Mediagazer: New Yorker Writer Peter Hessler and Radiolab Producer Jad Abumrad Among This Year's MacArthur Geniuses (Emily Witt/The New York Observer)

3:55 PM ET, September 20, 2011

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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 …

over(heard) & under:

I have some news to share. — Today, I'm excited to unveil a project I've been working on over the last few months: WSJ Social, an standalone news publication on Facebook. — Having recently moved from startup hub San Francisco — where I mused about the future of newspapers in the app economy …

Discussion: Adweek, Future of Journalism and Talking Biz News

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

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

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: FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, Hollywood Reporter, ShortFormBlog and Mogulite

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, L.A. Times Tech Blog, The Official Google Blog, paidContent and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Time.com Ad, Traffic Strategy Focuses More Heavily On Verticals — The value of being a weekly print brand in the online era has been in doubt for years, but Time magazine believes that it can retain relevance by not just emphasizing the Time the brand online, but ramping up attention a lot …

Discussion: Poynter and Future of Journalism

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Source: Facebook To Launch Read, Listened, Watched, And Want Buttons — The cat is out of the bag that Facebook is going to launch something big at its developer conference f8 this week. We've heard about the social music services that could be debuting in a few days …

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: Adweek, Media Decoder and Broadcasting & Cable

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: Future of Journalism

Emily Witt / The New York Observer:

New Yorker Writer Peter Hessler and Radiolab Producer Jad Abumrad Among This Year's MacArthur Geniuses — Abumrad. — The MacArthur geniuses have been announced. Here's how we read the list: scientist, scientist, scientist, long-form journalist and New Yorker contributor Peter Hessler!

Discussion: Poynter, The Book Bench, UnBeige and Gothamist

Jerry Vermanen / Online Journalism Blog:

Dutch regional newspapers launch data journalism project RegioHack — In a guest post for OJB, Jerry Vermanen explains the background to RegioHack — The internet is bursting with information, but journalists - at least in The Netherlands - don't get the full potential out of it.

Stephanie Miles / Street Fight:

Case Study: For Seattle Video Store, Print is Still King — Remaining relevant is a challenge for any independent video store that has to compete with subscription-based companies like Netflix. Next Door Media, an ad network of hyperlocal sites, took on that challenge with Scarecrow Video in Seattle …

Discussion: Poynter

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

If Righthaven Declares Bankruptcy, Expect Lawyers To Go After Stephens Media, Media News, And Righthaven Principals — There are lots of rumors swirling about a possible Righthaven bankruptcy, but that doesn't seem to worry those pushing for class action lawsuits against the company.

Discussion: TeleRead

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

What Does AOL's Life After Access Look Like? — Many folks, including Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings, suggest AOL (NYSE: AOL) should drop its declining ISP business. In fact, it already did that in Europe several years ago. — AOL's operation there is a prototype for AOL's life after access.

Discussion: Techdirt, Both Sides of the Table and Fast Company