Mediagazer: The Future of Media: Brands Are Publishers Now Too (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

8:10 AM ET, May 20, 2011

Top News:

Carly Carioli / Phlog:

Google abandons master-plan to archive the world's newspapers — In an email today to publishers including the Boston Phoenix, Google told partners in its News Archive project that it would cease accepting, scanning, and indexing microfilm and other archival material from newspapers …

Discussion: Search Engine Land, CNET News and The Next Web

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Breaking: Liberty Media Offers Nearly $1 Billion For Barnes & Noble — Bankrupt Borders needs a sale the most but Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), which put itself in play last August, is the book retailer with a serious suitor—and they don't come much more serious than John Malone.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, Reuters, Tech Trader Daily and The Wrap, more at Techmeme »

Shira Ovide / Deal Journal:
Insane! John Malone Offers to Buy Barnes & Noble

Discussion: bookforum.com and GalleyCat

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the missing link — Picture Pre-Tablet Man (or Woman). Let's go back to the time before Palm Pilots, at the dawn of consumer digital civilization itself, a time of AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve. Hunched heavily by the analog world on his shoulders …

Scott Karp / Publish2 Blog:
How to Make It Easy for Newspapers to Link on the Web

Thanks:p2chairman

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The Future of Media: Brands Are Publishers Now Too — As if newspapers and magazine publishers didn't have enough problems already, what with declining advertising revenue and the difficulty of getting readers to pay via iPad apps and paywalls, the number of competitors they face is expanding almost daily …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Associated Press, TUAW and Adweek, Thanks:bamonaghan

The Atlantic Online:
Did the New York Public Library Just Build the Magazine App of the Future?

Discussion: App Advice, Poynter and SocialTimes.com

Richard Sandomir / New York Times:

Dick Ebersol to Leave NBC Sports — Dick Ebersol, who has run NBC Sports since 1989 and engineered the network's bids to acquire the rights to more Olympics than any other, resigned on Thursday when he said he could not come to an agreement on a new contract.

Discussion: Globetrotting, Company Town, SportsNewser, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel, Adweek, TVNewser, The Wire, The Atlantic Wire, Mediaite, Forbes.com, paidContent, rbr.com, TVWeek.com, Deadspin, CNBC, New York Magazine, TVSpy and Inside TV

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

NY Times CEO: We Jumped Onto the Horse of Change — If Twitter makes you stupid, as New York Times executive editor Bill Keller believes, then the Times is extinguishing more brain cells than any other newspaper — and CEO Janet Robinson is darn happy about that.

Discussion: This is going to be BIG!, Forbes.com, Future of Journalism, The Buttry Diary, Most Recent Home Page Posts … and Techland

Alex Leo / MediaFile:

Bill Keller's war on the Internet keeps the Times down — It seems every time Bill Keller takes pen to paper (or hand to keyboard) these days it's to express displeasure with some aspect of the Internet. Last week he tweeted “#TwitterMakesYouStupid. discuss.”

Discussion: Runnin' Scared and Future of Journalism

Reuters:
Bill Keller's blind spots

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Poynter

Amazon.com:

Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Print Books — Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family — (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007 …

Carol Marie Cropper / NetNewsCheck Latest:

Honolulu Says Aloha To Add-Free Experiment — Hawaii's palm trees and gentle breezes have given rise to one of the nation's boldest experiments in online news. Honolulu Civil Beat, founded by eBay creator Pierre Omidyar, is vying to take its place among the usual newspaper and TV sites in the Honolulu online arena.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Twitpic changes reveal conflict as users, journalists, photo sharing services have competing goals — The popular photo-sharing service Twitpic this month took more control over the photos that millions of Twitter users upload to its site each month. — Although it provoked an outcry …

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

The CW to reward viewers for watching commercials — At its upfront presentation today, the CW network announced an unique partnership with the shopping app Shopkick. The app serves up shopping deals and special rewards for users who visit top retailers like Target and Home Depot.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, GigaOM and rbr.com

Nikki Usher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Conversation, the startup Australian news site, wants to bring academic expertise to breaking news — What would happen if you had close to 1,000 academics available to contribute to the breaking news cycle? Would it change the course, and the discourse, of news? — Andrew Jaspan thinks it will.

Discussion: J-Source

Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:

Big Content rips into Google, the “corporate imperialist” — The knives are out for Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Within hours of making comments to UK media during a press conference, major US rightsholders attempted to brand Google as an arrogant, out-of-control company bent …

Discussion: PC Magazine, PC World and Digital Trends

Noah Davis / The Wire:

ELIZABETH SPIERS: 'New York Observer Was Sluggish When I Got Here And Now It's Back On Track' — The visual metaphor is obvious. — Last week, Elizabeth Spiers — Gawker founder, Breaking Media founder, and currently editor-in-chief of the New York Observer — posted a picture …

The Huffington Post:

Katie Couric Signs Off ‘CBS Evening News’ — Katie Couric ended her nearly five-year tenure as the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” on Thursday. Couric looked back at some of her biggest moments during her historic run as the first solo woman anchor of a network newscast.