Mediagazer: Seeking to Disrupt Protesters, Syria Cracks Down on Social Media (Jennifer Preston/New York Times)

5:55 PM ET, May 23, 2011

Top News:

The Elephant in the Green Room — The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election. — On Monday afternoon, March 28, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes summoned Glenn Beck to a meeting …

Jim Rutenberg / The Caucus:

Fox News Executives Dispute Quote About Palin — Fox News Channel executives are disputing a quotation made by an unnamed Republican in the latest issue of New York magazine saying that the network's chairman, Roger Ailes, thinks former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is “an idiot.”

Discussion: Yahoo! News, The Wire, Adweek, Inside Cable News, Mediaite, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller and TVNewser

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Frank Bruni Named Times Op-Ed Columnist — Frank Bruni, whose writing career at The New York Times has spanned two presidential campaigns, a pope and more than five years as chief restaurant critic, has been named an op-ed columnist. — Andrew M. Rosenthal, editor of the Opinion Pages …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Gawker, Adweek, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

AOL Using TechCrunch as ‘Petri Dish’ for Transparency — Arianna Huffington and Michael Arrington. Image by TechCrunch via Flickr — Michael Arrington isn't an ethics scofflaw any longer. Now he's an ethics guinea pig. — At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this morning, Arrington …

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Wire and NYConvergence.com, more at Techmeme »

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Revealed: The Huffington Post Wanted To Buy TechCrunch Back In The Day

Discussion: Adweek, Betabeat, Fast Company, Future of Journalism and VentureBeat

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Female Magazine Fans Flock to Nook Color — Even as the iPad remains the favorite son of the magazine business, publishers are discovering that the Barnes & Noble Nook Color is a very promising younger daughter. — The Nook Color has surprised publishers of women's magazines like O …

Discussion: Adweek, MediaPost, Techland, ZDNet, Variety, Editors Weblog, USA Today and FishbowlNY

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

By The Numbers: How Facebook Says Likes & Social Plugins Help Websites — Earlier this month, I wrote about how the promise of Facebook traffic has enticed millions of sites to use Facebook Like buttons and other Facebook social plugins. But does following Facebook's socialist agenda really pay off?

Discussion: Poynter, WebProNews and FishbowlNY

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Conde Nast's New Marketing-Services Division Aims at Non-Advertising Budgets — Ideactive Will Offer Services Such as App Development — Conde Nast, the publisher of magazines such as Glamour and The New Yorker, is trying to move further beyond its core business of ad-page sales with a new marketing services division.

Discussion: MediaPost

Amy Wicks / WWD Media Headlines:
Condé Nast Gets Digitally Active

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

Really Bad Timing for Washingtonian — What's Washingtonian to do? They write a huge, glowing piece on Dominique Strauss-Khan by Apolline de Malherbe for their June issue. Then, after it goes to press and is mailed out, the goddamn guy goes and gets busted for rape.

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire and The Daily Caller

Sarah Maslin Nir / New York Times:
Tired, Testy, Even Rumpled: French Reporters on the Big Story

Discussion: NY Daily News, CNN, The Atlantic Wire and New York Magazine

Eli Pariser / New York Times:

When the Internet Thinks It Knows You — ONCE upon a time, the story goes, we lived in a broadcast society. In that dusty pre-Internet age, the tools for sharing information weren't widely available. If you wanted to share your thoughts with the masses, you had to own a printing press …

Joshua Brustein / New York Times:

Fine Print Blurs Who's in Control of Online Photos — If you post a photo on the Web, it still belongs to you, right? Well, be sure to read the fine print. — World Entertainment News Network, a news and photo agency, announced this month that it had become the “exclusive photo agency partner” …

Discussion: Big Journalism and ShortFormBlog

Google Book Search Blog:

Google eBooks: By the Numbers, Then and Now — It's been about six months since we launched Google eBooks. Now, we're happy to report there are more than three million free Google eBooks available in the U.S. for your enjoyment and enlightenment (as compared to more than two million at launch).

Discussion: GalleyCat, Electronista, Publishing Perspectives and Softpedia News, more at Techmeme »

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Glenn Beck to Offer Discount Deals — As he prepares to leave his daily Fox News talk show later this year, conservative television host Glenn Beck is entering the e-commerce business. — On Monday, Mercury Radio Arts, Mr. Beck's production company, plans to announce a new website called Markdown.com …

Discussion: The Wire, Adweek, Mashable!, Betabeat, PC Magazine, New York Magazine, Glenn Beck, WebProNews, Mediaite, TVNewser, PSFK and Gawker

Adweek:

The National Magazine Award and Guantánamo: A Tall Tale Gets the Prize — Harper's Magazine and Scott Horton were not supposed to win the National Magazine Award for Reporting this year. Of the five finalists in the category, there were three real contenders, and most people working …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, On Media's Blog and The Wire

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Li named Reuters.com editor as Ledbetter becomes op-ed editor — Kenneth Li has been editor-in-charge of Reuters' technology, media and telecoms reporting team. In his role as op-ed editor, James Ledbetter “will create a stable of top thought leaders from around the world who will weigh …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and @dylanbyers

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

U.K. Media Finally Start Ignoring Law That Prevents Them From Typing “Ryan Giggs” (Video) — Just about everyone in the U.K.-and lots of people outside of the country-knows that soccer star Ryan Giggs is rumored to have had an affair with a reality TV star.

Discussion: Guardian, Daily Mail, BBC, Citizen Media Law Project and Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal:

New Tools for Picking Hits TV Advertisers Consult Formulas That Weigh Social-Media Buzz, Economic Data — The animated series “South Park” on Viacom Inc.'s Comedy Central ranks 211 by number of TV viewers but, according to one ad firm's reckoning, it's really No. 4.

Discussion: The Corsair and Adweek

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Newsweek Adds Schama to Roster of Writers — If Tina Brown can't return Newsweek to profitability, it won't be for lack of ability to attract talent. — The magazine will Monday announce that the editor has grabbed another boldface name in Simon Schama, the U.K.-born historian …

Discussion: Adweek and Poynter

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CNBC Takes a Hollywood Turn — Every few minutes in “Too Big to Fail,” the film about the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2008 that will have its premiere Monday on HBO, something happens that once seemed unbelievable. Banks collapse. Balance sheets crumble.

Discussion: DealBook and TVNewser