusted to George Packer — When Richard C. Holbrooke died in December, he left behind the notes for a project he never had time to finish. — Mr. Holbrooke, a prominent diplomat in Democratic administrations since the 1960s, had planned to write a memoir …