Mediagazer: Wonkette deletes post ridiculing Sarah Palin's disabled son (Steve Myers/Poynter)

9:10 PM ET, April 21, 2011

Top News:

A New York Times TimesSelect flashback: Early numbers are nice, but growth over time is nicer — The New York Times Co., as part of its earnings announcement today, gave the first concrete numbers for its new digital subscription offerings, noting that “paid digital subscribers have surpassed 100,000” …

Discussion: Publishing Executive News, Future of Journalism, FishbowlNY, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, PC Magazine and Techland

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, MediaMemo, Poynter, paidContent, ReadWriteWeb, NetNewsCheck Latest, Tech Trader Daily, Screenwerk, @lkramer, The Wrap, Mashable!, GigaOM, Media Buyer Planner, FishbowlNY, eMarketer and Blog Posts and Gothamist, more at Techmeme »

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: Mixed Media, paidContent, The Wire, Guardian, Gizmodo, Geekosystem, Globe and Mail, MediaPost, TechCrunch and Noted

The Atlantic Online:

Detained Reporter Clare Gillis Says She is Alive and Well — Sixteen days after she was detained by the Libyan government, journalist Clare Morgana Gillis made her first direct contact with outsiders in two weeks today, telling her parents in a 15-minute phone call that she is in good health …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post and The Wrap

Caroline McCarthy:

Onward, to the Plex. — So I have some big news. — After five incredible years at CNET, I'm moving on. May 6 is my last day; ten days later, I will join Google's New York office as a member of its fledgling Trends & Insights team. I'll be doing a lot of writing, editing …

Discussion: Gawker, TechCrunch, @fromedome, @mathewi, @anildash, Betabeat, Epicenter, @dannysullivan and PC Magazine

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.

Discussion: Poynter and @editorialiste

Jonathan Stray:

Measuring and increasing accuracy in journalism — Professional journalism is supposed to be “factual,” “accurate,” or just plain true. Is it? Has news accuracy been getting better or worse in the last decade? How does it vary between news organizations, and how do other information sources rate?

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Regret the Error

Julie Moos / Poynter:

The top 5 news sites in the United States are... Earlier this week, we posted comScore data that showed the UK's Mail Online overtaking Huffington Post as the second most visited newspaper website in the world for March 2011. An astute reader wondered: If you merge comScore's data …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Schiller to public radio: Don't just sit there, take risks — Vivian Schiller has a warning to her former colleagues at NPR: “Your continued existence is not guaranteed.” — But that warning — delivered yesterday in a talk at Harvard's Shorenstein Center — wasn't just about the congressional fight over public funding.

Discussion: All Updates, Future of Journalism and Media Buyer Planner

MONEY, CASH, HO'S:

The Awl is now two years old. — This will be a long thing about The Awl, so if you don't care, please feel free to ignore. — A few weeks ago, when we realized that The Awl's birthday was coming up (an easily rememberable 4/20), we batted around some high level ideas on what we could do on the site to commemorate it.

Discussion: Reuters and FishbowlNY

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

News.me launches iPad aggregator with AP, New York Times, AOL as media partners — The news aggregator News.me launched Thursday morning as a subscription iPad app, with support from more than 20 major media outlets. — Built by Betaworks, the app will aggregate and filter news …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Future of Journalism, The Next Web, NewsGrange, TUAW, IntoMobile, Lost Remote, PC World, TechCrunch, News for Digital Journalists and App Advice, more at Techmeme »

Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:

Is WikiLeaks A Media Organization? The First Amendment Doesn't Care — Data thief or editor-in-chief? The first amendment doesn't ask. — WikiLeaks has taken pains, over the last several months, to cast itself as a journalism outfit. Julian Assange refers to himself as a publisher or editor-in-chief.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Wonkette deletes post ridiculing Sarah Palin's disabled son — Wonkette blogger Jack Stuef's post making fun of Sarah Palin's disabled son Trig was called “irredeemably vile” and “unfunny,” “disgraceful” and “gross.” And now, after two major companies pulled their ads from Wonkette and Steuf apologized, the post has been removed.

Discussion: Adweek, Mediaite and Weigel

Gillian Shaw / Digital Life:

Canadians vow to break election day Twitter ban — Canadians are already casting votes on Elections Canada's social media ban. — So far the online world has given the ban — a blackout on the transmission of any electoral results to an area where the polls are still open that would extend …

Discussion: Globe and Mail and CBC News

Tara Conlan / Guardian:

BBC considers ‘slimmed-down’ news channel — Leaked ‘Delivering Quality First’ proposals also include selling more news content abroad and putting BBC Parliament online — The BBC is considering proposals including a “slimmed-down” BBC News channel concentrating on “developing news and headlines” …

Discussion: TVNewser