Mediagazer: Tommy Sheridan ‘should be freed from prison’ (Roy Greenslade/Guardian)

7:30 AM ET, October 18, 2011

Top News:

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 and Free Press

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.

Roy Greenslade / paidContent:

Three UK Papers Are Still Hooked On The Bulk Sales Drug — I've just returned from the the world editors' forum in Vienna where delegates were intensely interested in the News International phone hacking scandal. — Those journalists who live in countries where press freedom …

Discussion: Guardian and NPR

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, NYConvergence.com, MediaFile, GigaOM, TeleRead, Adweek, VentureBeat, GalleyCat, The New York Observer, FT Tech Hub and Business Insider

Adweek:

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, New York Times, The Huffington Post, WWD Media Headlines, Media & Entertainment, MinOnline, Gawker, paidContent, AdPulp, MediaPost, On Media's Blog, 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

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: PC Magazine, MediaFile, Forbes 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: paidContent:UK, GigaOM, Softpedia News, SlashGear, PC Magazine, CNET News, VentureBeat, Electronista, ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines Blog, Business Insider, Engadget and TechNet Blogs, more at Techmeme »

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Tommy Sheridan ‘should be freed from prison’ — Tommy Sheridan, who is serving a three-year jail sentence for committing perjury during his libel action against the News of the World, should now be released, argues Kenneth Roy. He writes: … Roy believes the revelations about phone hacking …

Discussion: The Scottish Review

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

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Apuzzo and Goldman's long campaign: Behind the Associated Press' big NYPD counterterror investigation — It was a morning late in December or early in January at the Washington bureau of the Associated Press when two reporters, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, swung by the desk of Ted Bridis …

Discussion: New York Times

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

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: Media News, Adweek, CNET News, AllThingsD, The Huffington Post, Mashable!, GigaOM, TechCrunch, MediaFile and Forbes

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

Ken Auletta / New Yorker:

Jill Abramson, New York Times first woman executive editor.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 …

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 Times, Poynter and New York Magazine

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