Mediagazer: Tumblr Lands $85 Million in Funding (Jenna Wortham/Bits)

3:00 PM ET, September 26, 2011

Top News:

Roger's Reality Show — First, Ailes dialed back the Tea Party talk. Now he's turning the GOP race into a political X-Factor—and steering the election agenda one more time. — It was part political spectacle, part American Idol, part YouTube extravaganza, a pure Roger Ailes production …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, TVNewser, New York Magazine, Business Insider, The Corsair, The Huffington Post, Washington Monthly and Inside Cable News

Steve Myers / Poynter:
Howard Kurtz: Fox News is ‘edging back toward the mainstream’

Discussion: Media Matters for America and New York Magazine

Journalism.org:

HOW PEOPLE LEARN ABOUT THEIR LOCAL COMMUNITY — Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending and the subject matter …

Discussion: Center for Sustainable …, paidContent, Free Press, Poynter, On Media's Blog, @niemanlab, MediaPost and Media News

Julie Moos / Poynter:

More Americans now follow local, national news closely; teens, adults both rely most on TV for news — Buried in the latest Pew research on where Americans turn for local news, there's this important trend: 72 percent of respondents — nearly three-quarters — say they follow local news closely …

Brian Stelter / New York Times: Pew Media Study Shows Reliance on Many Outlets

New York Times:

Netflix Secures Streaming Deal With DreamWorks — LOS ANGELES — DreamWorks Animation, the company behind successful movie franchises like “Madagascar” and “Shrek,” said it had completed a deal to pump its films and television specials through Netflix, replacing a less lucrative pact with HBO.

Jenna Wortham / Bits:

Tumblr Lands $85 Million in Funding — Over the past few years, Tumblr, a microblogging service, has steadily built a community of fans and users who like the site's combination of social networking features and simple blogging tools that lets them quickly post photographs, videos, songs, links and bits of text.

Discussion: Reuters, John's Tumblr, MediaPost, Betabeat, Adweek, The Awl, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD, CNET News, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Business Insider, VatorNews and naming blogs is easy, more at Techmeme »

Michael Donohoe:

The Washington Post Social Reader app unnerves me. The act of “Reading” is now itself an action. You don't click any “read this” button. It may be benign to some but there are potential pitfalls on the privacy front. — What if your friends saw a steady stream of articles that you were reading?

Discussion: @harrisj

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter: With promise of audience growth, Facebook pulls news organizations within its walls

Ben Fritz / Los Angeles Times:

Hollywood downloads a post-DVD future — The movie studio business model is poised for its biggest shift in years as Hollywood turns to Internet delivery as the only way to boost home entertainment revenues. — Rocket Video, a mecca for L.A. cinephiles, is closing after more than 30 years.

Discussion: 24 Frames and Medacity

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

YouTube Prepares to Launch Scheduled Channels — Will consumers put down the remote and tune into YouTube? — The Google-owned site is getting closer to finding out. — The video giant is finalizing contracts for its first of more than a dozen “channels” featuring regularly scheduled content …

Discussion: The Wall Blog and Gawker

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Hearst and HGTV Enter a New Magazine in a Murky Market — With the economy sputtering, throw pillows and wicker baskets may not be at the top of many Americans' shopping lists. Nor perhaps is a glossy magazine about where to buy them and how to make them pop against your freshly painted pale avocado walls.

Discussion: Adweek, FishbowlNY, MediaPost, Folio and MarketWatch

Adrianne Jeffries / Betabeat:

Seamless, Fresh Out of Corporate Fetters, Buys MenuPages for $15 M. as GrubHub Comes Nipping — New York City-based online food ordering service Seamless, born SeamlessWeb during the dotcom boom in 1999, has purchased Menupages from New York magazine publisher New York Media for $15 million …

Discussion: TechCrunch, FishbowlNY, Bits, AllThingsD, The Next Web, Gizmodo and Business Insider, Thanks:nitashatiku

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Ahead of Tablet Launch, Amazon Adds Fox Shows to Streaming Catalog — Amazon is adding more titles to its streaming video library, this time via a deal with Fox: In a note posted on his site, CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he's now offering movies and shows like “24,” “Arrested Development” and “The X-Files.”

Discussion: MediaPost, Lost Remote, Forbes, MediaPost, TechCrunch, paidContent, Amazon.com, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap, Home Media Magazine, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Company Town and mediabistro.com, more at Techmeme »

Edward Moyer / CNET News:

USA Today's Twitter account falls victim to hackers — The same group that hacked NBC News' Twitter account on September 9 and sent tweets about a bogus attack on Ground Zero apparently grabbed hold of USA Today's Twitter feed today and fired off a clutch of messages.

Discussion: Gawker, Poynter, Mediaite, Naked Security, PC Magazine, Search Engine Journal, Softpedia News and TechCrunch

Eric Wilson / New York Times:

Magazines Begin to Sell the Fashion They Review — On Park & Bond, a new e-commerce site for designer men's wear, Jim Moore, the creative director for GQ, can be found describing a red Calvin Klein turtleneck as “something that can take that gray flannel suit and give it a little bon vivant.”

Discussion: Gawker, Erik Wemple and Noted

Damien Cave / New York Times:

Mexico Turns to Social Media for Information and Survival — MEXICO CITY — Before the police or news reporters had even arrived at the underpass outside Veracruz where gunmen held up traffic and dumped 35 bodies at rush hour last week, Twitter was already buzzing with fear and valuable information.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The News About The News and Future Journalism Project