Mediagazer: Conde Nast Sued Over Vanity Fair Oleg Cassini Story (Dan Duray/The New York Observer)

2:50 PM ET, August 9, 2011

Top News:

Erin Griffith / Adweek:

The Trouble With Back-Ends — No publication has a better story about back-end chaos than BusinessWeek. — Before it was acquired by Bloomberg LP, the publication sank a shocking $20 million into the back-end development of Business Exchange, a professional social networking site …

Discussion: @fromedome, @mikeydigital, @osder, @andymboyle, @codybrown, @jonathanstray and @fromedome

Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:

Murdoch to face Wall Street on News Corp earnings call — (Reuters) - News Corp is taking a risk in putting boss Rupert Murdoch, famous for his off-script comments, on the media conglomerate's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday with succession questions sure to be asked.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Free Press, Company Town and Runnin' Scared

Ian Burrell / The Independent:
‘NOTW’ staff offered lucrative severance pay

Discussion: Adweek

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder: News Corp.'s Independent Directors Have Strong Ties to Murdoch

Michael Wolff / Adweek:
How Bad Is News Corp.?

Discussion: Guardian, Mixed Media and Deadline.com

Steve Myers / Poynter:

U.K. photographer explains how she captured dramatic photo during riots — All the major newspapers in the U.K. published a dramatic photo of a woman jumping from a burning building during the riots that have terrorized the country, captured by Amy Weston of the photo agency WENN.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Guardian, Barbara Krasnoff's blog and Adweek, more at Techmeme »

Guardian:

London riots: Sky, ITN and CNN reporters attacked — Broadcasters' vans smashed in Croydon and Sky News reporter Mark Stone forced to flee in Clapham disturbance — Journalists and photographers came under attack on Monday as London faced its third consecutive day of violent riots in the capital.

Discussion: BBC, Journalism.co.uk, Fast Company, Forbes, PC World, NBC Bay Area, The Lede, WebProNews, The Huffington Post, Press Gazette and Jon Slattery, more at Techmeme »

Telegraph:
How technology fuelled Britain's first 21st century riot

Discussion: Gawker, TechCrunch Europe, Techland, Gizmodo, ReadWriteWeb and The Lede

Mark Milian / CNN:

Newspaper giant Tribune Co. developing tablet device — (CNN) — Hoping to take a small slice from Apple's big pie, newspaper publishers are developing tablet computers of their own. — The Tribune Co., one of the largest U.S. news enterprises, is working on a touchscreen tablet that it plans …

Discussion: Poynter, TechCrunch, rbr.com, Liliputing, Gizmodo, LAPTOP Mag, PC World, 9to5Google, 9to5Mac and NetNewsCheck Latest, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

AOL Earnings: Shares Plummet Despite Ad Revenue Gains — The addition of the Huffington Post and other acquisitions allowed AOL chairman Tim Armstrong to tell Wall Street what it has long waited to hear: the internet company's global advertising revenues grew in the second quarter, the first time that's happened since 2008.

Discussion: Business Wire, VentureBeat, Poynter, AllThingsD, CNET News, paidContent, TechCrunch, Reuters, Softpedia News, ZDNet, Digital Trends, The Tech Trade, Search Engine Land and The Business Insider

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Why Huffpo Would Be Better Off Without ‘Zombie’ AOL

Discussion: AllThingsD, Adweek, AdAge, FishbowlNY, digiday:DAILY, Crikey, Future of Journalism and Fast Company, more at Techmeme »

Nat Ives / AdAge:

How These Magazines Increase Circulation While the Industry Declined — Tactics Range From Absorbing a Defunct Title to Getting Bloggers to Sell Subscriptions — Here's the bad news that everyone was expecting: Magazines' paid and verified circulation in the first half slipped 1.36% …

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

New Stats: Book Publishing Is Growing; E-Book Revs and Sales Up Over 1000% — One positive story in a week of terrible economic news: BookStats, a new annual statistical survey of raw sales revenue and unit data provided by nearly 2,000 publishers that is being released today …

Discussion: GalleyCat and Techland

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

NYT Labs: Can a newspaper think like a startup? — After delaying the project while it launched a paywall, the New York Times has finally rolled out its version of Google Labs, the now-shuttered project that provided a home for the search company's various web experiments.

Discussion: Communications …, The Buttry Diary, beta620, The Business Insider, News for Digital Journalists, ReadWriteWeb, Nieman Journalism Lab, 10,000 Words, Betabeat and AdAge, Thanks:mathewi

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Onion's CTO: Our paywall experiment is just that — When word got out about The Onion testing a paid content model overseas, Gawker declared the beginning of the end: “It only affects dirty foreigners at the moment, but everyone knows damn well that these things always presage a domestic rollout.

Discussion: Mediaite, A.V. Club, The Huffington Post, Splitsider, Gizmodo and The Consumerist

James Parker / The Atlantic Online:

Valley of the Trolls — It's the rare star who can withstand the predatory cameras of TMZ on TV. — AM I ON some kind of Web site for nuts and stalkers?" asked Paris Hilton, rhetorically (I think), during the premier episode of her new reality show, The World According to Paris.

Dan Duray / The New York Observer:

Conde Nast Sued Over Vanity Fair Oleg Cassini Story — Conde Nast has been sued for libel over Maureen Orth's September 2010 Vanity Fair article, “Cassini Royale,” about designer Oleg Cassini and the battle over his estate. The plaintiff is Marianne Nestor-Cassini, Cassini's secret wife from that story …

Discussion: Adweek, FishbowlNY and WWD Media Headlines

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

A year after launch, lessons from the TBD experience — A year ago, my TBD colleagues and I launched one of the great adventures of my career. — Few remain there. TBD barely remains, its staff and mission diminished and redefined. Founding leader Jim Brady parted ways with owner Robert Allbritton last November.

Eric Newton / Knight Foundation:

The future of news? Four different sources weigh in — It is no secret that the news industry is struggling in the midst of our digital revolution. But what exactly is happening to newspapers? How are these changes affecting our communities? And what should be done to make sure that people are getting the information they need?

Discussion: Free Press

George Winslow / Broadcasting & Cable:

View Along the TV App Landscape — A company-by-company look at the app strategies of top channels, operators and TV program producers — To get a detailed look at the TV app landscape, B&C recently spoke to 25 executives who work in a broad cross section of the media industry.

Discussion: Future of Journalism