Mediagazer: Does commentary belong in local newscasts? (Deborah Potter/NewsLab)

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

News.me, the iPad News Aggregator Blessed by Big Publishers, Gets Ready to Launch — News.me, Bit.ly's social news iPad app, was supposed to launch by the end of 2010. But developers didn't submit it for Apple's approval until about a month ago. — Now it looks as if News.me is just about ready for public consumption.

Discussion: Betabeat, Yahoo! News, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Future of Journalism, eMedia Vitals, INFOdocket, mocoNews, Garcia Media, NewsGrange and Soup

News.Me, Social News Service, Debuts for iPad — News.me, the long-awaited social news service developed in collaboration with Betaworks, a technology incubator, and The New York Times Company, is ready for its debut. — News.me is a newsfeed that uses artificial intelligence to monitor …

Ellis Hamburger / SAI:

News.me's iPad App Will Get You Around The New York Times Paywall For A Fraction Of The Cost — News.me is a confusing product, as outlined in the “for publishers” page on News.me. — It's basically like Flipboard for iPad, but you have to pay $0.99 per week for it.

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

The Washington Post Launches Trove, A Personalized Social News Site — The Washington Post Company this morning debuted its free, personalized, social news site and aggregator Trove in public beta. — First reported to be in the works and nearing launch by The Wall Street Journal in February 2011 …

Discussion: MediaMemo, Fast Company, FishbowlNY, mediabistro.com, The Wrap, Journalism.co.uk, On Media's Blog, Weigel, Noted and Facebook

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Byliner Launches With A Splash, Aims To Disrupt Long-Form Journalism — The media is buzzing with allegations that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson fabricated his bestselling books and misused millions of dollars in donations. — Amazingly, within days of 60 Minutes breaking the story …

Discussion: @jenny8lee, The O. J., eMedia Vitals, Sun Herald, NetNewsCheck Latest and Poynter

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

‘Glenn Beck Threw Me Under the Bus’: Breakfast with Andrew Breitbart … Over crème brûlée oatmeal on Monday, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart talked sting videos. Mr. Breitbart explained to the Transom that Breitbart blog protocol requires undercover video kingpin James O'Keefe …

Discussion: Mediaite, New York Magazine, On Media's Blog and Media Matters for America

Glynnis MacNicol / The Wire:

Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker And Photographer Reportedly Killed In Libya — This is terrible news. And important to note the details are still sketchy. — But there are reports that photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros have been killed in Libya.

Discussion: @timhetherington, Vanity Fair, @joshuahersh and indieWIRE News

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The writing on the wall: Why news organizations are turning to outside moderators for help with comments — When a news organization decides to have someone else to deal with their online comments, it's sometimes seen as waving the white flag or the equivalent of dumping a problem child at a boarding school.

Discussion: Poynter.

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

eBay Acquires Location-Based Media And Advertising Company WHERE — eBay has acquired location-based media company Where.com, the ecommerce giant tells us. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2011.

Discussion: GigaOM, ClickZ, Between the Lines Blog, Search Engine Land, MarketingVOX and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

Louis Gray:

Physical Media Has To Go. I'm Digital Only From Here. — Moving across town last summer was a real eye opener in terms of seeing how tied we still are to physical things. Beyond all our sundry items needed to survive, there were boxes upon boxes of nice-looking and possibly interesting books …

Discussion: GigaOM, Techland and Fox News

Bloomberg:

Cuban Puts Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures Up for Sale — Billionaire Mark Cuban has put his Landmark Theatres and Magnolia Pictures up for sale, saying entertainment companies are attracting “huge valuations.” — Cuban, 52, is “just testing the waters,” he said today in an e-mail in response to a question from Bloomberg News.

Discussion: Company Town, The Wrap and Deadline.com

New York Post:

Condé Nast is making customers very app-y — Consumers may start seeing more free downloads of tablet editions from Condé Nast magazines — at least as temporary traffic builders. — Industry watchers were wondering what was up last week following the appearance of a free …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Nicholas Jackson / The Atlantic Online:

Gawker's Traffic Numbers Are Worse Than Anyone Anticipated — When Gawker launched an aggressive redesign back in early February, the tech blogs were waiting to see what would happen. How would readers respond? (The assumption was that the reaction would be negative …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and @nicknotned

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

Tag a TV Ad, Get a Free Pepsi — Television-tagging iPhone application IntoNow has partnered with PepsiCo in a promotion that will reward app users with a free soda for tagging the drink-maker's new Pepsi MAX spot. — “The basic concept is to find the Pepsi MAX commercial, tag it and select a store …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Lost Remote and MediaPost

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Does commentary belong in local newscasts? — Wearing dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, Bubba the Love Sponge brings it on. “Oil prices are a scam,” he roars. “A select few people are getting ultra-rich on the backs of the American family!” It's classic Bubba, the same shock jock shtick he's been doing for years on the radio.

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Lebedev to launch Saturday i — Paper expected to hit newsstands within the next few weeks priced at 30p — Alexander Lebedev is poised to bring his brand of cut-price national news to the weekend market with the launch of a 30p Saturday edition of the i.

Discussion: Media Week

Matt DeRienzo / NewspaperTurnaround.Com:

Why our small-town daily is adding a full-time curator — We're adding a full-time curator position at The Register Citizen. — Jenny Golfin, whose duties have included morning shift web updating, social media management and reporting, will be devoted full-time to this new role.

Discussion: Knight Digital Media Center …

Mohan Ramkumar / The Next Web:

CNN App launches for Android phones — Following on from the launch of its Android tablet app, CNN has unveiled an official app for Android smartphones. — For those wondering what the big deal is about launching the same app again, unlike iOS, Android tablets and smartphones run …

Discussion: SocialTimes.com, CNN and Gizmodo

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

HBO Go app set to stream its way to iPhones, iPads and Android devices — Are you familiar with the HBO Go online streaming service that lets subscribers catch up on HBO's award-winning and ass-kicking TV content? Well, 'appy news for you, dear reader, for it's about to hit smartphones and tablets early next month.

Discussion: VentureBeat, TUAW, CNET News, 9 to 5 Mac and ZDNet

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Are Apps Like Flipboard the Future of Media? — If you spend any time at all with an iPad, it soon becomes second nature to swipe through webpages, books and magazines with just a finger stroke, to the point where this has become the preferred way of consuming content for many digital natives …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Why Subscription May Not Be The Panacea In Entertainment — Subscription digital access is increasingly the hot business model for multi-platform entertainment distributors. — But, to Lovefilm, which pioneered UK DVD-by-post subscription, the same model could be increasingly second-best in its coming online era.

Donald R. Winslow / Lens:

The Pulitzer Eddie Adams Didn't Want — For a long time after Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for “Saigon Execution,” he wouldn't speak of it. He turned away questions about the picture, grumbling some dismissive rebuff like, “Everything's already been said about it.” Or: “There's nothing new.

Discussion: Poynter and Future of Journalism

Marika Lynch / KnightBlog:

Coming Monday: First Knight-Mozilla innovation challenge launches — On Monday, the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership will launch its first innovation challenge. The contest (one of three running through May) aims to accelerate media innovation by solving technological challenges …

Rem Rieder / American Journalism Review:

Spreading the Wealth — Denting the big-paper domination of the Pulitzers. — Rem Rieder (rrieder@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's editor and senior vice president. — In recent years, the Pulitzer Prize sweepstakes has often been dominated by a handful of large newspapers winning huge clusters of prizes.

Discussion: Google News Blog, BusinessJournalism.org …, Nieman Storyboard and The Firewall

Mark Kleinman / Kleinman:

Exclusive: News Corp Mulls F1 Bid (Updated) — News Corporation, the global media group, is in the early stages of talks about forming a consortium that would seek to acquire control of Formula One (F1) motor racing, I have learned. — News Corp has been in preliminary talks in recent weeks …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and The Wire

Kylie Davis / INMA:

Dopamine, Charlie Sheen and an addiction that is killing media — Media people have long joked that the industry is addictive, but new research shows that actually it is medically true. — The constant barrage of information, new facts, tight deadlines, demands from multiple inputs …

Discussion: FM Blog, The Daily Beast and Bits

James Gleick / Smithsonian Magazine:

What Defines a Meme? — Our world is a place where information can behave like human genes and ideas can replicate, mutate and evolve — With the rise of information theory, ideas were seen as behaving like organisms, replicating by leaping from brain to brain, interacting to form new ideas …

Discussion: Boing Boing

Grant Gross / PC World:

FTC Takes Action Against ‘fake’ News Sites — Several websites apparently featuring news reports that show the weight-loss benefits of acai berry products aren't what they appear to be, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Illinois Attorney General's Office said Tuesday.

Discussion: The Wire, Media Decoder and Federal Trade Commission