Mediagazer: Interpublic discloses stake in Facebook (David Gelles/Financial Times)

10:35 AM ET, April 4, 2011

Top News:

Team From Engadget Makes Jump to SB Nation — In 2005, Jim Bankoff was working at AOL as executive vice president in charge of products and programming. He decided that AOL needed to move aggressively into news if the business, then still a portal clinging to dial-up customers …

Discussion: BuzzMachine, The Wire, Joshua Topolsky, Guardian, SAI, Nilay Patel, BoomTown, @bankoff, eMedia Vitals, VentureBeat, paidContent, Poynter, @benhuh, @dannysullivan, GottaBeMobile, @tolles, @danshanoff, @futurepaul, Geekosystem and broadstuff, more at Techmeme »

Great Speculations:

Arianna, AOL Get Nice Goose If Gray Lady Chases Away Readers — Marvelous Arianna feeds on NYT's folly? — Since its spin-off from Time Warner in December 2009, AOL has pushed forward with a variety of strategic initiatives to resurrect its struggling business, not always in a linear fashion.

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC — Jim Bankoff, the fomer AOL exec responsible for buying Engadget for the Internet portal, has grabbed eight staffers who had left the huge tech site amid tensions recently, in order to start a new gadget property.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Talking Biz News, @karaswisher, Soup and Guardian, more at Techmeme »

Associated Press:

AP source: Couric leaving news anchor post — NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast. — A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity …

Discussion: The Wire, New York Observer, New York Magazine, Mediaite, On Media's Blog, Hollywood Life, Adweek, Gawker, LA Observed and Inside TV

Tanzina Vega / Media Decoder:

Center for Public Integrity to Start New Site for Investigative Journalism — The Center for Public Integrity will start a new Web site this month dedicated to investigative journalism. — The Web site, called iWatch News, will be updated daily with 10 to 12 original investigative pieces and aggregated content from other sources.

Discussion: Free Press

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Tug of War Between Cable Companies and Channels Comes to the iPad — The iPad, which went on sale a year ago, is becoming the latest battleground in a long-running fight over how TV programs will be delivered in the digital age, and who will deliver them. — Last week, Time Warner Cable …

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Updated: Cablevision Launches Optimum for iPad: 300 Channels And VOD

Discussion: Lost Remote and Light Reading

Ken Auletta / New Yorker:

What is Robert Thomson doing at the Wall Street Journal? — What is Robert Thomson doing at the Wall Street Journal? — Read the full text of this article in the digital edition (subscription required), or on our iPad app.

Discussion: Poynter

Wall Street Journal:

Making Facebook Ads More Buyer-Friendly — Specialist Agencies Emerge to Offer Big Marketers Help Navigating Site's Ad System — A new generation of agencies is trying to crack the code for placing ads on Facebook Inc. in a bid to lure more big-ticket marketers to the website.

Discussion: AdExchanger.com

Amy Ma / Wall Street Journal:

News Chief Pushes Multimedia — These are busy times for Emmanuel Hoog, chief executive officer of Agence France-Presse, the global newswires service. Major news events such as the earthquake, tsunami and radiation threat in Japan, and the continuing strife in Libya, typically come around one at a time.

David Gelles / Financial Times:

Interpublic discloses stake in Facebook — Interpublic, the advertising group, has emerged as an unlikely beneficiary of the surging value of Facebook. — The company owns a stake in the social network that is today valued at somewhere between $200m and $300m, depending on Facebook's valuation and the actual size of the stake.

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

ABC News Digital Chief Reports “Limitless Demand” for Video News — but the Challenge is How to Scale Content — Video news is being consumed by more people than ever before and viewership of digital video at ABC New is “exploding,” presenting a “limitless demand” for video journalism …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Marc Karimzadeh / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: Far and Away... What a Write-around... Off the Record, Then On... FAR AND AWAY: Those who ever wondered about Tommy Hilfiger's favorite eatery in the world (Bukhara in New Delhi), Diane von Furstenberg's airline of choice (Air France) or Simon Spurr's go-to hotel (The Dylan in Amsterdam) …

Guardian:

Media buying: a flawed system? — Ofcom is poised to lift the lid on the lucrative, and sometimes controversial, world of media buying - but the ad industry seems strangely unconcerned — Forget Don Draper. Today the real power in advertising is with those who control the money.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

Bonnier Gives Away Its New iPad Magazine Builder — The latest new vendor hoping to power publishers' tablet magazines has one of the slickest systems so far. — As we revealed last month, Bonnier has spun out its Mag+ concept, which is used by Popular Science's iPad edition …