Mediagazer: Bloggers Don't Follow the Script, to ConAgra's Chagrin (Andrew Adam Newman/New York Times)

4:05 PM ET, September 7, 2011

Top News:

Digital First: The Next Step — Today marks another important step for Digital First. — As announced earlier this morning, we have formed a new company - Digital First Media Inc. It will manage both the Journal Register Company and Media News Group and its mission will be to accelerate …

Discussion: Journal Register Company, The Buttry Diary, BuzzMachine, paidContent, The Huffington Post, The Latest Word, Future of Journalism, GigaOM, Felix Salmon, Extra! and Editors Weblog

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A wave of consolidation? Some context on MediaNews, Journal Register, and Alden Global Capital — The big newspaper news this morning is that two of the nation's largest remaining chains, Journal Register Co. and MediaNews Group, are executing something like a merger-without-merging.

Discussion: News after Newspapers and Gannett Blog

Steve Myers / Poynter:

MediaNews and Journal Register Co. brought under one roof with John Paton at helm — Journal Register Co. announced Wednesday that it is creating a company called Digital First Media Inc. to manage it and MediaNewsGroup. John Paton will be CEO of Digital First and will act as CEO of MediaNews …

Discussion: paidContent

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Carol Bartz Out at Yahoo; CFO Tim Morse Named Interim CEO — According to sources at the company, Yahoo's Carol Bartz is no longer CEO of Yahoo. CFO Tim Morse has been named interim CEO. — The situation around what is clearly an ouster is uncertain, but Bartz has had a very rocky tenure in her 32 months at the company.

Discussion: Business Wire, GigaOM, rbr.com, CNNMoney.com, Forbes, The Wrap, mediabistro.com, Between the Lines Blog, Glassdoor.com Blog, CNET News, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Geek News Central, @snoopdogg, Mashable!, ConversionRater, SocialTimes.com, Adweek, Don Dodge on The Next …, CBS News, VentureBeat, Business Insider, Softpedia News, ZDNet, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Digits, The First Post, The Next Web, Search Engine Land, VatorNews, Techland, Deal Journal, AdAge, L.A. Times Tech Blog, SplatF, WebProNews, AdExchanger.com, MediaPost, TechCrunch, MediaNama, CNET News, Gawker, paidContent, Bloomberg, Beyond Search, DealBook, Yahoo! News, Techi.com, BetaNews, mocoNews, Computerworld, Mixed Media, ReadWriteWeb, msnbc.com, PC Magazine, Digital Media Wire, Felix Salmon, Electronista, Shelly Palmer Digital Living, OzTechNews.com, Broadcasting & Cable, Tech Daily Dose, Seattle Times, GeekWire, Medacity and Fast Company, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:
Once Display's Ad Sales Leader, Trends Now Favor Yahoo Rivals

Discussion: VentureBeat, MediaPost, AllThingsD, Mixed Media, New York Magazine, Digits, Forbes.com, Softpedia News, AllThingsD and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

C.W. Anderson / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Information's triumph? Three ways TechCrunch challenges ideas of journalism … In the spirit of doing what one does best and linking to the rest, I'll dispense with a lengthy overview of the controversy that erupted when AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Silicon Valley power-broker …

Discussion: Betabeat, BetaNews, TheMediaBriefing, VentureBeat and Portfolio

Chadwick Matlin / Fortune:

The “end of TechCrunch”? It might not be such a bad thing — What would the startup scene be like without the blog that currently animates it? A whole lot better, actually. — FORTUNE — At TechCrunch's Disrupt conference earlier this year, Michael Arrington brought Arianna Huffington …

Discussion: Guardian, Betabeat and Editors Weblog

Sarah Ellison / Vanity Fair:

Murdoch And The Vicious Circle — As the phone-hacking scandal threatens Rupert Murdoch's empire, people are opening up about the fear he instilled in British society. And while denial is still rife inside News Corp., the author hears how its supposedly hands-off chairman spawned a culture of coarseness and brutality.

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:
Phone hacking: Evidence to MPs gives James Murdoch room for manoeuvre

Discussion: The Wrap, Media Matters for America, Press Gazette, PC Magazine, The Independent, Crikey, Adweek and BBC

Guardian:

Guardian journalist questioned over alleged phone-hacking leaks — Case raises concerns about attempts to criminalise contact between journalists and off-the-record sources — A Guardian journalist has been questioned by police officers investigating alleged leaks of information from Operation Weeting …

Discussion: Press Gazette, Telegraph, Business Insider and Jon Slattery

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

Media Analysts Begin To Slash Ad Spending Forecasts As Economy Craters... When the economy weakens, one of the first expenses that companies cut is advertising spending. — Especially advertising spending on old, dying media in which performance is unmeasurable—e.g., newspapers.

Andrew Adam Newman / New York Times:

Bloggers Don't Follow the Script, to ConAgra's Chagrin — IN August, food bloggers and mom bloggers in New York were invited to dine at an underground restaurant in a West Village brownstone run, apparently, by George Duran, the chef who hosts the “Ultimate Cake Off” on TLC.

Discussion: Forbes, The New York Observer, NYConvergence.com and Gawker

Adobe:

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite To Support iOS 5 Newsstand — For immediate release — Publishers To Create Newsstand-enabled Applications with Full Support for Subscriptions — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that publishers will be able to use Adobe® Digital …

Discussion: 9to5Mac, MacStories, Startup Meme, App Advice, Electronista and The Next Web

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

Righthaven Terminates Lawyer, Stops Filing New Cases — Is copyright enforcer Righthaven, which has suffered a series of legal setbacks, folding its cards? — Righthaven burst on the scene over a year ago with a business model that involves enforcing newspaper owners' copyrights in return for a cut of the profits.

Discussion: Poynter, Threat Level and WebProNews

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

Suggestions (but not standards) for live tweeting — “Do you know of any standards for content of live tweets?” a commenter asked on my blog recently. — “I have students live tweet meetings and speeches. Would love some specific guidelines for what makes a good tweet,” asked Michele Day …

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Newsweek Daily Beast Co. Hires New President Rob Gregory jumps from Plum TV By Lucia Moses — The Newsweek Daily Beast Co. is getting a new president. CEO Stephen Colvin picked Rob Gregory, a veteran of Maxim and Rolling Stone with whom he worked at Dennis Publishing, for the newly created position.

Discussion: MiamiHerald.com, AdAge and On Media's Blog

Mike Swift / Mercury News:

YouTube becomes entertainment destination — Just for laughs, San Jose's Dylan Hart and a college friend posted a video on YouTube in 2007 about charging an iPod using an onion and a bottle of Gatorade. — More than 9 million views later, that video — uploaded at 5 a.m …

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

Ticker Taped: The 9/11 News Crawl — At 10:49 a.m. on Sept. 11, 21 minutes after the North Tower of the World Trade Center began to collapse, Fox News launched a news ticker—a ribbon of all-caps text along the bottom of the screen made up of headlines from scenes occurring off camera …

Discussion: TVNewser and Inside Cable News

Steve Smith / MediaPost:

Ralph Lauren Takes Over The Times iPad App, Reminds Us What A ‘Sponsor’ Does — If you haven't yet caved to the New York Times paywall restrictions and ponied up the subscription fee, then you may have let your iPad app for the brand lie unused in recent months.

Discussion: Medialets and Poynter

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Top 40 UK news websites: BBC still leads Mail Online — The BBC News website still remains comfortably ahead of the Mail Online in terms of UK online visitors, according to research compiled for Press Gazette. — The UKOM/Nielsen data is based on a survey of 50,000 people accessing …

Discussion: The Next Web