Mediagazer: Mike Barnicle: The best friend a gangster could have (Steve Kornacki/Salon)

The Atlantic Wire:

Gay Talese: What I Read — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? What sources can't they live without? We regularly reach out to prominent figures in media, entertainment, politics, the arts and the literary world, to hear their answers to these questions.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Yahoo! News and New York Magazine

Gene Weingarten / Washington Post:

How ‘branding’ is ruining journalism — Dear Leslie: — I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I've “built my personal brand over the years.” I'm answering with this column.

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, Future of Journalism and Poynter

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

AOL's Huffington Post Expands Local News Ahead of Campaign — AOL Inc. (AOL), after buying the Huffington Post website this year to revive sales growth, is accelerating its expansion of local coverage to lure readers interested in campaign news ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Future of Journalism and The Wire

Discussion: @aarongell

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Times' Headlam: 'We cover the media, we're not the most important part of the Times' — New York Times Media Desk Editor Bruce Headlam appeared on “The Daily Show” Thursday night as a late substitute for Andrew Rossi, director of “Page One,” the documentary about the newspaper.

Andrea Pitzer / Nieman Storyboard:

“Why's This So Good?” - a collaboration on the magic of long-form stories — We're excited to announce a new feature that we'll be rolling out next week on Nieman Storyboard. “Why's This So Good?” will explore what makes classic narrative nonfiction stories worth reading.

Ben Collins / Hulu Blog:

The Great Reddit-Hulu Experiment — Well, Reddit, that was a lot of fun. — We asked you out to a nice steak dinner the other day and when we got to the restaurant, it was filled with people we like talking about shows we love and offering us superfluous amounts of A1 Sauce. Oh, and Carl Sagan was there.

Discussion: Lost Remote and AllThingsD

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the next-gen NPR network — Editor's Note: Each week, Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of news for the Lab. — Tell me if you've heard this one. The head of media company says: Why are we reinventing the wheel?

Discussion: Bloggasm and WBUR

MediaShift:

NY Times Paywall May Be Working, Could Work Better — There's been a lot of hand wringing about pay walls in digital media lately, but not a lot of discussion on how they're working or how to improve them. — The pay wall that's gotten the most press, of course, is that of the New York Times — instituted on March 28.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Media Week

Claudia Cruz / Mountain View Patch:

For Student Journalists, No Burden Guarding Vargas' Secret — When Jose Antonio Vargas told the Oracle editorial staff his immigration status, silence fell upon the room. — “I'm an undocumented immigrant,” he confessed to the group after a nervous pause for a sip out of his Starbucks cup.

Discussion: Poynter, Mediaite and Big Journalism

Steve Kornacki / Salon:

Mike Barnicle: The best friend a gangster could have — In the summer of 1991, James J. “Whitey” Bulger won the Massachusetts lottery. Well, at least he claimed he did. The $14 million winning ticket was actually held by a South Boston man named Michael Linskey, who had purchased it at the Bulger-owned South Boston Liquor Mart.

Discussion: National Review

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

Cleeng's ‘next generation paywall’ gets its first major customer — We've raved about Cleeng for some time and it looks like the mainstream media is starting to catch on. — The Dutch startup makes it easy for online publishers to charge for small pieces of online content …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

News Challenge winner OpenBlock Rural plans to partner with smaller papers on using public data — Small rural papers can have a level of reader engagement that would be the envy of their larger peers. If you're the newspaper of a town with 12,000 or so people — like, say …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“The Drupal of dataviz”: Overview, AP's News Challenge winner, wants to make sense of big document sets — When WikiLeaks released its Iraq War Logs last year, it unleashed upon the world, and particularly upon newsrooms, 391,832 individual documents. If a single reader were to tackle that document set …

Jake Dobkin / Gothamist:

Call For Journalists: Gothamist Wants Long-Form Features — Gothamist is interested in adding long-form non-fiction features to our website. Since we're new to this game, we're going to dip our toes in the water slowly, by publishing a single feature next month.

Discussion: GalleyCat, The Wire, Editors Weblog, paidContent, Forbes.com, eMedia Vitals, Gawker and FishbowlNY