Mediagazer: Meet the journalist behind Tumblr's rise (Alex Kantrowitz/Fortune)

3:45 AM ET, October 18, 2011

Top News:

Editorial Director Michael Wolff to Leave ‘Adweek’ — Michael Wolff leaves his post as editorial director of leading media industry publication Adweek, parent company Prometheus Global Media announced today. Executive editor Jim Cooper has been tapped to oversee the day-to-day operations …

Discussion: Media Decoder, The Huffington Post, New York Times, WWD Media Headlines, Media & Entertainment, MinOnline, Gawker, paidContent, AdPulp, On Media's Blog, MediaPost, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Adweek managing editor Hillary Frey leaves for Yahoo News on heels of Michael Wolff exit — On the same day as Michael Wolff's sometimes tumultuous tenure as the editorial director of Adweek comes to end, the trade publication is losing another big name. Hillary Frey, Adweek's managing editor, is joining Yahoo News.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, FishbowlNY and Yahoo! News

Jim Cooper / Adweek: A Letter to Adweek's Readers

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing — SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers. — Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form.

Discussion: SlashGear, Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, MediaFile, NYConvergence.com, GigaOM, TeleRead, VentureBeat, Adweek, GalleyCat, The New York Observer, FT Tech Hub and Business Insider

Frédéric Filloux / Guardian:

How can we stop publishers inflating circulation? — The WSJ Europe ‘scam’ highlights the fact that audiences, print or digital, are often artificially bought rather than naturally sold — Surprise: To boost its circulation, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal Europe engaged in massive channel stuffing.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Reflections of a Newsosaur, Free Press and NPR

Steve Myers / Poynter:

WSJ Asia moves more than half of its copies through heavy discounting, like WSJ Europe — Responding to one of our posts about The Wall Street Journal Europe's use of bulk sales to, well, bulk up its circulation, a commenter questioned whether The Wall Street Journal Asia employs a similar strategy.

Discussion: paidContent

Alex Kantrowitz / Fortune:

Meet the journalist behind Tumblr's rise — Former Newsweek editor Mark Coatney won't take all the credit. But since he joined Tumblr and began selling the platform to other publishers, it has skyrocketed. — By Alex Kantrowitz, contributor — FORTUNE — Mark Coatney is Tumblr's secret weapon.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

83 Minutes With Chrystia Freeland — Fielding a faux pitch by the new, Davos-friendly face of Reuters, who's trying to build a team to take on Bloomberg. — We have the money," Chrystia Freeland tells me one recent afternoon on the nineteenth-floor newsroom of Reuters' gleaming Times Square tower.

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Weakening Ad Business Vexes Yahoo Amid Sale Talk — As Yahoo Inc. shops itself to potential buyers, its core advertising business is weakening. That trend is evident through Craig Atkinson's ad agency. — Mr. Atkinson is president of ad giant Omnicom Media Group's PHD unit …

Discussion: Forbes, PC Magazine, MediaFile and Digits

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Scoop: Skype founders gunning for Netflix with Vdio — Updated. With Skype's sale to Microsoft finally sealed, one might wonder: What are Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the European serial entrepreneurs that have founded KaZaA, Skype, Joost and Rdio, up to next?

Discussion: GigaOM, VentureBeat, PC Magazine, CNET News, Electronista, ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines Blog, Business Insider, Engadget and TechNet Blogs, more at Techmeme »

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

The Times hails 10% rise in digital subscribers — The number of people paying for a digital version of the Times has risen to just over 110,000, according to new figures — The number of people paying for a digital version of the Times has risen 10% in the past three months to just over 110,000, according to new figures.

Discussion: Media Week, Journalism.co.uk and The Drum

Los Angeles Times:

McDonald's to launch in-store channel — Mark Burnett, BBC America and KABC-TV Eyewitness News will provide content for dine-in customers. — McDonald's customers will soon be able to have local school sports, movie previews and heartwarming human interest stories to go with their fries — McTV is here and in high definition.

Discussion: AdPulp, Deadline.com, PopWatch, rbr.com, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY, AdAge and TVWeek.com

Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:

UberMedia launches Twitter/Digg/Reddit/Facebook clone Chime.in — UberMedia CEO Bill Gross isn't dodging the fact that his latest app, Chime.in, is a patchwork of other successful apps. — “It's an amalgam of blogging and Reddit and Facebook — there's aspects of each in there,” he told VentureBeat in a phone interview last week.

Discussion: Adweek, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, CNET News, Mashable!, The Huffington Post, GigaOM, MediaFile and Forbes, more at Techmeme »

Sara Dickenson Quinn / Poynter:

4 reasons the Sunday front page now looks a lot like the Monday front page — Where are all of the truly great Sunday, front page designs in the U.S. these days? — As I do my daily run through the Newseum's collection of front pages, Sunday looks a lot like Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

Discussion: Charles Apple

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

Hulu Puts Owners in New Quandary — Now that big media companies have decided not to sell online-video venture Hulu LLC, they have to figure out what to do with it. — News Corp., Walt Disney Co. and Providence Equity Partners LLC said late last week that they were abandoning efforts …

Discussion: Company Town and Adweek

Jacob Caggiano / Seattle Journalism Commons:

KING5 gives away $10,000 check at #HackingNews — Hackathons are getting trendy. Not just in journalism, but health care, education, entrepreneurism, crisis management, mobile tech, government, and other arenas. Yes, it's another technology buzz word, but one that hopefully sticks around and evolves into a combustible formula.

Discussion: Poynter

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Times libel appeal reaches Supreme Court — The Times announced in July last year it would seek to appeal a judgment which found the newspaper was not entitled to a defence of qualified privilege based on the Reynolds test of responsible journalism — The Supreme Court will consider whether …

Discussion: Inforrm's Blog and Guardian

Matt Lakin / Knoxville News-Sentinel:

UT student-publisher uses periodical to trumpet professor's affair with ex-wife — Junior psychology student John Durden distributes copies of the Athenaeum News newspaper Tuesday at the University of Tennessee. The new student publication highlights campus life, student complaints …

Discussion: College Media Matters

Valentina Gimenez / MediaShift:

In Spain, ‘Little Black Book’ of Journalism Shows Profession in Crisis — Pressure from the publishing industry has weakened the watchdog role of journalists, turning them into lapdogs at the service of — corporations and politicians and unable to serve their readers.

Keach Hagey / The Politico:

Pew: Media not in love with Obama — Sarah Palin put an end to her possible presidential candidacy this month with a familiar parting critique: President Barack Obama has an unfair advantage as a candidate because he's got “about 90 percent of the media still there in his back pocket.”

Discussion: Journalism.org, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine and Poynter

Ken Auletta / New Yorker:

Jill Abramson, New York Times first woman executive editor.

Discussion: Poynter, Media Research Center, LA Observed, The Corsair, Gawker, Prof Chris Daly's Blog, Erik Wemple, New York Magazine, The Awl, The Huffington Post, National Review, Forbes.com, The New York Observer, Ask the Author, The New Republic, FishbowlNY, WWD Media Headlines and CBS News

Sarah Marshall / journalism.co.uk:

Citizen journalism site Blottr expands into France and Germany — Citizen journalism breaking news site Blottr has launched in France in and is due to follow with a German site next week. — Blottr, which launched in the UK in August 2010 and received £1 million in funding to expand six months ago …

Richard L. Brandt / Wall Street Journal:

Jeff Bezos of Amazon: Birth of a Salesman — Behind the rise of Jeff Bezos and Amazon: Richard L. Brandt on the founder's Texas roots, the site's chaotic early days, why negative reviews are allowed and his increasing use of personal data. — Jeffrey Preston Bezos was 4 years old …

Discussion: Business Insider

Steve Myers / Poynter:

NPR's Andy Carvin takes Twitter break to write book about covering Arab Spring via social media — Just after he logged his 100,000th tweet, NPR's Andy Carvin told people on Twitter that he's taking the week off so he can work on a book about covering the Arab Spring via social media.

Discussion: EJC

Adrian Chen / Gawker:

Rupert Murdoch, Bill Clinton Attend Steve Jobs Memorial Service — A memorial held for Steve Jobs yesterday at Stanford University attracted a bunch of big names, including News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, with whom Jobs was slated to unveil the Daily iPad newspaper, before he took his leave of absence.

Discussion: Bits, Fortune and GeekWire

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Adam Moss: NY Mag publishes new content every six minutes — Here's a tidbit that will likely make your organizational productivity seem wildly inadequate: NYmag.com publishes new material every six minutes. Every six minutes. — You're welcome. — In a talk celebrating the 25th anniversary …

Discussion: Poynter

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

John Miller to Join CBS, Bolstering ‘The Early Show’ — Every week or so comes another signal that CBS is reshaping “The Early Show,” its low-rated morning newscast. On Monday will come another: the announcement that John Miller is joining the network as a senior correspondent with a special emphasis on the morning show.

Discussion: LA Observed, TVNewser, FishbowlNY, Broadcasting & Cable, TVWeek.com and The Wrap

Dan Roberts / Guardian:

Lessons from our open news trial — The first week of the Guardian's experiment in publishing its news lists has reaped advantages, but more is needed — Well, the sky didn't fall in. One week in, and the remarkable thing about our experiment publishing The Guardian's list of upcoming stories …

Discussion: Poynter and Jon Slattery

Adweek:

First Mover: Randy Falco Univision's new CEO says it's time to embrace the realities of the Hispanic media marketplace — You don't have loads of Spanish-language media experience under your belt. ¿Habla Español? — [Laughs] I don't speak Spanish.