Mediagazer: In the digital era free is easy, so how do you persuade people to pay? (Cory Doctorow/Guardian)

4:40 PM ET, April 21, 2011

Top News:

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

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

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: VentureBeat, FishbowlNY and PC Magazine

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, Guardian, The Wire, MediaPost, Gizmodo, Globe and Mail, Geekosystem, TechCrunch and Noted

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

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: TechCrunch, Betabeat, @anildash, @dannysullivan, @mathewi and @fromedome

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 and The Wrap

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: Regret the Error

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

Steven Zeitchik / Los Angeles Times:

Product placement guru explains how it's done — ‘Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold’ includes product placement expert Norm Marshall, who has navigated Hollywood for decades, quietly adding his clients' goods to movies whenever possible. — Norm Marshall is the marketing …

Discussion: indieWIRE News

Noah Davis / The Wire:

We're Pretty Sure Adam Rapoport Is The Coolest Editor In NYC — We mean this statement in the nicest way possible, but Adam Rapoport is such a dude. — He is a guy who tweets about grilled steak and booze, who embodies the GQ ethos and style, who plays hoops with Lebron James.

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

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, Lost Remote, TechCrunch, NewsGrange, PC World, IntoMobile, The Next Web, News for Digital Journalists and MacStories

Peggy Fletcher Stack / Faith Blog:

BYU seder has ‘all the ingredients of a good story’ for national Jewish publication — The Jewish Daily Forward, a national newspaper, sent a reporter to Provo this spring to cover a Passover seder — sans the wine — at Brigham Young University. — You can read Gabrielle Birkner's story here or The Tribune's own feature

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Apple's 92% earnings windfall: The bloggers nail it, the pros miss by a mile — The shortfall in iPad sales was one of the few categories the Street called correctly — Click to enlarge. — The Wall Street analysts who get paid to cover Apple (AAPL) got some things right.

Discussion: Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com and CNET News

Simon Dumenco / AdAge:

‘We Were Definitely Tweeting Before Twitter’ — A Q&A With Television Without Pity Director Daniel Manu — It's TV Week at Ad Age — you've already devoured our special TV Issue package, right? — and to extend the festivities, today we present a conversation with Daniel Manu …