Mediagazer: ‘Frontline’ team investigates its options for digital future (Joseph P. Kahn/Boston Globe)

12:15 PM ET, April 26, 2011

Top News:

The Incredible Shrinking New York Times — The New York Times has righted its ship after a near-death experience during the last recession. — Thanks to sharp cost-cutting, the company has returned to profitability. And thanks to frantic debt restructuring, the NYT has also removed …

Jack Shafer / Slate:

Times Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane's stupid ideas on how to cover the press. — New York Times Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane advanced the flummoxing idea in his column yesterday that the Times should not diss or needle other news organizations, nor should its writers grill the competition in interviews.

Discussion: The Informer, California Watch, Yahoo! News, Poynter, @emmagkeller and FishbowlNY

CAITLIN DICKSON / The Atlantic Wire:

Over Half of 2011's New York Times Issues Rely on WikiLeaks — Today's New York Times prominently features “The Guantanamo Files,” a synthesis of “700 classified military documents” obtained by WikiLeaks, about the Cuba prison's current and former inmates. It's the latest blockbuster data cache to be trumpeted by the paper.

Discussion: The Nation, Mediaite, Runnin' Scared and Boing Boing, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Zeke Turner / WWD Media Headlines: Memo Pad: New York Times' Subscription Push... Mary Berner Opts Out...

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

EXCLUSIVE: YouTube Finally Goes Hollywood With New Movies on Demand Service (Updated) — YouTube will imminently launch a movie-on-demand service charging users to stream movies off the world's largest video sharing site, TheWrap has learned. — The new service means a full-bore challenge …

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

What I Think I Know About Journalism — Next month I will have taught journalism at New York University for 25 years, an occasion that has led me to reflect on what I have tried to profess in that time. — Or, to put it another way, what I think I know about journalism. — It comes down to these four ideas.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Poynter

Ivanoransky / Retraction Watch:

More details emerge on ScienceBlogs-National Geographic deal — Yesterday, we reported that National Geographic had bought ScienceBlogs. We've now obtained a recording of a conference call between various members of National Geographic senior management, ScienceBlogs management …

Ivanoransky / Retraction Watch:
So who bought ScienceBlogs? Retraction Watch exclusive: National Geographic

Discussion: Pharyngula and CJR

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Google Traffic to Demand Media Sites Down 40 Percent — Are the halcyon days of content farming over? Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr — Here's some plain, easy-to-understand proof that Google's recent algorithm overhaul is doing exactly what it was meant to do …

Discussion: Marketing Pilgrim, SEO Book.com, Forbes.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, seobook.com, ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Land, Domain Name Wire and @dannysullivan

Burgess Everett / On Media's Blog:

Olbermann announcement planned Tuesday — Keith Olbermann — on both his website and Twitter account — is gearing up for a Tuesday proclamation about his upcoming show on Current TV. — “Oh by the way, we'll be making a couple of big announcements tomorrow about the new show,” …

Discussion: The Wrap, The Wire, Mediaite and Broadcasting & Cable

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Slate rethinks aggregation (again) with a Slatest redesign — Slate was arguably the first major news site to care about aggregation, starting back in 1996, when we only thought we suffered from information overload. (They didn't even call it “aggregation” yet. It was “meta-news.")

Discussion: Slate, NetNewsCheck Latest and eMedia Vitals

Julie Moos / Poynter:

The obligatory and the original: 3 things I learned from our week as Romenesko — In the eight-plus years I've worked with Jim Romenesko, I've spent some time talking with him, more time emailing with him, and — most of all — I've admired and observed how he does what he does.

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire

Joseph P. Kahn / Boston Globe:

‘Frontline’ team investigates its options for digital future — In its 28 years on air, “Frontline” has broadcast more than 500 documentaries and won a slew of awards for investigative reporting. But change is in the air at the Brighton offices of the national award-winning public affairs show.

Discussion: Free Press and Poynter

Hadley Freeman / Guardian:

Rachel Maddow: 'I'm definitely not an autocutie' — The top US news anchor on why she prefers jokes to anger and why she is proud to be gay — It's 10.05pm on a rainy Tuesday night in the MSNBC studio in the now famous New York address, 30 Rock, and Rachel Maddow - one of the highest profile news anchors …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Daily Caller, The Maddow Blog, Hot Air, The Wire, Gawker, FishbowlNY and The Huffington Post

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Why Yahoo Bought IntoNow — Yahoo scooped up TV check-in app maker IntoNow Monday, just three months after the startup introduced its first product. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but reports are putting the price anywhere between $17 and $30 million, and we hear from someone …

Discussion: Media News, Lost Remote, ReadWriteWeb, New Media Age, Electronista and Mogulite

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo Buys TV Programming Index IntoNow for About $17 Million, Plus Retention Packages

Discussion: TVWeek.com, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, PC Magazine, The Social, L.A. Times Tech Blog, IntoNow, MediaPost, SAI, The Next Web and Multichannel

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

The Times Gains New Subscribers With Groupon Discount — Times Newspapers has added nearly two percent more digital subscribers in the last three days, after discounting its online rates by 70 percent in a deal through Groupon. — On Easter Sunday morning, Groupon recipients received …

Dan Snyder / Washington Post:

Why I am suing Washington City Paper — On Tuesday I am refiling my lawsuit against Washington City Paper, a tabloid paper that published false and reckless charges about me in November 2010. The case needed to be refiled in Washington, not New York, for legal reasons; the rest of the complaint is essentially the same.

Discussion: Forbes.com, Poynter and Deadspin

Bloomberg:

Couric Said to Weigh Move to ABC as CBS Anchor Job Ends — Katie Couric is contemplating a move to ABC as she prepares to end her five-year run as the “CBS Evening News” anchor, according to people with knowledge of the situation. — Couric, 54, is expected to announce this week …

Discussion: Bloomberg, TVNewser, Hollywood Life and Media Decoder

Tim Carmody / Snarkmarket:

Why Not? An overdue advance story on the Nook Color — Barnes & Noble dropped a software update today for Nook Color, adding apps and support for Flash and a whole bunch of other features that give it more parity with tablets than e-readers. I got an early briefing and interview with some of the development team.

Miguel Helft / Bits:

News Aggregator Zite Wants to Play Nice With Publishers — Zite, a news aggregator for the iPad whose app has irked major news publishers, said Monday that Mark Johnson, a longtime adviser to the company, would become its new chief executive. — But the announcement those news publishers focused …

Discussion: Zite - Blog, MacNN, paidContent and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme »

Bradley Johnson / AdAge:

Tweet This: Agencies Get 28% of Revenue From Digital — Mad Ave Better Take Note — You Are Digital, or You Are Very, Very Unimportant — Digital services accounted for an estimated $8.5 billion (28%) of the $30.4 billion in 2010 U.S. revenue generated by the 900-plus advertising …

David Hirschman / Street Fight:

‘Newsonomics’ Author Ken Doctor: ‘The Play Is for Tablets’ — Media industry analyst and consultant Ken Doctor has been watching the local news space for decades, long before “hyperlocal” was coined. He spent 21 years at Knight Ridder, where he first observed that consumers are willing …

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

TV People Realizing That The Internet Is Global — It's kind of amusing to read this NY Times article about how the producers of Doctor Who had the brilliant idea of showing the latest season in the UK and the US on the same day this season, rather than showing it in the UK and then delaying the US release for a while.

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

Facebook introduces first private content-sharing tool with ‘Send’ button — The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post added a “Send” button to their sites today, enabling users to privately send stories to their Facebook friends, Facebook Groups or to an individual email address.