Mediagazer: Penske's MMC Rebrands, Promotes Racer To President (David Kaplan/paidContent)

4:10 PM ET, June 30, 2011

Top News:

Mark Halperin apologizes for Obama gaffe — Mark Halperin, editor-at-large for Time, called President Obama “a dick” on Thursday on a popular MSNBC morning show and then quickly apologized. — “I thought he was a dick yesterday,” Halperin, who also is a senior political analyst for MSNBC …

John Cook / Gawker:

Roger Ailes' Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News — Republican media strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News Channel in 1996, ostensibly as a “fair and balanced” counterpoint to what he regarded as the liberal establishment media. But according to a remarkable document buried deep within …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Wire and On Media's Blog

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Flipboard 1.5 Integrates LinkedIn, Adds A Content Guide For Curated News Browsing — An update to social news viewing app Flipboard goes live in the app store today, with a new souped up 1.5 version that optimizes the reader experience even further. Earlier this week we had the chance …

Discussion: Poynter, GigaOM, The LinkedIn Blog, Time, ReadWriteWeb, ZDNet, PC Magazine, AllThingsD, Mashable!, PhoneArena, Appolicious ™ App Directory, PC World, The Business Insider, MobileBurn.com, Read It Later Blog and VatorNews, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the British invasion — 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. — With the United Kingdom one of the countries suffering the economic doldrums …

Discussion: paidContent:UK

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Tablet owners read print newspapers, magazines less often — People who use an iPad or other tablet device read printed newspapers, books and magazines less than they used to, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. — Almost one-third (32 percent) of tablet owners …

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Birthers Sue Esquire Over Parody, Seeking More than $200 Million — Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have some pretty interesting beliefs. They believe there's no proof Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. * They also believe Hearst Corp. and a writer it employs ought to pay them hundreds …

Discussion: Adweek, The Wire, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, The Raw Story, FishbowlNY and New York Magazine

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

Forensic Art Expert Sues ‘New Yorker’ Author — Forensic art expert Peter Paul Biro brought a $2 million defamation suit Wednesday against The New Yorker staff writer David Grann and Advance Magazine Publishers (owners of Condé Nast, which publishes The New Yorker) …

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Next Issue Media Works To Build The Storefront Before The Audience Arrives — Magazine joint venture Next Issue Media is adding six titles to its digital storefront on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android-powered Samsung Galaxy as it unveils an integrated app that allows users to keep their digital reads …

Discussion: Media Maverick

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Penske's MMC Rebrands, Promotes Racer To President — Jay Penske's Mail.com Media Corp is simplifying things a bit by rebranding as PMC and promoting Chief Revenue Officer Aly Racer to the role of president. Also, CFO George Grobar will now add the COO post to his duties …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Curiosity made collaborative: Apture's “Hotspots” feature brings crowdsourcing to link generation — How many times has this happened to you? You're reading an article online, and you come across a word or a reference you don't know — or a topic or term you want to learn more about — but it's not hyperlinked.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, The Apture Blog, TechCrunch, Future of Journalism, ShortFormBlog and GigaOM

David Kravets / Threat Level:

Newspaper Chain Fights for Copyright Troll's Survival — Stephens Media, the Las Vegas-based media chain, is fighting to keep its latest business model alive: copyright-trolling. — After standing on the sidelines while professional content-troll Righthaven fights in court …

Discussion: Righthaven Victims

Tom Grubisich / Street Fight:

The ‘Wishes and Dreams’ of Hyperlocal News Consumers — “Give me the news about my neighborhood, please,” wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick in March on Read, Write,Web. … What Kirkpatrick wants in his hyperlocal news is very close to the hot new thing in health care - “observations of daily living.”

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A year after its big redesign, how Google News is thinking about the best ways to present news stories — It's been a year since Google News launched its big redesign, the first major update of the Google News interface since it launched in 2002. The revamp put a new emphasis on customized news content …

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

Peter Perl: 'I haven't been fired or suspended or fined' for keeping Vargas secret — The Washington Post will reassign some of Peter Perl's duties, but won't demote or suspend the assistant managing editor, who knew that Jose Vargas was an undocumented immigrant, but kept it a secret for seven years.

Discussion: http://www.Stinkyjournalism …

Ellie Behling / eMedia Vitals:

Editors as the new audience specialist — I recently met an audience development manager at a major B2B media company, who explained his job to this effect: “We're the ones who get the audience for those of you in editorial to write about.” — When you put it that way, it intrigued me.