Mediagazer: Surprising Straight Talk About the Politics of AOL-Huffpo (Jeff Bercovici/Mixed Media)

7:15 PM ET, April 20, 2011

Top News:

C.J. Chivers / New York Times:

‘Restrepo’ Director Is Killed While Working in Libya — BENGHAZI, Libya — Tim Hetherington, the conflict photographer who was a director and producer of the film “Restrepo,” was killed in the besieged city of Misurata on Wednesday, and three photographers working beside him were wounded …

Glynnis MacNicol / The Wire:

Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker And Photographer Killed In Libya* — *This post has been updated. — Oscar nominated director Tim Hetherington and Pulitzer Prize nominated photographer Chris Hondros were killed earlier today in Libya. Two other photographers were injured, one seriously.

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: MediaPost, INFOdocket, Poynter, Electronista, Adweek, PC Magazine, Betabeat, mocoNews, Techland, Yahoo! News, FishbowlNY, NewsGrange, Garcia Media, eMedia Vitals, Future of Journalism and Soup

Jenna Wortham / Bits:

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 …

Discussion: GigaOM, Marco.org, Techi.com and NYConvergence.com, more at Techmeme »

Ellis Hamburger / SAI: News.me's iPad App Will Get You Around The New York Times Paywall For A Fraction Of The Cost

Amazon.com:

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books — Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps — Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

Discussion: VentureBeat, Gadget Lab, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, 9 to 5 Mac, The Next Web, Brave New World, GeekWire, ZDNet, Between the Lines Blog, Media Buyer Planner, The Consumerist and eMoney, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Amazon Launches Library Lending, But Who Owns the Books?

Discussion: paidContent, TechCrunch and Jacket Copy, Thanks:thibetian

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, Business Wire, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Wrap, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Fast Company, Lost Remote, MediaPost, Weigel, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, Future of Journalism, Journalism.co.uk, On Media's Blog, Noted and Facebook

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Magazine Publishers Scramble To Streamline Their App Production — Magazine publishers are not only trying to pack more features and content into their apps—they're also trying to design for an ever-growing variety of devices and formats. The result is wreaking havoc with traditional print …

New York Post:
Condé Nast is making customers very app-y

Discussion: Adweek, FishbowlNY and NYConvergence.com

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

Frances Martel / Mediaite:
Andrew Breitbart To Mediaite: Yes, He's After The ‘Institutional Right,’ Too

Discussion: RealClearPolitics Video Log and Media Matters for America

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: @nicknotned, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, The Awl and FishbowlNY

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 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

Ashley Parker / New York Times:

Covering (and Working for) Bloomberg — Henry Goldman writes his articles on a Bloomberg terminal. His paychecks are stamped Bloomberg L.P. His company ID badge: Bloomberg. And the subject of his stories? Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. — Mr. Goldman is Bloomberg's man on Mr. Bloomberg.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and FishbowlNY

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: MediaPost, BostInnovation.com, GigaOM, Search Engine Land, ClickZ, mocoNews, Communications …, eMoney, PC Magazine, CNET News, AdAge and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Nieman Journalism Lab:

Chasing pageviews with values: How the Christian Science Monitor has adjusted to a web-first, SEO'd world — Editor's note: At the International Symposium on Online Journalism earlier this month, one of my favorite papers presented was by Drury's Jonathan Groves and Carrie Brown-Smith of the University of Memphis.

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 …

New York Observer:

Sarah Douglas Named Culture Editor of ‘The New York Observer’ — Elizabeth Spiers announced this morning that Sarah Douglas has been named culture editor of The New York Observer. — Ms. Douglas is currently a staff writer at Art+Auction magazine and its affiliate web site, Artinfo.com.

Discussion: New York Magazine, FishbowlNY and mediabistro.com

Susannah Breslin / Pink Slipped:

How Your Journalism Sausage Gets Made, Part One … The other day, I came across a post by a young journalist and recent college grad advising other young journalists who are recent college grads on how to get hired for an online journalism job after graduating.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Surprising Straight Talk About the Politics of AOL-Huffpo — Image by Getty Images for AOL via @daylife — Arianna Huffington is skilled at staying on message like the former political candidate she is. So it's interesting, sometimes, to hear what people who aren't Huffington …

Discussion: On Media's Blog, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Steven I. Weiss / Slate:

A Baltimore Sun photographer who took a buyout, started a blog, and changed the photography business forever. … Like This Story … - Can Rich People Who Think They're Undertaxed Really Send the IRS Extra Money? - Christopher Hitchens' Advice to Kate Middleton …