Mediagazer: Give Me Back My Baby: Michael Arrington Trying to Buy Back TechCrunch From AOL — But Would AOL Sell It? (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

4:05 PM ET, September 6, 2011

Top News:

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over — This is a post I never thought I'd have to write. Unfortunately, I do. And the worst part about it is that it should be Michael Arrington writing this post, not me. — But he can't. — TechCrunch is on the precipice.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Editorial Independence — There's confusion - way too much confusion - about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch's status at Aol after last week's announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol. — The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol on Thursday …

Discussion: The Awl, Business Insider and BetaNews, more at Techmeme »

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Give Me Back My Baby: Michael Arrington Trying to Buy Back TechCrunch From AOL — But Would AOL Sell It? — Here's another interesting wrinkle to the ongoing saga of AOL, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his nascent venture firm, CrunchFund. — Arrington has reached …

Discussion: Digits and Talking Biz News, more at Techmeme »

Henry Blodget / Business Insider: TECHCRUNCH: If AOL Fires Mike Arrington, We're Screwed

Noreen Malone / New York Magazine:

Slate's Jack Shafer Is Headed to Reuters [Updated] — Shafer — Jack Shafer, Slate's very recently laid-off media critic, is moving to Reuters, according to a source familiar with the matter. The deep-pocketed news service — which under the digital leadership of Chrystia Freeland …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Reuters

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

NYT's Abramson names leadership team — “This is a start, explaining some changed roles,” Jill Abramson writes on her first day as Times executive editor. “Some leaders will continue in the same roles, because they've made themselves irreplaceable, at least to — us rookies in our first year.

Discussion: Poynter, Media Decoder, Gawker, On Media's Blog, Adweek, MediaPost, @jillabramson, mediabistro.com, Future of Journalism and FishbowlNY

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

Can Politico Win Again? — Ben Smith has a problem. — If there is such a thing as the prototypical political news blogger, then he's it. Smith didn't quite invent the form, but over the six years he's been blogging—first for The New York Observer, then the New York Daily News …

Discussion: Poynter and Monday Note

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Conde Nast Spins Out Reddit, Without Letting Go — Five years after buying Reddit, Conde Nast is giving the social news site a gentle shove out the door. — The publisher isn't pushing Reddit very far away, though. It is spinning out the company as a standalone operation, but will retain full ownership of it, for now.

Discussion: Betabeat, The Next Web and New York Magazine, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Google Goes Big With Its Hulu Bid — Hulu's corporate owners are currently mulling bids from three would-be buyers: Amazon, Yahoo, and the Dish Network. — And then there's Google. The search giant has also made an offer for the video site, but it seems to be playing a different sport …

Discussion: The Next Web, Business Insider and Softpedia News, more at Techmeme »

Guardian:

News International to cut 110 jobs — Sun and Times publisher also reveals that almost half of former News of the World staff have taken voluntary redundancy — News International is to cut 110 jobs across its workforce as the company revealed that almost half of the former News …

Discussion: Press Gazette, totalpolitics.com and Media & Entertainment

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Now on iTunes, for Free: A Show You Can't Watch on Fox for a Couple Weeks — Fox is leading the charge to take TV episodes that used to be free and easy to access on the Web, and make them more expensive and/or harder to find. — But the network doesn't always want to play hard to get.

Discussion: Variety, Techland, Future of Journalism, GigaOM, Tuned In and Electronista

Anna Tarkov / Knight Digital Media Center …:

Patch by the numbers — Amid much hoopla and skepticism about Patch, AOL's group of 800-plus hyperlocal news sites, little has been said about the sites themselves. How much news do they produce? How do their users interact with them? To find out, I took a closer look at four Patch sites around the country for a month.

BBC:

Phone hacking: James Murdoch ‘told of hacking email’ — Tom Crone: “It was the reason that we had to settle the case” — Former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone has told MPs he was “certain” he told James Murdoch about an email which indicated phone hacking at the paper went beyond one rogue reporter.

Discussion: Guardian, CNN, The Huffington Post and Business Insider

Erik Larson / Bloomberg:
Phone-Hacking Lawyer Lewis Says Hearing Could End James Murdoch's Career

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine

MediaPost:

The Pros And Cons Of Building An Audience Outside YouTube — As YouTube marches towards greater market share of viewers and video streams, “It's YouTube's world, we just stream it.” But can you build an audience on or outside YouTube? — The reality is that unless content creators rely solely …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Longtime Yahoo Front Page Editor Liz Lufkin Out — According to sources close to the situation, longtime Yahoo front page chief Liz Lufkin has parted ways with the company. — The departure last week appears to be related to a reorg by newish editor-in-chief Jai Singh …

Discussion: Digital Media Wire

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Naming Names on the Internet — PARIS — Three years ago, after the suicide of a popular actress who had been bullied via the Internet, South Korea introduced a radical policy aimed at stamping out online hate. It required contributors to Web portals and other popular sites to use their real names, rather than pseudonyms.

Discussion: Erik Wemple and TechCrunch