Mediagazer: Top Viacom Ad Exec Out Over Alleged Kickbacks (Exclusive) (Hollywood Reporter)

5:00 PM ET, September 14, 2011

Top News:

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

All for One! Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Band Together for Ad Plan. — AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft compete for ad dollars. But a new pact calls for the rivals to cooperate on ad sales, too. — The three companies are going to start selling ad inventory on each others' sites …

Discussion: Business Insider, Mixed Media, Marketing Pilgrim, The Next Web, VentureBeat, MediaPost, New York Post, ClickZ, CNET News, paidContent, Mashable!, Search Engine Land, Future of Journalism, GeekWire and WebProNews, more at Techmeme »

Zach Rait / Facebook Blog:

Introducing the Subscribe Button — Until now, it hasn't been easy to choose exactly what you see in your News Feed. Maybe you don't want to see every time your brother plays a game on Facebook, for example. Or maybe you'd like to see more stories from your best friends, and fewer from your coworkers.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

When it comes to disclosing potential conflicts of interest, New York Times shouldn't throw stones at Arrington — The meta-media debate for the last few weeks has been about the conflict of interest inherent in Michael Arrington's proposal to run a new venture capital fund while writing …

Discussion: Boing Boing

Ben Popper / Betabeat:

Venture Capitalists With Powerful Blogs May Run Afoul of the SEC — Image via BacktoGeek — Has Blogging Become the New Insider Trading? … Michael Arrington wanted to have it all. The editor-in-chief of TechCrunch, the nation's most powerful tech blog, had, except for a brief hiatus …

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Wall Street Journal Adds to Live Video Programming — Operating a bit like a stealth business news network, The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday announced a major expansion of its video unit, which is now producing three and a half hours of live programming each weekday and will soon produce even more.

Discussion: Online Video News, TVNewser, Editors Weblog, AndyDickinson.net, eMedia Vitals, BtoB Magazine and FishbowlNY

Inside Cable News:
Wall St. Journal vs. CNBC?

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:

How Tumblr is Changing Journalism — Earlier this week we looked at the remarkable growth of Tumblr, a blogging and curation service that now gets over 12 billion page views per month. Tumblr is mostly used as a consumer curation tool - it's an easy way for people to re-post articles, images and videos.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Janine Gibson / Guardian:

Unveiling the Guardian's new US homepage — The Guardian has launched a new US front page at guardiannews.com. Janine Gibson explains why — Today we're unveiling the new url and front page for our US readers. It's the first tiny step in our bid to improve the Guardian website for US users …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, On Media's Blog, The New York Observer, Mashable!, ReadWriteWeb and The Next Web

John Koblin / WWD:

More Movement at The New York Times — TIME FOR A RESHUFFLE: New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson quietly removed two editors from the masthead on Tuesday as she continued to make moves throughout the paper. Former New York Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati …

Discussion: Poynter, mediabistro.com, The New York Observer, Gothamist, Media Decoder and On Media's Blog

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

Patent Troll Strikes Bloomberg, NYT And Other News Giants — For some time now, so-called patent trolls have aggressively targeted the biggest tech companies in the world. Now, they seem to be setting their sights on large media companies too. A shell company in Delaware is suing Bloomberg …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Hollywood Reporter:

Top Viacom Ad Exec Out Over Alleged Kickbacks (Exclusive) … A senior Viacom advertising executive has exited the company following an investigation into allegations of a kickback scheme involving millions of dollars over a period of years. — Brian Fays was senior vp at MTV Networks …

Discussion: MediaPost and Business Insider

News.me:

News.me is all grown up (and now free)! — We're pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly to run as an independent company under betaworks. Here's what John Borthwick has to say about the change on his blog: Over the past year, News.me has been incubated within bitly.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, MacStories and THINK / Musings

The Independent:

Exposed after eight years: a private eye's dirty work for Fleet Street — Files seen by The Independent detail 17,000 requests to investigator Steve Whittamore — Former police officer has revealed how the authorities have known for more than eight years the vast scale …

Discussion: Guy Fawkes' blog, FleetStreetBlues and Jon Slattery

Emily Witt / The New York Observer:

$2 a Word? Chump Change! With Byliner and Atavist, Hungry Freelance Writers Seek Out Alternatives To Magazine Work — William T. Vollmann on assignment in Japan for Byliner Originals. (Photo from Byliner) — When the journalist David Dobbs first had the idea of writing an article …

Discussion: CJR

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Could Homer Simpson get his own channel? — Ready for a channel devoted to nothing but “The Simpsons?” — Don't laugh, it is one idea News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey threw out when speaking Tuesday at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills.

Discussion: Multichannel

Wall Street Journal:

Scandal Clouds James Murdoch's Path — Future Muddied by U.K. Hacking Probe — Rupert Murdoch has long said he wants one of his children to succeed him. The scandal at News Corp. has threatened that prospect. — Youngest son James, 38 years old, has been groomed as heir apparent.

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, Company Town and Guardian

Ben Fenton / Financial Times:

FT editor calls for media standards commission — Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, on Wednesday called for reform in the regulation of the UK press, with the establishment of a Media Standards Commission that would be dominated by independent outsiders rather than editors and proprietors.