Mediagazer: Google acquires Zagat, enters original content business (Larry Dignan/Between the Lines Blog)

7:40 PM ET, September 8, 2011

Top News:

Marissa Mayer / The Official Google Blog:

Google just got ZAGAT Rated! — “Did you know there's a place in Menlo Park near the Safeway that has a 27 food rating?” one of my friends asked me that about two years ago, and I was struck because I immediately knew what it meant. Food rating... 30 point scale... Zagat. And the place... had to be good.

Discussion: DealBook, Search Engine Land, @marissamayer, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Reuters, Jeff Jarvis, Zagat Buzz, TechCrunch, Business Insider, rbr.com, Forbes, Deal Journal, Future of Journalism, CNET News, Epicenter, Eater National, Media & Entertainment, MediaPost, ReadWriteWeb, paidContent:UK, John Battelle's Searchblog, @jeremyhfisher, GeekWire, @jeffjarvis, CNNMoney.com, VentureBeat, msnbc.com, Betabeat, AdAge, Gawker, Fortune, Computerworld, VatorNews, PE Hub Blog, Globe and Mail, ClickZ, Fast Company, Screenwerk, Beet.TV, Gothamist, MarketingVox News & Trends, The Wrap, The New York Observer, Adweek, Mercury News, PC Magazine, The Week, HBR.org, The Next Web, Techland, The Consumerist, Felix Salmon, Mashable!, GigaOM, New York Magazine, Techi.com, LAUNCH, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Hillicon Valley, eBookNewser, Gannett Blog and GalleyCat, more at Techmeme »

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Google acquires Zagat, enters original content business — Summary: Google said that Zagat will “be a cornerstone of our local offering.” Zagat is best known for its original reviews and rating service. — Google on Thursday acquired Zagat in an effort to bolster its local products with the restaurant rating service.

Discussion: broadstuff, ReadWriteWeb, MediaFile, CNET News, AllThingsD, Computerworld, Top Digital Journal News and WebProNews, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Washington Post publisher Weymouth sees new media as ‘them,’ not ‘us’ — Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth draws a big, bold line between “old media” like the Post and “new media” such as blogs and citizen journalists. — The Post is embracing the new “tools” of online journalism …

Discussion: Zombie Journalism, B2B Memes and J-Lab

BBC:

Nato-led forces killed BBC reporter in Afghanistan — Ahmed Omed Khpulwak sent text messages saying: “Death has come” — The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan has admitted it mistakenly killed BBC reporter Ahmed Omed Khpulwak in July.

Discussion: Guardian, New York Times, TVNewser, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, msnbc.com, Business Insider and Jon Slattery

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Paton: Too Early To Say Whether MediaNews Paywalls Stay Up — Journal Register CEO John Paton has been a vocal opponent of using paywalls to increase digital revenue for newspapers, as have his advisory board members Jeff Jarvis, Emily Bell and Jay Rosen. But what happens now that he is also the CEO …

Discussion: MediaPost, Poynter, mediabistro.com, Guardian, eMedia Vitals and San Francisco Peninsula …

Felix Salmon:
When digital ads pay for local news

Discussion: Street Fight, BrauBlog, Nieman Journalism Lab and paidContent

Jon Lafayette / Broadcasting & Cable:

ESPN Signs News Rights Deal With NFL — Keeps ‘Monday Night Football’ through 2021 — Jumping the gun on the kickoff of the pro football season Thursday night, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN unit has signed an extension with the NFL that will keep Monday Night Football on the cable channel for eight more years.

Discussion: Multichannel, Beet.TV, Forbes, MediaPost, mediabistro.com and The Wrap

Los Angeles Times:
How high can fees for sports rights go?

Discussion: Company Town and rbr.com

Wall Street Journal:

Content Deluge Swamps Yahoo — Yahoo, Rivals Fetch Less for Ads as Services That Sift Through Web Gain an Edge — Ousted Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz faced a plight all too familiar to many of her peers: Making money off digital content isn't easy and it's getting harder.

Discussion: Fortune, AdPulp, PE Hub Blog, GigaOM, On Media's Blog, George Dearing dot com and Editors Weblog, more at Techmeme »

Alex Goldman / On the Media:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF RIGHTHAVEN — Over the past year, we have reported a couple of times on a company called Righthaven, which buys certain copyrights on newspaper content and sues bloggers and aggregators who repost said content, either in part or in full. This week, several news outlets …

Discussion: Plagiarism Today, Threat Level, Poynter and WebProNews

David Kravets / Threat Level:
Newspaper Chain Drops Righthaven — ‘It Was a Dumb Idea’

Discussion: Adweek and paidContent

Choire Sicha / The Awl:

Inside Gawker Media's First Company-Wide Meeting — Last night, Gawker Media held its first real company-wide meeting at the Crosby Hotel screening room, down in the hotel's swank basement. Honcho Nick Denton gave a speech from the stage—just like a real grown-up company, and also totally not.

Discussion: Poynter, PE Hub Blog, @weareyourfek and Business Insider

Anthony DeRosa:

David Karp discusses Tumblr's growing pains — The very platform this post is appearing on is undergoing a bit of a revolution. The rise of blogs over the past decade has begun to give way to microblogging platforms, such as Twitter and Tumblr. The difference between the two is that microblogs tend …

Discussion: Betabeat and ShortFormBlog

Dean Starkman / CJR:

A Heavy Blow to The Wall Street Journal — Anyone who thinks the departure of Alix M. Freedman, the WSJ's Page One editor, a twenty-seven-year Journal mainstay, and winner of one of the more storied Pulitzers in my old paper's storied past, is inside-baseball for media types is dead wrong.

Discussion: Media Matters for America and The Huffington Post

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Media companies have three ways to innovate, each with its own barriers — Deteriorating advertising revenues in 2011 have brought skeptics in news organizations around to what their critics have been saying for years: Innovation is an imperative. — But how, exactly?

Discussion: MediaPost

AdAge:

Glamour Publisher Job Goes to Jason Wagenheim, Publisher of Entertainment Weekly — Conde Nast's decision to name Jason Wagenheim the new publisher at Glamour sparks yet another turnover in the publisher's job at Entertainment Weekly. Mr. Wagenheim had only been running EW since December.

Discussion: MediaPost, MinOnline and The New York Observer

Maureen Ryan / AOL TV:

Why Is Television Losing Women Writers? Veteran Producers Weigh In — As the fall TV season approaches, it's worth taking a closer look at the people who have created and written the scripted fare you'll see. — In the 2006-2007 television season, 35 percent of the writers of broadcast network …

Discussion: Splitsider

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

No, licensing journalists isn't the answer — Is the media industry in turmoil? Clearly it is, with publishers fighting declines in circulation and advertising revenue, combined with competition from digital-native entities such as blog networks and the “democracy of distribution” …

Thanks:mathewi