Mediagazer: Reading Rainbow: The Next Generation (Gregory Ferenstein/Fast Company)

11:50 AM ET, September 15, 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.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

New Subscribe button lets journalists use Facebook like Twitter — Facebook announced a new feature today that competes directly with Twitter and will make it easier for journalists to use their personal profiles to share updates and links with the public. Facebook users can now visit …

Discussion: TechCrunch, eMedia Vitals, Inside Facebook and VentureBeat

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Nick Davies, Ana Marie Cox join Guardian's new U.S. operation — Nick Davies, the reporter who's blown the lid off some of the biggest scoops of the U.K. phone-hacking scandal for the British newspaper, will join the American operation next spring. I first reported last month that he was considering making the move.

Janine Gibson / Guardian:
Unveiling the Guardian's new US homepage

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

Gregory Ferenstein / Fast Company:

Reading Rainbow: The Next Generation — The iconic brand returns—with a 21st-century upgrade for iPads. — LeVar Burton, a children's literacy advocate and a former star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plans to make an ambitious comeback, giving the once-loved Reading Rainbow brand a 21st-century upgrade.

Discussion: App Advice, WebProNews, TUAW and The Loop

The Independent:

Johann Hari: A personal apology — I've written so many articles over the years laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of other people. This time, I am writing an article laying bare and polemicising against the errors and idiocies of myself. If you give it out, you have to take it.

Discussion: Mixed Media, The First Post, Reason, The Huffington Post, Jon Slattery and Guardian

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

For morning TV's ‘bookers,’ a constant race to secure ratings-grabbing guests — A tornado tears across southwestern Missouri, visiting devastation on the small town of Joplin. The dramatic news breaks in network TV newsrooms in New York in the early evening hours of May 22. What next?

Discussion: TVNewser

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:

BREAKING! Deadline's Parent Company Sues The Hollywood Reporter's Parent Company For Copyright Infringement — 2ND UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter has just removed from its website PMC's unique and original featured module comprised of source code that produced PMC-owned TVLine.com's distinctive homepage.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, mediabistro.com, Company Town, Washington Post, New York Magazine, Gawker, The Awl and Movieline

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

Vanity Fair Nabs New York Design Director Chris Dixon — Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter has poached Chris Dixon, New York magazine's design director, according to an internal memo sent out today. — Longtime VF design director David Harris is reducing his role at the magazine.

Discussion: WWD, magCulture.com/blog and FishbowlNY

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

What media companies can learn from Walmart — As reported in a number of places, Walmart has acquired OneRiot: a startup that originally tried to do social search before pivoting to focus on social advertising. OneRiot joins a unit called Walmart Labs, which the giant retailer created earlier …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, @WalmartLabs Blog, ClickZ, TechCrunch and WebProNews, Thanks:terryflynn

New York Post:

Wolff tracks seen — Publisher Prometheus Global Media has started searching for a replacement for Adweek Editor Michael Wolff amid an internal back-and-forth over the direction of the company, The Post has learned. — Prometheus backer Jimmy Finkelstein, who hired Wolff to overhaul Adweek …

James Robinson / Guardian:

RTL spurned deal with online TV service Hulu over advertising wrangle — RTL chief executive says broadcaster has not done deal with Hulu because US owners would not allow it to sell own ads — The RTL chief executive, Gerhard Zeiler, said on Thursday the broadcaster had not done a deal with Hulu …

Mac Slocum / O'Reilly Radar:

The work of data journalism: Find, clean, analyze, create ... repeat — Data journalism has rounded an important corner: The discussion is no longer if it should be done, but rather how journalists can find and extract stories from datasets. — Of course, a dedicated focus on the “how” doesn't guarantee execution.

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: ReadWriteWeb, MinOnline and eMedia Vitals

Jon Lafayette / Broadcasting & Cable:

No Signs of Ad Slowdown at CBS, Moonves Says — Upfront ad orders firming up — CBS is still not seeing any signs of an advertising slowdown, CEO Les Moonves told an investors' conference Wednesday. — “I know people are saying it should be slowing down; we're just not seeing it,” …

Discussion: MediaFile and Company Town

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, True Ventures and Boing Boing