Mediagazer: Is the iPad Just a New Way to Give Away Magazines? (David Carr/Media Decoder)

8:05 PM ET, May 11, 2011

Top News:

Nat Ives / AdAge:

New York Times' Share of Newspaper Sites' Traffic Hits 12-Month Low — April Was a Quieter Month for News Than March, But Other Newspaper Sites Maintained Traffic Better — The pay wall introduced by The New York Times at the end of March is hurting traffic to its website, as expected, but perhaps within acceptable levels.

Discussion: MediaPost, Tech Trader Daily, Poynter, Runnin' Scared, paidContent, Bloggasm and FishbowlNY

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Yahoo grew unique visitors in April while New York Times, others declined — Yahoo!, USA Today, ABC News and Advance saw unique visitors to their websites grow in April compared to March, while all other sites saw declines, data from comScore shows. — To determine the most viewed news websites …

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:
5 big problems with ‘Navigating News Online’ study

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire and Still Not Going To Do …

Edward Wyatt / Media Decoder:

F.C.C. Commissioner Leaving to Join Comcast — WASHINGTON - Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who approved the deal said she would join Comcast to oversee its government affairs office.

Discussion: MediaPost, Adweek, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, B&C, rbr.com, Company Town, Hillicon Valley, PC Magazine and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

The Wrap:

Four Months After Approving Merger, FCC Commissioner Joins NBCUniversal — Only in D.C. — A mere four months after voting in favor of Comcast's controversial $13.75 billion purchase of NBC-Universal, Meredith Attwell Baker, the Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission …

Discussion: Ars Technica, Broadcasting & Cable and Washington Wire, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

The Surprising Reason Publishers Are Finally Saying Yes to Apple — Earlier this week, I asked what had changed in the standoff between Apple and magazine publishers, who want to sell subscriptions to iPad editions in the iTunes store but, until last week, weren't prepared to accept Apple's rules.

Discussion: AppleInsider, MacStories, MacRumors and Bloggasm

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Nomad Editions, a Movie Studio For Tablet Magazines

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

The Atlantic Online:

'Google Doesn't Laugh': Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO — If online searches are literal, what happens to headlines that involve word play? Copy editors fear they're going the way of the classified ad. — To Matthew Crowley, funny headlines are serious business.

Discussion: The Awl, @ivantohelpyou and Bloggasm

Aljazeera:

Missing Al Jazeera reporter deported to Iran — Al Jazeera's Dorothy Parvaz, missing since arriving in Damascus almost two weeks ago, is now understood to be in Tehran. — Missing Al Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz has been deported from Syria to Iran, the network has learned.

Discussion: Poynter, Guardian, Globe and Mail, The Atlantic Wire, The Wire, msnbc.com and The Daily Dish

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Is the iPad Just a New Way to Give Away Magazines? — In the last few days, there have been a flurry of deals that suggest that a level of détente between Apple and the Big Three Manhattan publishers (Condé Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst) has finally been reached.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Nxtblog

Keach Hagey / The Politico:

Erik Wemple to Washington Post — Erik Wemple, one of the most fearsome media reporters on the Washington Post beat during his days at City Paper, is leaving the editorship of TBD to take a job at the paper he long covered, a source at the Washington Post confirms.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Gawker, Poynter and The Wrap

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism — A new report by Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave and Lucas Graves — A recording of this event will be posted soon. — Can digital journalism be profitable? What's making money, what isn't, and why?

Discussion: Forbes.com, Lost Remote, CJR, NYConvergence.com and Guardian

Teri Evans / Entrepreneur.com:

Mashable's Pete Cashmore on Persistence — How he turned obstacles into an opportunity, why he's so obsessed with the Internet and a winning habit he learned from his father. — Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable. — 'Trep Talk is a column on personal insights from the people behind the big ideas.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Jason Fry / Poynter:

How valuable is your brand? 4 questions to determine whether to stay or go, plus how to keep your biggest stars happy — The age of the individual brand was inevitable, a natural consequence of the way digital media has remade our reading habits. In print, columns have a home on a section front …

Discussion: Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

USA Today:

Google deflects PR firm's attack of Gmail privacy — It's not as if Google lacks privacy controversies to quell. — Yet Burson-Marsteller, a top-five public relations firm, is attempting to pile more on. — Burson last week stepped up a whisper campaign to get top-tier media outlets …

Discussion: Adweek, SAI, Future of Journalism and PRNewser