Mediagazer: Analysts: The New York Times Paywall Must Pay With fierce competition for digital ads … (Adweek)

2:50 PM ET, April 18, 2011

Top News:

Roger Ailes Caught Spying on the Reporters at His Small-Town Newspaper — The small-town newspapers in New York's Hudson Valley that Fox News chief Roger Ailes owns with his wife Elizabeth are in a staff revolt after employees caught Ailes spying on them with News Corp. security goons. More »

Discussion: The Wire

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Flipboard: Threat and Opportunity — Every media company should be afraid of Flipboard. The Palo Alto startup epitomizes the best and the worst of the internet. The best is for the user. The worst is for the content providers that feed its stunning expansion without getting a dime in return.

Discussion: blogs.chron.com, Skype Journal, Editors Weblog, Marshall Kirkpatrick …, Poynter, FM Blog, @dannysullivan and Future of Journalism

Adweek:

Adweek Regrooves Adweek was started 33 years ago in a far, far different media world. Now it is remade for a new age and new opportunities. — Welcome to the new Adweek—not your father's trade magazine. — In fact, my dad was in the advertising business and pored over the ad trades.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, paidContent, Media News International, Gawker, MediaPost, FishbowlNY and MinOnline

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
Adweek editor: Michael Wolff ‘saved’ the magazine (but don't call it a trade)

Discussion: Runnin' Scared

Simon / Bloggasm:

The New Yorker gains 16,000 new fans during Facebook experiment — A week ago, the New Yorker released a free Jonathan Franzen essay that would have normally resided behind its paywall. The only catch? You had to “like” its Facebook page and access the story through the social networking giant.

Discussion: Betabeat, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

WSJ Editor Preempts Pulitzers: We Aready Won ‘the Greatest Prize’ — Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife — Who needs a Pulitzer Prize? Not the Wall Street Journal's managing editor, Robert Thomson. In keeping with the anti-elitism of his boss, Rupert Murdoch …

Discussion: The Wire and Talking Biz News

Roy J. Harris Jr / Poynter:
Handicapping the Pulitzers as prize season peaks with the top award

Discussion: Gannett Blog

John Reinan / MinnPost:

Has the Twin Cities' one-newspaper future finally arrived? — The future of newspapers in the Twin Cities could hinge on events in Southern California. Sound crazy? Let me explain. — One of California's largest newspapers, the Orange County Register, is for sale.

David Carr / New York Times:
A Native Son Revitalizes His Paper

Discussion: BrauBlog

CBS News:

Questions over Greg Mortenson's stories — He has written inspiring best sellers, including “Three Cups of Tea,” but are the stories all true? — Please note this story has been formatted transcript style. — Greg Mortenson is a former mountain climber, best-selling author, humanitarian, and philanthropist.

Discussion: Media Decoder, The Wire, New York Times, The Book Bench, The Atlantic Wire, GalleyCat, The New Yorker Blog, Forbes.com, The Daily Beast, CBS News, Hit & Run, Danger Room, HyperVocal, The Daily Caller, The Latest Word, TPM LiveWire, bookforum.com and Associated Press

Gregory Ferenstein / Fast Company:

Al Jazeera's Social Media Experiment “The Stream” Launches Online Today — Al Jazeera's aggressive expansion into cyberspace hopes to empower a new generation of newsmakers, impact the American news market, and capture the attention of young cable cutters. — Fresh off the wild success …

Discussion: The Stream, Reuters, The Politico, @magicandrew, Poynter and Soup

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Mirror Awards announce finalists for best media coverage — Syracuse University has announced the finalists for the fifth annual Mirror Awards honoring media coverage. Out of over 200 entries, judges selected articles from AJR, CJR, Nieman Journalism Lab, MediaShift, Gannett Blog and Poynter, among others.

Discussion: Gannett Blog

Sidney Harman / Newsweek:

Hey, Cancer: Go Stand in the Corner — NEWSWEEK's executive chairman received a dire diagnosis. In his own words, here's how he faced it. — Sidney Harman at the Newsweek Office, 2010. … I have just learned that I have acute myeloid leukemia, or AML.

Discussion: Mediaite, Media Decoder, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Wire and The New Yorker Blog

NPR:

‘Robot Journalist’ Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter … A while back, All Things Considered brought you the story of a breakthrough technology: the robot journalist. — Okay, so it's not really a robot. It's actually a software program. You feed it data, it processes that data …

Discussion: Mediaite, Matters of Varying …, Yglesias and The Next Web

Adweek:

Analysts: The New York Times Paywall Must Pay With fierce competition for digital ads, the paywall is necessary for revenue By Katie Feola — Thanks to a flurry of stop-gap grabs for capital, the New York Times Company has emerged from the recession with enough cash to disprove predictions of its imminent demise.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Gannett's Digital Revenues Still Rising; UK Decline Drags Print Down — Gannett's ability to reach and retain profitability over the past year rested on two main things: the growth of digital revenues and its dedication to holding down expenses. While the McLean, Va.-based media company …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“People remember stories”: Meet Anil Kandangath, the winner of Google's Data Viz Challenge — Back in February, Google issued a challenge to its users: “Can you make tax data exciting?” — Turns out, you can. (No, seriously.) Head over to datavizchallenge.org/, and you'll see over 40 projects that …

Discussion: The Official Google Blog, CNET News, Free Press, BuzzFeed and ReadWriteWeb

David Matthews / The Good Men Project Magazine:

On #Abandonment, Be It of Yard or Blog — With guys like John Steigerwald gainfully employed, David Matthews wonders where the jobs are for the left-brained sportswriter. — It's fitting that in the week that Josh Zerkle stepped down from his post at “With Leather,” Dan Levy's “On the DL” …

The Huffington Post:

PBS Legend Returns To Tell Personal Story About Autism — BOSTON — It's been 16 years since Robert MacNeil sat behind an anchor's desk and a decade since half of PBS's famous MacNeil/Lehrer news team did any street reporting. — It took a 6-year-old autistic boy named Nick to persuade MacNeil to work in front of the camera again.