Mediagazer: WaPo Co.'s Reality Check (Lucia Moses/Adweek)

9:20 AM ET, September 12, 2011

Top News:

Amazon in Talks to Launch Digital-Book Library — Amazon.com Inc. is talking with book publishers about launching a Netflix Inc.-like service for digital books, in which customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content, according to people familiar with the matter.

David Carr / New York Times:

News Trends Tilt Toward Niche Sites — It was a rough week for the big guys on the Web. Yahoo unceremoniously dumped its chief executive, Carol Bartz, and AOL faced a mutiny from TechCrunch, the Silicon Valley news site it bought last year. — Apart from the specific business issues feeding …

Discussion: Felix

Wall Street Journal:

A Business Model Based on Conflict of Interest — On TechCrunch it's hard to tell where news ends and investing begins. — New technology provides an endless supply of information online, but as even Silicon Valley found out this month, it comes at a price: Readers have to work harder …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
The Blogosphere's Soft Corruption

Discussion: Guardian and AllThingsD

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

Report Details Rise of Social Media — As social media like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube grow increasingly popular among consumers, marketers are seeking more data about the changing behavior of their customers. — The Nielsen Company, which has long provided such information …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, eMedia Vitals, digiday:DAILY, Nielsen Wire and Future of Journalism

Alessandra Stanley / New York Times:

On Slow and Somber Anniversary, News Media Try to Stay Out of the Picture — Television is about faces, not names. It's about motion, not stillness. So the fact that so much time on Sunday was dedicated to the slow, solemn recitation of all the Sept. 11 victims was as significant a tribute as the camera can make.

Discussion: WebProNews

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
How 9/11 helped to change the media landscape

Discussion: BBC, Media & Entertainment and Hot Air

Jon Slattery:
How the US press marked a decade since 9:11

Discussion: Charles Apple, Poynter, The Huffington Post, Media Nation, Business Insider, Gawker, Forbes, Future of Journalism and Mashable!

Barbara Chai / Wall Street Journal:

CBS Show Is Watching With Interactive Billboards — To promote its new fall drama “Person of Interest,” CBS Corp. is turning its eye on viewers. — To highlight the show's theme of citizen-surveillance, CBS is tapping into the trend of interactive billboards, installing one each in New York City and Los Angeles.

Financial Times:

Turning the page: newspapers face the future — The digitalisation of the media is no longer just about the migration towards online news. — Tablets, apps and mobile sites are all part of the package that must be provided by modern news organisations whose century-old business models …

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Glenn Beck Faces Big Test as New Show Bows — Conservative firebrand Glenn Beck faces his first big test since leaving Fox News when his new two-hour show begins Monday. — The first episode of Mr. Beck's program “Glenn Beck,” which will air on his new Internet-only network GBTV …

Discussion: The New York Observer

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

WaPo Co.'s Reality Check — While other newspaper companies struggled to stay afloat, the Washington Post Co. was sitting relatively pretty. It had problems of its own, of course—let's not forget Newsweek—but it also had a white knight: its education unit, Kaplan.

Ben Dowell / Guardian:

Private Eye is 50? Surely shome mistake — It may feature old jokes and Andrew Neil in a vest every week, but its content is so well loved it makes £200,000 a year — Mention the phrases “surely shome mistake”, “that's enough, ed” and “Ugandan discussions” and you instantly …

Discussion: FleetStreetBlues

New York Times:

Raid on Egyptian Al Jazeera Affiliate Seen as Part of a Broader Crackdown — CAIRO — Egyptian security forces raided the offices of an Egyptian affiliate of the Al Jazeera news network known for attentive coverage of street protests, eliciting allegations on Sunday of a crackdown on the news media …

Discussion: Pajamas Media

Dexter Filkins / New Yorker:

Syed Saleem Shahzad's murder, Pakistan, and the ISI. — On May 30th, as the sun beat down on the plains of eastern Pakistan, a laborer named Muhammad Shafiq walked along the top of a dam on the Upper Jhelum Canal to begin his morning routine of clearing grass and trash that had drifted into the intake grates overnight.

Discussion: Ask the Author and Felix Salmon

Liz Shannon Miller / GigaOM:

Can Jane Espenson's Husbands jump from the web to TV? — For over a decade, writer/producer Jane Espenson has been celebrated among television nerds; her IMDB profile includes work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Battlestar Galactica, Warehouse 13 and Game of Thrones, just to name a few.

Mike Madden / City Desk:

Dan Snyder Drops Lawsuit against Washington City Paper, Dave McKenna — Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has just filed papers in D.C. Superior Court to dismiss his lawsuit against Washington City Paper and staff writer Dave McKenna over “The Cranky Redskins Fan's Guide to Dan Snyder,” which we published last November.

Discussion: Washington Post, Erik Wemple, Future of Journalism, DCist, The Huffington Post and AAN

Scott Eyman / Palm Beach Entertainment:

Former ‘Wall Street Journal’ publisher recalls the glory years of journalism in a new memoir — In 1947, Warren Phillips went to work at The Wall Street Journal as a copy editor. The paper had a circulation of 100,000. — In 1991, Warren Phillips retired as publisher and CEO of Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's parent company.