Mediagazer: Interview: Michael Wolff On The Irrelevance Of Media Reporters (Alex Alvarez/Mediaite)

11:35 AM ET, April 21, 2011

Top News:

Nat Ives / AdAge:

New York Times Pay Wall Gets More Than 100,000 Takers in Early Weeks — No Word on Impact to Web Traffic or Ad Revenue, but 100,000 New Credit Cards for The Times — More than 100,000 people have forked over credit-card numbers to get through the digital pay wall erected by the New York Times on March 28.

Discussion: MediaMemo, The Wire, TechCrunch, Noted, Globe and Mail and Gizmodo

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Times Company Profit Falls on Weak Ad Revenue — The New York Times Company reported a sharp drop in net income in the first quarter as the print advertising market remained stubbornly depressed for newspapers. — The company said net income fell 57.6 percent to $5.4 million, compared with $12.8 million in the quarter a year ago.

Discussion: The New York Times Company, paidContent, Poynter, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, Mashable! and @lkramer

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 …

cjchivers.com:

Almost Dawn in Libya: Chris & Tim, Heading Home. — We're numb here as the clock nears 4:30 a.m., and we're not quite sure what to do. The deaths of Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington on Tripoli Street still seem unreal. Bryan just walked off from the little space we've been huddled in, working.

Discussion: Poynter, The Wire and Invisible Inkling

Glynnis MacNicol / The Wire:
Oscar Nominated Documentary Filmmaker And Photographer Killed In Libya*

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Tina Brown's ‘Newsweek’ a Hit on Newsstands Magazine still has to deal with sluggish ad sales — Newsweek's been under the microscope since Tina Brown took over. So far, things haven't looked good: First-quarter ad pages were down 31 percent year-over-year, and the April 12 issue had just six ads.

Matt Kinsman / Folio:

Reader's Digest Buys Haven Home Media — Online vertical network joins RDA's Family Handyman, Fresh Home — The Reader's Digest Association today announced the acquisition of Haven Home Media, an online vertical network serving the do-it-yourself home and shelter category.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Media News International, NYConvergence.com, MediaPost and paidContent

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: USA Today, TeleRead, VentureBeat, 9 to 5 Mac, SocialTimes.com, Gadget Lab, ZDNet, Engadget, TechCrunch Europe, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, Between the Lines Blog, The Consumerist, Brave New World, Media Buyer Planner, eMoney and GeekWire

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

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

Jessica Roy / 10,000 Words:

The 5 Best iPad Apps For Consuming The News That's Important To You — With the recent release of the iPad 2, the Apple App Store is swarming with new and updated apps tailored for interactive news consumption. Some of the most compelling news apps are those that take a familiar concept …

Discussion: Crikey

Cory Doctorow / Guardian:

In the digital era free is easy, so how do you persuade people to pay? — To compete with piracy, content providers need clear value propositions that don't conflict with the product — The seemingly straightforward act of purchasing a good or service is fraught with mystery.

Discussion: TeleRead and Boing Boing

Alex Alvarez / Mediaite:

Interview: Michael Wolff On The Irrelevance Of Media Reporters — Adweek has recently undergone an image overhaul, merging Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek into one, single brand and honing its focus in on the intersection of advertising, marketing and media.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Roy Greenslade / paidContent:UK:

Brooks Aims To Change News International's Game With Big Review — News International's chief executive Rebekah Brooks has launched a three-year internal review of the company under the slogan “changing the game.” — Every division - including editorial, advertising and marketing …

Discussion: Marketing Week and Guardian

Mike Fleming / Deadline.com:

HBO Sets Pulitzer Prize Winner ‘A Visit From The Goon Squad’ For Series Treatment — EXCLUSIVE: It has been some week for Brooklyn-based author Jennifer Egan. Her novel A Visit From The Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize and she cited the HBO series The Sopranos as her inspiration.

Discussion: TVWeek.com, Movieline and Screen Junkies

Andrea Morabito / B&C:

NBC News Brings the Monarch into the Digital Age — The royal wedding may still be more than a week away, but the conversation around the upcoming marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton has already started trending on Twitter. — Last week alone, 43,000 tweets mentioned the impending royal nuptials.

Discussion: Reuters and The Wire

Teemu Henriksson / Editors Weblog:

Big Issue aspires to turn its vendors into citizen journalists — Homeless people who sell The Big Issue magazine are to be equipped with smartphones so that they can act as news gatherers in their communities, the charity announced, according to Press Gazette.

Discussion: Poynter

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.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Folio

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 …