Mediagazer: Meet The First Indie Publisher To Sell A Million Kindle Books (Leena Rao/TechCrunch)

12:45 PM ET, June 20, 2011

Top News:

Ugly Details in Selling Newspapers — Any look behind the curtain of Wall Street is not going to be pretty. But there is not pretty and then there is plain ugly. — James O'Shea, the former editor in chief of The Los Angeles Times, found a classic of the genre in the course of reporting out …

Discussion: LA Observed, The Atlantic Wire, The Wire and Money & Company

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

At New Network, Olbermann Sets Sights on MSNBC — Starting on Monday, there will be new competition for progressive attention spans on television. — Challenging MSNBC, which has a stable lineup of left-leaning hosts, will be Current TV, where Keith Olbermann will start anchoring the 8 p.m. hour, his former time slot on MSNBC.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Company Town, National Review, Gawker, Inside Cable News and Chickaboomer

David Bauder / Associated Press:
How MSNBC is surviving after Olbermann

Discussion: Mediaite

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Revealed: Facebook's music plans involve Spotify, others — For the past few months, I have been hearing about Facebook and Spotify getting a lot closer as companies, with a much tighter integration between the two services. However, Facebook's musical ambitions go beyond Spotify and include other music services and applications.

Discussion: SAI, Pocket-lint, ReadWriteWeb, CNET News.com, I4U News, The Next Web, 9 to 5 Mac and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

The Onion Is Seeking a Pulitzer, Any Pulitzer — Despite a professed designation as “America's Finest News Source,” The Onion has never actually won the highest honor in American journalism: the Pulitzer Prize. — Not that it hasn't tried. Editors at the satirical newspaper have submitted …

Discussion: New York Magazine, Adweek, FishbowlNY and Hit & Run

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Meet The First Indie Publisher To Sell A Million Kindle Books — Amazon is touting its self-publishing platform today with the announcement that John Locke has become the first independently published author to become a member of the “Kindle Million club,” selling over 1 million Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing.

Discussion: paidContent, Business Wire, GalleyCat and Pocket-lint

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Hulu Plays Along With Apple's New Rules. Who's Next? — Apple's new subscription rules could have posed a problem for services like Hulu. But when Steve Jobs changed his mind earlier this month, life got a lot easier. — Here's the old version of the Hulu Plus subscription app for the iPad:

Discussion: paidContent, SAI, AppleInsider, MacRumors and eBookNewser, more at Techmeme »

Ellie Behling / eMedia Vitals:

Reinventing the article with Storify — Storify is one of the most exciting journalism tools of the year. The mission of the platform is to make social media the story not just the distribution tool, explained Xavier Damman, co-founder of the site. — “Storytelling has to be reinvented …

J. Max Robins / The Business Insider:

Getting Reporters Off The Hamster Wheel: The FCC And The Future Of Media — The crisis in journalism lies in the decline of news stories that are costly to produce and that advertisers don't like to pay for. — That's how the FCC's Steven Waldman summed it up yesterday …

Discussion: CJR and Media Buyer Planner

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Display's New Kingpin: Facebook's No. 1 — Social Network's $2.19 Billion Puts It at Top of the Digital Heap, Leaping Google, Yahoo — but It's Still a Bit Player When Compared to TV — Facebook doesn't really have to try to become the biggest player in digital media; it simply is.

Discussion: Beet.TV, Softpedia News, SAI and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

Have newsrooms relaxed standards, sanctions for fabrication and plagiarism? — When the Chicago Sun-Times fired Paige Wiser for fabricating earlier this month, readers shared mixed reactions about whether the punishment was too harsh. — Wiser, who had been at the paper for 17 years …

Steve Myers / Poynter:

False comparisons between New York Times and Huffington Post obscure true difference — We oxpeckers in media, to borrow a phrase from New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, have fed on several tick-sized bits of news about the Times and The Huffington Post this year.

Committee to Protect Journalists:

Journalists in exile 2011: Iran, Cuba drive out critics — Two of the world's most repressive nations each forced at least 18 journalists to flee their homes in the past year. In exile, these journalists face enormous challenges. A CPJ special report by Elisabeth Witchel. — LONDON

Discussion: Jon Slattery and Guardian

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Google Will Scan 250,000 Out-Of-Copyright Books For The British Library — Turns out libraries and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can work together on books - as long as copyright is no longer an issue. — The British Library is handing 250,000 out-of-copyright titles from 1700 to 1870 …