Mediagazer: What's the big idea? (Economist)

4:30 PM ET, August 24, 2011

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

EXCLUSIVE: Media Pioneer Jim Romenesko To ‘Semi-Retire’ — NEW YORK — When Jim Romenesko attended an annual Poynter Institute board meeting in 2002, a few years after bringing his pioneering brand of media blogging and aggregation to the journalism school's site, some of the country's top editors complained …

Bill Mitchell / Poynter:

How the Romenesko Years have changed journalism and Poynter — It was the summer of 1999, still early days on the Web, and former Poynter president Jim Naughton and I were scheming ways of creating a site that journalists would find useful to the point of habit-forming.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Journalists freed from Rixos hotel in Tripoli — After being held at the Rixos hotel in what increasingly seemed like a hostage situation, about three dozen people, including journalists and foreign diplomats, were released Wednesday. CNN Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance …

Discussion: Reporters Without Borders, Mediaite, Mediaite, TVNewser, Jon Slattery, Press Gazette, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wire, On Media's Blog, msnbc.com, Guardian and Online NewsHour

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: A front-row seat to Libyan rebellion — Alex Crawford of Britain's Sky News and CNN's Sara Sidner and Matthew Chance provide cable TV viewers with riveting reports from Tripoli. — Too bad a little shaky ground on the East Coast seized the better part of the news cycle Tuesday …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Colby Hall / Mediaite:
CNN's Sara Sidner Gets Grazed By Bullet Casings During Live Report In Tripoli

Discussion: mediabistro.com, The Wire, TVNewser, onmilwaukee.com and Forbes

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Time Warner to Subsidize Subscribers' TV Device — Time Warner Cable, one of the nation's top cable and Internet providers, said on Tuesday that it would subsidize some purchases of a set-top box called Slingbox that allows users to watch their home television programming from anywhere, like a vacation home or a mobile phone.

Discussion: Betabeat, Deadline.com, Between the Lines Blog, Adweek, Engadget, Company Town, Gizmodo, This is my next, The Business Insider, Electronista and NYConvergence.com, more at Techmeme »

Michaelle Bond / American Journalism Review:

Aggregating Without Aggravating — What are the best practices when it comes to collecting the material of other news outlets? Wed. August 24, 2011 — Michaelle Bond (mbond@ajr.umd.edu) is an AJR editorial assistant. — The day after media columnist Simon Dumenco wrote a post commenting …

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Hollywood News Machine Getting a New TV Entrant — PMC, the digital-media company owned by entrepreneur Jay Penske whose properties include Nikki Finke's Deadline.com, is making a push into entertainment television by teaming up with ION Television to produce short news segments on Hollywood.

Discussion: Poynter and Medacity

D.M. Levine / Adweek:

Hulu Buyer May Be Getting a Network, Not a Video Platform — Hulu's network partners—ABC, NBC and Fox—have had a famously ambivalent relationship with the video venture since its launch in 2008. Now, as Hulu readies itself for a sale with initial bids due on Wednesday …

Gina Lovett / New Media Age:

Specific Media to launch video creative testing tool — Specific Media is to launch a video version of its creative campaign testing technology that uses eye-tracking. — The tool for display advertising analyses the impact of advertising creative by tracking user eye movement.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Medacity

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Online Video Platform Company Brightcove Files For $50 Million IPO — Online video platform company Brightcove this morning announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC in connection with a proposed IPO of its common stock. The company is looking to raise up to $50 million through the offering.

Discussion: Business Wire, paidContent, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, Online Video News, Softpedia News, VatorNews and Venture Capital Dispatch, more at Techmeme »

Economist:

What's the big idea? — LAST week in the New York Times, Neal Gabler argued … As I see it, Mr Gabler's complaint is at bottom a lament about the rise of mass literacy and the decline of oligopoly mass media. When literacy was the privilege of a small educated elite …

Amber Jamieson / Crikey:

The quality journalism project: investigating Wendy Bacon — Shining a light on injustice and corruption isn't an easy, but it's a critical aspect of journalism and democracy. Walkley award-winning journalist Wendy Bacon has done just that, examining official corruption in NSW …

Erik Sherman / Wired In Blog| BNET:

MarketBrief Shows Media's Future: More Automation, Fewer People — The future of news is increasingly automated. Just look at a company called MarketBrief, which translates SEC documents into template-driven reports. The company makes them available on its site and also hopes to syndicate them to other publishers.

Leslie Horn / PC Magazine:

Report: As Tablets Market Grows, Paper Media Will Have Steep Decline — As print goes increasingly digital, many wonder if the growth of the tablet and e-reader space mean the death of traditional paper media. A new report from RISI, a company that monitors the paper industry, says it doesn't look good for print.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Publishing Executive News, Noted and BtoB Magazine

David Higgerson:

How the NCTJ proved that asking the wrong question is one of the most basic fact-finding failings — “Asking the right question, that's the key to journalism.” It's one of the many pieces of advice I received from the experienced and wise old hands who mentored me during my first job …

Discussion: AndyDickinson.net, One Man & His Blog, Press Gazette and Headlines and Deadlines

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

MediaNews Group Consolidates Eleven Bay Area Papers Into Two — California's Bay Area residents are a couple months away from losing many of their local newspapers, as the Bay Area News Group—a division of MediaNews Group—consolidates eleven newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune, into just two: The Times and the East Bay Tribune.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, LA Observed and Future of Journalism