Mediagazer: News.me is all grown up (and now free)! (News.me)

9:10 PM ET, September 14, 2011

Top News:

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.

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

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 …

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, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, TVWeek.com and Guardian

Wall Street Journal:
Scandal Clouds James Murdoch's Path

Discussion: Company Town, The Atlantic Wire and Guardian

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

Keeper of the Commentary — Gone are the days when Reuters was just a wire service. Former Slate media critic Jack Shafer, hired last week, is only the latest appointment op-ed editor James Ledbetter has made in his effort to turn the Reuters opinion page into a leading source of commentary.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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, Mashable!, The New York Observer, ReadWriteWeb and The Next Web

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, Mashable!, ReadWriteWeb, THINK / Musings and MacStories

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 and Media Decoder

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

Robert Niles / Online Journalism Review:

Apps vs. eBooks: Where can newsrooms and journalists make the most money? — By Robert Niles: How much time do you or your news organization spend developing apps? What's your return on that investment, and by that I mean - how much money are you making on app sales and from direct advertising on those app platforms?

Folio:

Hearst To Convert All Sites to HTML5 — Good Housekeeping is the first redesign with multi-device functionality. — NEW YORK—Hearst Magazines is aiming to improve its digital strategy through the integration of HTML5, the company announced plans early Tuesday to implement the platform …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, MinOnline and Audience Development Blogs RSS

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: Editors Weblog and CJR

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

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

Inside Cable News:

Wall St. Journal vs. CNBC? — Buried in Brian Stelter's New York Times article on the expansion of the Wall St. Journal's web video section is what appears to be a juicy little shot at CNBC from Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray... Update: Putting Murray's accusation into context, 2005 …

Discussion: Talking Biz News