Mediagazer: The New York Times launches its first Tumblr blog (Joe Pompeo/Yahoo! News)

10:30 AM ET, April 5, 2011

Top News:

Henry Blodget / The Wire:

IT'S OFFICIAL: AOL Fires Freelancers* — A couple of weeks ago, AOL threw its freelance journalists into purgatory: — They were supposed to sit tight and wait to hear from their editors on their roles in the post-merger Huffington Post Media Group. — The freelancers, naturally …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Marketing Pilgrim, mediabistro.com, WebProNews, Guardian, mediabistro.com, FishbowlNY and GigaOM

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

Six things aggregator app News.me must do to beat Zite, Flipboard — Personalized news app Zite made headlines last week for a minor skirmish with a group of major publishers, but the personalized aggregation app expected to make news any day now is Betawork's News.me.

Discussion: Jonathan Stray

Robert Niles / Online Journalism Review:

Whining isn't winning — Please quit whining about “aggregation,” or whatever other phenomenon on the Internet you're blaming today for the fact you no longer enjoy the monopoly over local publishing you once had. — To be blunt, whining about the competition is the act of a loser.

Discussion: Metamedia and Future of Journalism

Henry Blodget / SAI: AOL: We're Not Firing All Our Freelancers — We're Hiring Some Of Them Full-Time

New York Times:

Katie Couric Has a Few Regrets — When you started hosting the “CBS Evening News” in 2006, there was a lot of talk about mold-breaking. Now the show looks very much like the other network broadcasts. — In retrospect I would have given people what they were used to, a traditional newscast.

Discussion: The Wire, Open Mic, Mixed Media, Tower Ticker, TVWeek.com, newsfeed.time.com, The Huffington Post, The 6th Floor, TVLine, Tuned In, Associated Press, TVNewser, MyFox New York and Random Pixels and Loose Talk

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Amid Rumors She's Leaving CBS, Couric Heads to Iraq — As reports continue to swirl about an impending departure from her anchor position at CBS News, Katie Couric will embark Monday night on a long-planned trip to Iraq, where she will report on the military and political situation eight years …

Discussion: NY Daily News, The Wire and TVNewser

Hollywood Reporter: Katie Couric Eyeing AOL, Yahoo Partnership With Talk Show

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

The New York Times launches its first Tumblr blog — More than eight months after media reporters first stumbled upon a URL that the New York Times had quietly registered with Tumblr, the paper of record has finally launched its inaugural editorial product on the influential blogging platform.

Discussion: Noted, eMedia Vitals and FishbowlNY

Neil Vidyarthi / SocialTimes.com:

Tumblr's Mark Coatney: Do Most Websites Treat Commenters As Second Class Citizens? [Video] — Mark Coatney, Media Evangelist for Tumblr, recently made the trip down to our mediabistro office in Manhattan to let us in on a few secrets about Tumblr's growth and progress over the last year.

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Vice Media Empire Is Near a Big Infusion of Cash — Vice was born in 1994 as an underground magazine in Montreal, financed by a government subsidy and run by three friends who started their own company because no one else would hire them. — Today it is a pan-media confederation with a record label …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and paidContent

Informer:

Conde Nast Paid $8 Million To Scammer Who Sent One Email — By William P. Barrett and Janet Novack — With a Parade of fancy fraud cases centered on Wall Street so much in Vogue, here is Chatter about a swindle with no Glamour at all but still a certain amount of Allure.

Discussion: The Wire, Techdirt, New York Magazine, Threat Level, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Geekosystem and Gawker

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:
Report: San Francisco Chronicle to put up paywall

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, MediaPost and Gannett Blog

Patrick May / Mercury News:

Apple makes bid to become gatekeeper for newspapers and magazines — Apple's (AAPL) bold foray into the world of digital publishing could make it the online gatekeeper for newspaper and magazine content, just as it is for music. — But for a plan ostensibly designed to help ailing print publishers sign …

Discussion: Noted

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

‘The conditions are finally right to give newspaper paywalls a fair shake’ — That's what former NPR chief executive and ex-head of NYTimes.com Vivian Schiller said at the 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism. This is the first time I've felt this way, and possibly the first time I've …

Discussion: Austin American-Statesman and CJR

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Hulu Q1 By The Numbers: On Pace For $500 Million 2011 — In a new blog post, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar says the online video joint venture finished the first quarter of 2011 up 90 percent in revenue over the same period last year and is on pace to bring in a half-billion in revenue this year.

Discussion: Hulu Blog, MediaMemo and The Wire, more at Techmeme »

Ian Burrell / The Independent:

FT: The Pink 'Un powers on — The Financial Times's online subscription model is 10 years old and has just posted huge subscription figures. What's its secret? — It's the 10th anniversary of the Financial Times introducing subscription charges for access to its digital content.

Discussion: blogs.journalism.co.uk, Editors Weblog and Press Gazette

Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:
INTERVIEW-FT won't give up subscriber relationship to Apple

Discussion: Noted, eMedia Vitals, eBookNewser, Nieman Journalism Lab, blogs.journalism.co.uk, iClarified, MobileBurn.com, thinq_, Gizmodo, MacRumors, App Advice, Talking Biz News, Gizmodo Australia, MacStories and Daring Fireball, more at Techmeme »

Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:

The View From Somewhere — Neither ideology nor politics defines my work, but that doesn't mean I'm without bias - consider me a partisan for public discourse, California roots, and disagreement in conversation. — The press critic Jay Rosen often complains about The View From Nowhere …

Dan Levy / Sparksheet:

Slate of Mind: Q&A with David Plotz — Slate has always labeled itself an “online magazine,” even as a whole ecosystem of blogs and content websites and tablet newspapers has sprouted around it. How is Slate different from the Gawkers and HuffPosts and Daily Beasts, not just in terms …

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Who's afraid of Arianna Huffington? — The New York Times has been gunning for The Huffington Post lately, which makes me wonder what exactly Arianna Huffington has done to scare or anger them so. Or perhaps that's the wrong question. Given that our enemies are often those we don't understand …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Atlantic Wire, Rebooting The News, Stowe Boyd, On Media's Blog, FishbowlDC and New York Observer

Great Speculations: Arianna, AOL Get Nice Goose If Gray Lady Chases Away Readers

Jon Lafayette / Broadcasting & Cable:

EXCLUSIVE: Bounce TV, New Broadcast Net Aimed at African Americans, To Launch in Fall — Andrew Young, Martin Luther King III among founders — A group led by Ambassador Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III is expected on Monday to announce plans to launch a new over-the-air television network aimed …

Discussion: rbr.com, The Wrap, Company Town, MediaPost, Multichannel News and TVWeek.com

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Newspapers get 3x too many ad dollars, says study — Even though newspapers have lost nearly half of their ad revenues in the last five years, some analysts believe they still are getting three times more advertising than their readership deserves. — This good news/bad news for publishers comes …