Mediagazer: Won't talk to bloggers, no more, no more (Matt Wardman/Anna Raccoon)

2:10 PM ET, June 18, 2011

Top News:

AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out — I got the job through a friend. The job was this: I would write about TV for a section of the AOL Television website. In theory, this sounded great. In exchange for writing about “The Simpsons” and other TV shows, I would be making $35,000 a year …

Discussion: Adweek, Future of Journalism, The New York Observer, Runnin' Scared and One FPS

Matt Wardman / Anna Raccoon:

Won't talk to bloggers, no more, no more — We live in interesting times for independent news media. The regional media has been in crisis for years, and councils which used to run their own newspapers have been slapped down by Eric Pickles. — There has been an explosion of local news blogs …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Gordon Rayner / Telegraph:

Riches to rags as Guardian bleeds £33m in a year — The Guardian, propped up by a car magazine, faces going out of print after warning of a cash crisis and the threat of more redundancies. — When The Guardian celebrated its centenary in 1921, its most revered editor …

Discussion: Jon Slattery and Future of Journalism

New York Times:

A Watchdog Professor, Now Defending Himself — For the last two years, David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor who spent three decades fighting to prove the innocence of others, has been locked in a battle to do the same for himself. It hasn't gone as well.

Strawberry Saroyan / New York Times:

Magazine Preview: Storyseller — Amanda Hocking, the star of self-publishing, was sitting in the front seat of her Ford Escape earlier this spring when she spotted a messenger delivering flowers to her home in Austin, Minn. She watched her best friend and roommate, Eric Goldman, get the door.

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Facebook PR: Tonight We Dine In Hell! — There's currently something going on in the outskirts of the tech world that's a bit sensitive, so no one really likes to talk about it: we (journalists, bloggers, etc) are at war with the PR industry. — That sentence alone will throw the PR flacks into a tizzy.

Discussion: Electronista, MediaFile, WebProNews, GigaOM and MacRumors, more at Techmeme »

Mike Madden / City Desk:

City Paper Seeks Dismissal of Dan Snyder's Lawsuit — When Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder sued Washington City Paper's parent companies in February in New York courts over “The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder,” we said the suit had no merit.

Discussion: Citizen Media Law Project, Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Deadspin

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Following Departures, Murdoch's iPad Paper Makes A Big Hire — The Daily made a big hire Friday, scooping up Variety's Tom Lowry as the tablet publication's new business editor. — Daily editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo announced the hire Friday in a memo to staff obtained by The Huffington Post.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, The Wrap and Future of Journalism

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

CBS Shuffles CNET Editors — More management changes at CBS' digital arm: Veteran editor Dan Farber is once again running CNET News, a position he last held in 2008. — CNET editor in chief Scott Ard will stay on at the company, but will focus on CNET's reviews, which he had overseen prior to his promotion in 2009.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Spotify, Gearing Up for U.S. Launch, Closes Its $1 Billion Round — More momentum for Spotify: The streaming music service has finalized a huge funding round that gives it a valuation of about $1 billion. — The European company has raised around $100 million from DST, Kleiner Perkins and Accel.

Discussion: VentureBeat, GigaOM, App Advice, MacRumors, ReadWriteWeb, Guardian, paidContent, Betabeat, PC Magazine, SAI, The Next Web, broadstuff and Softpedia News

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

comScore: The Average YouTube Viewer Watches 5 Hours Of Videos A Month — comScore has just released its monthly data on online video engagement, with 176 million U.S. Internet users watching online video content in May for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer.

Discussion: VideoNuze, Softpedia News, GigaOM, Media News International, comScore, Inc., Marketing Pilgrim, Multichannel and Home Media Magazine

Shane Richmond / Telegraph:

Why Twitter's media critics are missing the point — Media commentators have called Twitter 'smug, ‘intolerant’ and suggested that it's pointless but that's like saying the telephone is smug, writes Shane Richmond. — Twitter: scaring people in the media since 2006.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Editors Weblog

Noah Davis / The Wire:

Meet Hearst's Secret Weapon Who's Making Magazine iPad Apps Pay — If Hearst Corporation figures out how to make magazine subscriptions pay on the iPad and other tablets, Jim Meigs will deserve plenty of the credit. — The editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics is one of the leaders …