Mediagazer: The Onion's Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News Is Absurd (Fast Company)

7:05 PM ET, June 14, 2011

Top News:

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Wall Street Journal's Greater New York Wins Advertisers but Draw for Readers Remains Unclear — Local Ad Revenue Doubles but Print Circulation Declines — Over a year after Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal introduced Greater New York to better compete for New York Times advertisers and readers …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, FishbowlNY, Runnin' Scared and Poynter

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

What does the journalism of the future look like? — We've spent so long consuming the news in fairly predictable formats — the short story, the long feature, the four-part series designed to win awards, the TV documentary, and so on — that the new forms of journalism we're seeing can be confusing.

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, Future Journalism Project and eMedia Vitals

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Rockville Central drops website for Facebook, offers eight lessons on Facebook news publishing — A little over 100 days ago, a community news blog in Rockville, Md., took a big leap. Founder and Publisher Brad Rourke and Editor Cindy Cotte Griffiths moved the entire operation of Rockville Central to a Facebook page.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

rbr.com:

McGraw-Hill hangs for sale sign on TV group — Television has long been a tiny part of The McGraw-Hill Companies and Wall Street analysts have asked CEO Terry McGraw several times on quarterly conference calls why the company doesn't sell it off as an obviously non-core business.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, MinOnline and MediaPost

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

How Quora Recruited “Super 8” Director J.J. Abrams — The filmmaker J.J. Abrams appeared for a seven-minute stint on the Q&A site Quora on Friday afternoon, the day his new science fiction movie “Super 8” was released. He answered a total of four questions on general topics like breaking …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and Quora

Mike Fleming / Deadline.com/hollywood:

ICM Signs To Rep New York Magazine Articles For Film And Television — EXCLUSIVE: After brokering over 30 film and TV option deals for articles from The New York Times since signing the daily as a client, ICM has just signed New York Magazine. It will rep the magazine in all areas to broaden its reach in Hollywood.

Discussion: The New York Observer

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

Now That Hearst Has Partnered With Buddy Media, You're Going to Have to Learn What a ‘Sapplet’ Is — “The days of, ‘Do we publish on Facebook? Do we tweet?’ are over,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow told Betabeat. “Either you do it, or you're crushed. Do it or go out of business.”

Discussion: Folio, GigaOM and Curbed National

Ethan / ...My heart's in Accra:

Understanding #amina — On Monday, June 6th, a post appeared on the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” announcing that Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, the “girl” in question, had been kidnapped, possibly by Syrian authorities. Bloggers, including my friend and colleague Jillian York …

Discussion: New York Magazine, CJR, Guardian, BBC, MediaFile, Hit & Run, BBC College of Journalism Blog, Press Gazette, BBC, The Daily Dish, memeburn, A Gay Girl in Damascus, The Wire, Washington Post and The Lede

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Comcast Bringing Skype To Some Of Your TVs, “Soon” — Interesting. Comcast plans to let some of its customers use Skype on their TV sets. — The two companies say Comcast subscribers equipped with special gear will be able to use the Web video messaging service on their HD sets “soon.”

Discussion: VentureBeat, GigaOM, Techland, PC Magazine, ZDNet, CNET News, Multichannel and Company Town, more at Techmeme »

Fast Company:

The Onion's Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News Is Absurd — From Jon Stewart's The Daily Show to The Onion to Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, fake news has become as much a part of the national dialogue as the real news it parodies. During the 2008 presidential campaign …

Discussion: Future Journalism Project

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Arianna Huffington: ‘Our Traffic is Not Down,’ But AOL Favors Cash — AOL's Arianna Huffington does not seem fazed by the barrage of skeptical media that's been nipping at her heels in the last week. — “Our traffic is not down despite the fact that we've had preexisting deals that have ended,” Huffington told TheWrap this week.

Discussion: LA Observed, The Wire and mediabistro.com

Joe Mandese / MediaPost:

Turner Discloses Tens Of Thousands Of Online Viewers Being Added To Its TV Ratings — Turner Broadcasting's cable TV networks are reaping tens of thousands of incremental viewers in their Nielsen ratings that are being ignored by the rest of the TV industry, a top research executive revealed Monday during …

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

A New Anchor, but the Same Ratings, on CBS — CBS introduced Scott Pelley as the new anchor of its evening news with no fanfare last week, and the result was no new fans,. — The numbers for Mr. Pelley's first week showed no growth from the audience that Katie Couric had been averaging …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Mediaite, Company Town, The Huffington Post, Inside TV and On Media's Blog

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

New York Times Takes a Preemptive Strike Against The Patent Trolls at Lodsys — From the fake Lodsys Twitter page. — Woo boy, the normally dry and wonky world of patent law is getting interesting. The New York Times has filed suit against Lodsys, a patent firm (some might say troll) that has been targeting Apple developers.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Electronista and FOSS Patents

Mark Briggs / Nieman Reports:

Start Spreading the News — 'Word of link's power is like nothing we've experienced before. It's about how we pass along information, share ideas, and expand business in our digital times.' — Information, news, recommendations and yes, gossip, have always been spread by word of mouth.