Mediagazer: Sobees Brings Social News Reader NewsMix To Facebook (Leena Rao/TechCrunch)

9:45 PM ET, September 20, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

WSJ Social, For a World Where Facebook Is the New Internet — Is Facebook a friend of news companies, or is it a rival? No matter how much success publishers have piggybacking off its traffic, they can't escape the cruel math: The more of their time consumers spend on Facebook …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

With WSJ Social, the Wall Street Journal is rethinking distribution of its content...on Facebook — The most recent stats could be, for news outfits, pretty grim: Americans spend 22.5 percent of their time online visiting social networks and blogs, and only 2.6 percent of their time learning about current events.

Discussion: Forbes

over(heard) & under:
I have some news to share. — Today, I'm excited to unveil …

Discussion: Adweek, Future of Journalism and Talking Biz News

Bloomberg:

Turner: Murdoch ‘Going to Have to Step Down’ — Billionaire Ted Turner said News Corp. (NWSA) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch will probably have to leave the helm of his media company after a phone-hacking scandal that began at one of its newspapers.

Discussion: New York Magazine, Hollywood Reporter, Mogulite, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post and ShortFormBlog

Greg Farrell / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Said to Get U.S. Letter Seeking Information For Bribery Probe — News Corp. (NWS) was sent a letter by U.S. prosecutors investigating foreign bribery, requesting information on alleged payments employees made to U.K. police for tips, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Discussion: Guardian

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Can Ginia Bellafante Save the New York Times' Soul?

Discussion: TVNewser and Mediaite

Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:

Exclusive: Facebook seeks exec to build Hollywood, media ties — (Reuters) - Facebook is looking to hire a big-name executive to cultivate relationships and strike deals with the film and music industries to bolster its media offerings. — In recent months, Facebook had discussions …

Discussion: scribbal.com and Future of Journalism

A. G. Sulzberger / New York Times:

In Small Towns, Gossip Moves to the Web, and Turns Vicious — MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. — In the small towns nestled throughout the Ozarks, people like to say that everybody knows everybody's business — and if they do not, they feel free to offer an educated guess.

Discussion: Gannett Blog, The Atlantic Wire, Business Insider, New York Magazine, Future of Journalism and Gawker

Guardian:

Met police drop action against the Guardian over hacking sources — Scotland Yard has dropped bid to force the Guardian to reveal confidential sources behind phone hacking stories — The Metropolitan police has dropped its attempt to force the Guardian to reveal confidential sources for stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Jon Slattery

Richard Littlejohn / Daily Mail:
No, I'm not kidding. We really have to defend the Guardian

Discussion: Press Gazette, Jon Slattery and Guardian

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

Sasha Frere-Jones Backs Away from Duties at The Daily — Sasha Frere-Jones, The Daily's bold-face culture editor and New Yorker pop music critic, has relinquished his full-time editing duties at the iPad tabloid, a source familiar with the operations told The Observer.

Diana Marszalek / TVNewsCheck:

How Social Should A Newscast Be? — KOMU Columbia, Mo., in DMA138, has taken the plunge into social media news, last week launching a 4 p.m. newscast that makes viewers an integral part of the show. And there's a social media desk that includes two reporters tracking bloggers …

Discussion: Poynter

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Public streaming, recording make Google Hangouts more useful for journalists — Journalists have new ways to use the group video chat Hangouts in Google+ thanks to new features announced today. A new version called “Hangouts On Air” allows a discussion to be publicly livestreamed and recorded.

Discussion: Google Mobile Blog, The Official Google Blog, L.A. Times Tech Blog, GigaOM and MediaFile, more at Techmeme »

Alex Alvarez / Mediaite:

Cenk Uygur On His Current TV Show: Wanted A Place Not ‘Encumbered By A Media Conglomerate’ — Cenk Uygur is joining his fellow former MSNBC veteran Keith Olbermann and heading to Current TV. Uygur's new show, The Young Turks, will be an original televised news program airing every weeknight at 7 p.m. …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Adweek, Broadcasting & Cable and Media & Entertainment

Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:

Digg delivers automatically curated news content with new Newsrooms — News aggregation site Digg unveiled Newsrooms today, a new section of the site that features automatically curated news content on specific topics like technology or politics. — Here's how it works …

Discussion: Bits, CNET News and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Tanzina Vega / Media Decoder:

Former NPR Official Gets New Position — Nine months after resigning as senior vice president for news at National Public Radio, Ellen Weiss has been named executive editor at the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative news organization in Washington.

Discussion: The New York Observer and Poynter

Aljazeera:

Al Jazeera director general steps down — Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera's top executive since 2003, to step down after leading the network to global prominence. — Al Jazeera's director general, Wadah Khanfar, has announced that he will step down after eight years as the network's top executive.

Discussion: Associated Press, TVNewser, Guardian, Broadband TV News, On Media's Blog and CJR

Quote and Comment:

Could we please see this sentence in the New York Times more often? — It's the one that goes, “This is false.” — Somebody on Twitter sent the link to me. They knew I would appreciate it. — Here it is in context, in an article on Ray's Pizza (the real one) closing down in Soho.

Discussion: Boing Boing and Gawker