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

7:50 AM ET, September 20, 2011

Top News:

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 …

Avril Ormsby / Reuters:

News International to pay $4.7 million to settle hacking case — (Reuters) - News International is expected to pay about three million pounds($4.7 million) to settle hacking claims by the family of murder victim Milly Dowler against the now defunct News of the World newspaper, sources close to the case told Reuters on Monday.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Erik Wemple, PC Magazine, Pulse2, AllThingsD and Business Insider

Richard Littlejohn / Daily Mail:

No, I'm not kidding. We really have to defend the Guardian — Are YOU sitting comfortably? Then prepare for a shock. You may even like to pour yourself a stiff drink. I'm about to defend the Guardian. — First, though, the caveats. When I heard that Scotland Yard was using …

Discussion: Guardian and Jon Slattery

James Robinson / Guardian:
Phone hacking: Operation Weeting has cost £1.8m

Discussion: Press Gazette, Media & Entertainment and paidContent

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 …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, CNET News and Medacity

MediaPost:

Scripps Consolidates All Digital Under Symson — E.W. Scripps Co. announced a reorganization of its digital operations, consolidating it under Adam Symson vice president and Chief Digital Officer. Based in Cincinnati, Symson will oversee all of the digital teams for Scripps' 13 daily newspapers and 10 TV stations.

NetNewsCheck Latest:

Scripps Consolidates Digital Operations — The company is moving all of its digital properties under one umbrella in an effort to accelerate the launch of new products and services for digital platforms. Adam Symson will lead the company's new effort as vice president and chief digital officer.

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why Netflix is a cautionary tale for newspapers — When Netflix first announced earlier this year that it was changing its pricing plans for its legacy DVD-by-mail service as a way of promoting its digital streaming business, we wrote about how this was very similar to what newspapers …

Discussion: The Official Netflix Blog, Company Town, Poynter, MediaPost, VideoNuze.com, TechCrunch, Mashable!, Both Sides of the Table, Forbes, Media Decoder, Home Media Magazine and Bits, more at Techmeme », Thanks:mathewi

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Calling the beginning of a story a ‘lede’ is just another form of nostalgia — A Sunday morning tweet from NYU's Jay Rosen provoked a conversation about why journalists call the opening of a story a “lede.” — Jennifer Connic, a social media producer at NJ.com, tweeted, “I kind of like lede still.

Discussion: The Awl and Change of Subject

Andrew Keen / TechCrunch:

Keen On... Sir Martin Sorrell: We Have to Get Consumers to Pay for Their Content (TCTV) — It's Stream time again. Last year, when I interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell, the co-founder and CEO of WPP at the company's annual Stream unconference in Athens, Sir Martin argued that “free=fail.”

Discussion: Media Week

Elizabeth Rubin / Vogue.com:

Arianna Huffington: The Connector — Michelle Williams: — My Week with Michelle — Photographed by Norman Jean Roy — Everyone remembers the first time they met Arianna Huffington; everyone has a story. Often it's not the first meeting that resonates but the first time she got …

New York Times:

In E-Books, Publishers Have Rivals: News Sites — Book publishers are surrounded by hungry new competitors: Amazon, with its steadily growing imprints; authors who publish their own e-books; online start-ups like The Atavist and Byliner. — Now they have to contend with another group elbowing …

Discussion: B2B Memes

Michael R. Triplett / The NLGJA Blog:

NLGJA Joining UNITY Coalition — Historic news from NLGJA and UNITY this morning. The NLGJA board has unanimously voted to accept an invitation to join UNITY as a full member. We will be joining our colleagues at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association …

Discussion: Poynter

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Berkeley j-school hires Spot.Us founder to research online business models — Romenesko+ Misc. DigiDave — David Cohn, who launched community-funded reporting site Spot.Us in 2008, will be conducting research on economic models of online journalism publications and help to develop business products …

Discussion: DigiDave and Medacity