Mediagazer: How you can use social machinery to power personalized news delivery (Jeff Sonderman/Poynter)

10:55 PM ET, June 28, 2011

Top News:

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

AOL Consolidates 53 Brands Down To 20 “Power Brands;” The Huffington Post Gets Bigger — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong likes to streamline things. And he is about to streamline AOL even more. Somewhat reversing the anti-portal strategy he inherited, he will start to consolidate 53 different content brands into 20 “power brands.”

Discussion: The Business Insider, The Wire, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, AdAge and Future of Journalism

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

AOL Moves the Furniture Around Some More, With Brod to Patch — Here's an internal memo, titled “Platform for Growth,” just sent out by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, in which he buries the lede by noting the business partner of content czar Arianna Huffington, Jon Brod, will move to work …

Discussion: paidContent, Digital Trends, The Business Insider and mediabistro.com

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Chesapeake Energy fights bad PR by buying Promoted Tweets on Twitter — Chesapeake Energy was not pleased, to put it politely, with Sunday's New York Times story about the natural gas industry. The piece quotes from company emails to suggest Chesapeake executives are overstating productivity and profitability.

Discussion: BusinessJournalism.org …, Hot Air, ProPublica, Most Recent Home Page Posts … and Forbes.com

MediaFile: My response to Bill Keller: Trivialization makes you stupid

The Real Voice:

STRIKE LOOMS AT VILLAGE VOICE — The current three-year contract between Village Voice Media and UAW Local 2110, representing the workers of The Village Voice, expires midnight June 30. The membership has unanimously passed a strike authorization vote. — Over the past three years …

Discussion: AAN, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Google plans for “the second phase of the display ad revolution” with a focus on smartphones and tablets — Google is known primarily for its work in search advertising. But it's making an investment — a big one — in another area: display ads. — This month's acquisition of AdMeld …

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Chris Suellentrop joins Yahoo! News blog network from New York Times Magazine — Chris Suellentrop, an editor at the New York Times Magazine, has joined Yahoo's network of news blogs, where he will become deputy editor starting August 8. — “We're very excited that Chris is coming on board …

Discussion: Adweek and Poynter

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

How you can use social machinery to power personalized news delivery — People have spent the past five years in Social Networking 101. We figured out what social networks are, created our profiles and connected with friends. We rethought fundamental aspects of human relationships …

Discussion: Future Journalism Project and 10,000 Words

Lymari Morales / Gallup:

Americans Regain Some Confidence in Newspapers, TV News — Confidence still lags behind levels of trust seen through much of the 1990s and into 2003 — WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news rebounded slightly in the past year, having been stuck at record lows since 2007.

Discussion: CJR, Media Buyer Planner, MediaPost, Poynter, On Media's Blog, TVWeek.com, mediabistro.com, Forbes.com, TVNewser, Free Press and Hot Air

Ed Yong / Discover Blogs:

Am I a science journalist? — I've just spoken at the opening plenary of the second day of the World Conference of Science Journalists at Doha, Qatar. It's a panel called “Am I a science journalist?"with myself, my fellow Discover blogger Chris Mooney, Mo Costandi, Homayoun Kheyri, and Cristine Russell.

Discussion: Poynter and Adam Westbrook

Mark Joyella / Mediaite:

CNN Names Jessica Yellin Chief White House Correspondent — CNN has named Jessica Yellin its new chief White House correspondent, replacing Ed Henry. A CNN insider tells Mediaite Yellin has been the network's choice since Spring. Yellin had been serving as the network's national political correspondent …

Discussion: TVNewser, On Media's Blog, The Wire, FishbowlDC, mediabistro.com, MediaPost, Adweek, Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel

Johann Hari:

Interview etiquette — I've recently been asked to clarify something about a few of the interviews I've done in the past. When I've interviewed a writer, it's quite common that they will express an idea or sentiment to me that they have expressed before in their writing - and, almost always …

Discussion: Guardian, blogs.journalism.co.uk, brianwhelan.net, FleetStreetBlues, blogs.independent.co.uk, Metamedia, Salon, Journalism.co.uk, Guy Fawkes' blog, The Wire, Big News Network.com, One Man & His Blog and themediablog.typepad.com

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Rohde quits NYT to become Reuters columnist — Romenesko Misc. — David Rohde's writing will focus on foreign affairs and globalization, says a Reuters memo. Rohde, who escaped the Taliban in 2009 after seven months in captivity, “is one of the most brilliant and consequential journalists …

Discussion: Forbes.com

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Amazon Starts an Ad Network, Powered by Your Data — You can buy just about anything on Amazon.com, including advertising. Now Amazon is selling ads on other people's sites, too. — The e-commerce giant has started what is effectively an ad network* where it buys Web advertising inventory and resells it to marketers at a premium.

Discussion: PC Magazine and Techland, more at Techmeme »

Inside Higher Ed:

‘Times’ Ticks On — The New York Times Company plans to continue its slow advance into the realm of higher education this fall. It announced today that it is teaming up with the University of Southern California to offer continuing education programs to try to tap a growing market of adults looking to pick up new skills.

Discussion: LA Observed, Poynter and Forbes