Mediagazer: Tumblr Set to Close Big New Financing (Spencer E. Ante/Wall Street Journal)

2:20 PM ET, August 26, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Slate Lays Off Staff. Does Its Model Still Make Sense? — You don't have to be an ink-and-paper newspaper to be a dinosaur. — Slate, one of the original internet-only magazines, has laid off four journalists, including someone whose words I often quote in this column, press critic Jack Shafer.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Washington Post, Thanks:beet_tv

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Slate's Layoffs Signal Flaws in Web Model — Unexpected ‘Head Winds’ Buffet Online Pioneer's Ad Sales — Since its mid-1990s launch, the online magazine Slate has been a study in whether a Web-only news organization can support a staff of professional journalists churning out original, reported content.

Discussion: Poynter

New York Post:

Staff cries Wolff — Adweek's top editor, Michael Wolff, is on the hot seat, The Post has learned. — Senior executives at Prometheus Global Media, which owns the title, have been telling business associates that they are unhappy with Adweek under Wolff, sources said.

Discussion: The New York Observer, @michaelwolffnyc, @michaelwolffnyc, @rickwebb, @espiers and MediaPost

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

In Britain, a Meeting on Limiting Social Media — LONDON — British officials and representatives of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry met Thursday to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest, while trying to dodge charges …

Discussion: Gawker, Techland, The Business Insider, The Next Web and Guardian

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

New York Times Publishes Spread From State-Owned Chinese Newspaper — In the center of today's front section, the New York Times published a full page spread from China Daily, the state-owned English-language newspaper of China, called “China Watch.” It is marked as an advertisement …

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Forbes

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:
How Steve Jobs has changed (but not saved) journalism

Discussion: Forbes, MediaFile, MediaShift, AllThingsD, Softpedia News, Garcia Media, Globe and Mail, Epicenter, digiday:DAILY, ZDNet, Digital Trends, Yahoo! News, Fortune, The Tech Report, HBR.org and The Business Insider, Thanks:jeffsondermanch

Peter Greenberg / Poynter:

Travel is news, so why am I the only travel editor at a major network? — People know me because of travel. But the classic error that many people make - and it's a well-intentioned error - is when they say to me, “When did you make the transition from journalism to travel?”

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Amy Wicks / WWD:

Kim Kardashian's People Cover a Hit — KARDASHIAN'S A HIT: Kim Kardashian and her over-the-top wedding to New Jersey Nets player Kris Humphries easily beat out the last celebrity wedding cover story to break on people.com (the marriage of Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth) …

Discussion: Forbes and FishbowlNY

Spencer E. Ante / Wall Street Journal:

Tumblr Set to Close Big New Financing — Blogging service Tumblr has a funny name and scant revenue. It has also convinced investors it is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. — The New York-based company is poised to raise $75 million to $100 million in venture capital …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Adweek, VatorNews, FT Tech Hub and Reuters, more at Techmeme »

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Contessa Brewer Leaving Daily Anchoring at MSNBC — Contessa Brewer, who has been a fixture on MSNBC since 2003, will no longer be an anchor on the network, TVNewser has learned. — For the last year-and-a-half Brewer has anchored the NoonET hour on MSNBC as well as hosting the weekend documentary series “Caught on Camera.”

Discussion: Inside Cable News, The Huffington Post, TVWeek.com and LA Observed

Ben Dowell / Guardian:

Rise in defamation involving blogs and Twitter — Cases include action brought by New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns over former IPL chief's tweets — The growth of social networking sites has seen the number of defamation cases involving online content more than double in the 12 months to June, new research has found.

Discussion: Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk and Inforrm's Blog

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Why Political Coverage is Broken — My keynote address at New News 2011, part of the Melbourne Writers Festival, co-sponsored by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation at Swinburne University of Technology. (Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2011.) — This talk had its origins …

Discussion: Poynter

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Study: iPad users spend most time with news apps compared with other types — An app analytics company says that news apps generate the longest periods of use among iPad owners. “Based on data from apps subscribing to the firm's analytics platform, users spend over two and a half times …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, NetNewsCheck Latest, GigaOM, The Loop and App Advice

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

Advice for building engagement through newsroom Twitter accounts — Like many institutional Twitter accounts, Journal Register Co. newsroom accounts need to be more engaging and conversational. — We tweet a lot of links to our content. But we're not very personable.

Erik Larson / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Phone Hacker Mulcaire Required to Name Names by Today in U.K. — Glenn Mulcaire, the British private detective who hacked celebrities' voice mails for the News of the World tabloid, is required to reveal by today for the first time the names of the News Corp. employees who directed him.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

David Smydra / Google News Blog:

Google News now crawling with Googlebot — (Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog) — Google News recently updated our infrastructure to crawl with Google's primary user-agent, Googlebot. What does this mean? Very little to most publishers. Any news organizations that wish …

Discussion: Softpedia News, Search Engine Land, Future of Journalism and WebProNews

Amie Parnes / The Politico:

The bundler wears Prada — From her front row seat at the fall and spring fashion shows, a nod or frown from Anna Wintour can make or break what comes down the runway and send tremors through the fashion industry. — As one of President Barack Obama's most successful fundraisers …

Discussion: The New York Observer and The Corsair