Mediagazer: 9 Questions For Tumblr Newsie Ernie Smith Of ShortFormBlog (Jaclyn Schiff/Mediaite)

7:55 AM 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, mediabistro.com and Poynter

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, ReadWriteWeb and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

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

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

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 …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
James Murdoch Marked As News Corp. #3; Promoted To Deputy COO, Moving To NY

Discussion: News Corporation, Media & Entertainment, Guardian, Guardian, Media Week, Press Gazette, Company Town, FishbowlNY, rbr.com, AdAge, Media News International, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wire and On Media's Blog

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: NetNewsCheck Latest and TechCrunch

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., LA Observed and Show Tracker

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

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.

New York Post:

Paltrow said to be cooking up a food magazine — Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow has been remaking herself in recent years as a food expert with strong ties to celebrity chef Mario Batali — and now, according to a reliable source, she is trying to expand her empire outside of the Hollywood realm with a magazine project.

Discussion: The Wire, The Huffington Post, Gothamist, Movieline and FishbowlNY

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Roku Boxes To Hit Best Buy Shelves — After selling its streaming media players primarily online for the last three years, Roku will now start selling its set-top boxes in Best Buy stores. This is Roku's largest retail partnership; it also sells its models through smaller chains BJ's Wholesale Club, Fry's Electronics and RadioShack.

Discussion: Ubergizmo, Online Video News, GigaOM, CNET News, Multichannel and The Consumerist

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

The Era of Sound-Bite Warfare — Mike Huckabee's remarks about Natalie Portman's out-of-wedlock pregnancy weren't incendiary—until Eric Hananoki got his hands on them and found just the right snippet to get the media fired up. Howard Kurtz on how partisan groups are deploying sound bites to discredit public figures.

Discussion: The Daily Beast

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 …

Adrian Chen / Gawker:

Meet the Man Responsible for Rebecca Black — This month Rebecca Black's “Friday” hit the Internet like audio-visual swine flu—and the Internet hit back. She seemed to come out of nowhere, possibly autotuned from her first word. But Black was spawned by the vanity production company Ark Music Factory.