Mediagazer: Cleeng's ‘next generation paywall’ gets its first major customer (Martin Bryant/The Next Web)

10:20 AM ET, June 24, 2011

Top News:

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, Most Recent Home Page Posts … and The Atlantic Wire

Phil Bronstein / SFGate:
I was duped by Jose Vargas, illegal immigrant

Discussion: Mediaite, Poynter, Slate, Big Journalism, Mountain View Patch, Gawker, TBD All News, ProPublica, The Huffington Post, The New Republic, The New Yorker Blog, Salon, The Atlantic Wire, San Francisco Peninsula …, The Daily Caller and Washington Post

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

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.

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 and Poynter

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: The Wire, paidContent, eMedia Vitals, Forbes.com and FishbowlNY

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: WBUR

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 …

Curt Hopkins / ReadWriteWeb:

Brazilian Blogger Assasinated — On March 18, 2009, Omid Reza Mir Sayafi became the first blogger to die in prison. A culture blogger, he was imprisoned in the vicious Evin prison outside Tehran and either killed outright or at least allowed to die. He was followed on April 9 of this year …

Discussion: Reporters Without Borders

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 …

Discussion: GigaOM

David Hirschman / Street Fight:

St. Louis Beacon: Revenue Beyond the Banner Ad — The St. Louis Beacon was founded in 2007 by a group of veteran St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters who perceived a serious lack of in-depth reporting about the communities they lived in. After building up the site, they snagged a couple …

Discussion: Poynter

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:

Late Night's Late Bloomer Jimmy Kimmel … Famous athletes have their bizarre pregame rituals, and so, it seems, do comedians. It's minutes before Jimmy Kimmel Live!'s 7 p.m. taping June 9, and half a dozen members of the host's staff are huddled around him in his sprawling Hollywood office.

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

Joshua Hersh Leaves The Daily for The Huffington Post — The Huffington Post has poached reporter Joshua Hersh from The Daily, spokesman Mario Ruiz told The Observer. — Mr. Hersh will be a staff reporter covering foreign policy and the State Department in the Washington, D.C. bureau.

Discussion: @aarongell

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Good News for ‘Newsweek’ — After a year of year-on-year declines in ad pages, Newsweek has something to celebrate. For July, at least, it has stopped that decline, which could mean improved advertiser confidence in the brand. — Last year, the magazine had 52 ad pages for the month of July; this year it will be the same.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, FishbowlNY and The Wire