Mediagazer: How A ‘Business Class’ And ‘Economy Class’ For News Sites Would Look (Victor Wong/paidContent)

9:50 AM ET, May 12, 2011

Top News:

Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google — THE DAILY BEAST ON: — The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.

Discussion: FT Tech Hub, TechCrunch, The Atlantic Wire, Adweek, Marketing Pilgrim, Gizmodo, Engadget, SAI, The Next Web, NetworkEffect, The Not-So Private Parts and paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Ben Popper / Betabeat:

Smear Story Source Speaks: Facebook Wanted to Stab Google in the Back — Privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian broke open the story of how Facebook tried to use global PR giant Burson-Marsteller to smear Google in the press. He was pitched to ghost-write the op-ed, but posted the email exchange online instead.

Discussion: broadstuff, more at Techmeme »

Edward Wyatt / Media Decoder:

F.C.C. Commissioner Leaving to Join Comcast — 8:02 p.m. | Updated WASHINGTON — Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved a hotly contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said on Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast's Washington lobbying office.

Discussion: Adweek, Hillicon Valley, paidContent, MediaPost, Company Town, CNET News, CrunchGear, Multichannel News, Chickaboomer, PC Magazine, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel, rbr.com and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

InsideDeal! WebMediaBrands Acquires Inside Network For $14 Million — When it comes to in-depth news about Facebook, there has been no better site than Inside Facebook. In fact, the flagship site of Inside Network became so successful alongside the meteoric rise of Facebook …

Discussion: paidContent, NetworkEffect, MinOnline, VentureBeat and @megan, more at Techmeme »

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: Fast Company, Tech Trader Daily, Poynter, Media & Entertainment, MediaPost, Future of Journalism, paidContent, Runnin' Scared 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 …

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: Fortune, GigaOM, App Advice, TUAW, MacStories, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Future of Journalism and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

The New York Times to Debut “UGC” Wedding Announcements This Weekend — The New York Times, which features a short article and photo of a couple of dozen newly-weds every Sunday in the Style section, will be adding short videos created by the couples. The first user-generated video will be published this weekend.

Discussion: New York Times and Poynter

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: Poynter, The Awl and @ivantohelpyou

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

How The New York Times Will Shake Up Its Weekly Section — NEW YORK — New York Times staffers in the editorial and news departments have been working for several months to reinvent the paper's “Week in Review” section, a Sunday staple for more than 75 years.

Discussion: NewsBusters.org and coverawards.com

The Atlantic Wire:

The New York Times's Bill Keller Riles Up Twitter — New York Times executive editor Bill Keller likes things stirred-up, as his recent public spats with The Huffington Post and Fox News demonstrated. This afternoon he took the fight to Twitter, posting a message to his seldom used …

Discussion: @mikeriggs, @mlcalderone, @weareyourfek, @nytkeller, @jeffjarvis, @emmagkeller, @carr2n, Online NewsHour and Soup

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: Poynter, Yahoo! News and Gawker

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: Canadian Magazines, FishbowlNY and Nxtblog