Mediagazer: Google May Penalize Ad Heavy Pages (Danny Sullivan/Search Engine Land)

2:45 PM ET, November 9, 2011

Top News:

Andrew Crook / Crikey:

Farewell Big Harto: News Ltd CEO John Hartigan resigns — Rupert Murdoch has delivered a savage verdict on the health of his Australian operation, with veteran News Ltd CEO John Hartigan stepping aside and Rupert taking the company's chairmanship for himself.

Discussion: Adweek, Guardian, mUmBRELLA, Sydney Morning Herald and TheAustralian

Jim Galloway / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

NBC's David Gregory apologizes for saying ‘no grand wizard’ in GOP — On NBC's “Today” this morning, David Gregory - the host of “Meet the Press” — was addressing the lack of Republican infrastructure that might encourage a beleaguered Herman Cain to leave the GOP presidential contest.

Discussion: Mediaite, Hot Air, The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Caller, RealClearPolitics Video Log, TVNewser and RedState

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Josh Kraushaar: ‘Profoundly irresponsible’ for Cain campaign to say he's related to sexual harassment accuser — Tuesday afternoon, as reporters started to spread the name of one of Herman Cain's accusers, they kept asking Josh Kraushaar, executive editor of National Journal Hotline, if he is related to Karen Kraushaar.

Discussion: Media Matters for America, MarketShare, Erik Wemple, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Mediaite and New York Post

Maggie Haberman / Politico:

Cain aide wrongly insists they've ‘confirmed’ accuser's son works for POLITICO — Herman Cain campaign manager Mark Block, in an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox News just now, insisted that a relative of the second woman to publicly accuse the candidate of sexual harassment in the 1990s works at POLITICO.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Fox News to use Google+ Hangouts for GOP candidate interviews — Fox News anchor Bret Baier will use Google+ Hangouts (group video chats) to moderate live discussions with each of the Republican presidential candidates and members of the public. First up is Mitt Romney on Nov. 15, to be followed by others later.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Special Report, The Next Web, Strange Attractor and NewscastStudio Blog

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Regis May Be Going, but We'll Have Kelly for a While — Regis Philbin is leaving the daytime talk show “Live! with Regis and Kelly” later this month but his co-host, Kelly Ripa, is staying a while. — Disney-ABC Domestic Television confirmed on Wednesday that Ms. Ripa …

Discussion: Deadline.com, The Huffington Post, Inside TV and AOL TV

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Discovery Executive to Leave — After two years as the chief operating officer of Discovery Communications, Peter Liguori will leave at the end of the year, the company said Wednesday. — His departure had been rumored for weeks. Discover said It does not plan to name a replacement.

Discussion: Adweek, AdAge, Multichannel, Company Town and Broadcasting & Cable

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Gone in a Flash: How Adobe's abandonment of Flash for mobile devices impacts news orgs — Jason Perlow at ZDNet broke a pretty big story overnight: Adobe is abandoning development of the mobile version of Flash Player. As the text of the announcement Perlow obtained has it:

Discussion: Forbes, AllThingsD, ZDNet, Charles Apple, VentureBeat, Deadline.com, Gadget Lab and Softpedia News, more at Techmeme »

Stephen Mangan / Reuters:

Endemol set to reject prospective bidders: report — (Reuters) - Endemol, the debt-burdened Dutch TV production company, and its lenders are set to rebuff offers from Time Warner (TWX.N) and others for the group, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. — The newspaper cited people familiar …

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
RTL eyes up possible Endemol bid

Discussion: Digital Spy and @edmundlee

Tim Adler / Deadline.com: Time Warner's $1.3B Bid For Endemol Shows How Much Rupe Overpaid For Shine

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Google May Penalize Ad Heavy Pages — Ever encountered an ad-heavy page, where you struggle to find the actual content on that page? Google's looking at penalizing those in its search results. — The head of Google's web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news when speaking at the Pubcon conference today.

Discussion: WebProNews

Glyn Moody / Techdirt:

Russian Internet Content Monitoring System To Go Live In December — Back in April of this year, the Russian government put out a tender: … The stated purpose of the monitoring system was quite specific: … Here's what it would be searching for:

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Who's behind Newark Politico? ‘A group of Newark professionals,’ as yet unidentified, gets a ‘cease-and-desist’ from Politico — Josh Benson. — The vestigial website Newark Politico will be a news- and commentary-based venture with content produced by full-time journalists …

Discussion: Poynter and FishbowlDC

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Political Ad Spending Helps Drive a Consolidation of Local TV Stations — A period of consolidation is under way in local television — and with it, a renewed debate about the implications of merger and acquisition activity on the industry. — A torrent of deals began in September …

Discussion: Company Town, TVSpy and Gannett Blog

Susan Decker / Bloomberg:

Barnes & Noble Urges U.S. Regulators to Probe Microsoft on Mobile Patents — Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) asked U.S. regulators to investigate whether Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) seeks to monopolize the mobile-device market by demanding patent royalties on electronics running on Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

Discussion: GeekWire, VentureBeat, Techland, PC Magazine, Epicenter, SlashGear, Digits, Wall Street Journal and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

As Magazines and Retail Converge, Where Will the Editorial Line Be Drawn? — According to Forrester research, Americans will spend nearly $200 billion online in 2011, which accounts for about one-tenth of what U.S. consumers will spend on products and services all together this year.

Craig Silverman / Regret the Error:

HuffPost removes, apologizes for 'Who's Got The Tranny Look?' poll — After receiving complaints from members of the gay and transgendered community, The Huffington Post removed a poll from its website that asked readers to vote on who has more of a “Tranny Look” between Sofia Vergara and Blake Liveley.

Discussion: Equality Matters and GLAAD

R. Thomas Umstead / Multichannel News:

CNN's Gupta To Host New Series — Sunday Afternoon Show to Profile World Innovators — CNN will continue to build new programming around its on-air talent with the Nov. 13 launch of a new weekly series featuring Dr. Sanjay Gupta. — The 30-minute series, The Next List …

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:

AOL Doubles Down On Its Editions iPad Magazine With UK And Canada Versions — AOL's push into iPad news aggregation—to compete with the likes of Flipboard, Zite, Pulse, Yahoo's Livestand and others—is being taken up a notch today, with the launch of the AOL Editions magazine app in the UK and Canada.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Journalists are the 99 percent too, says new Tumblr — A St. Petersburg Times reporter has riffed on the “We are the 99 Percent” Tumblr and created a Tumblr where journalists can tell their stories. “We are journalists. We are proud of what we do,” writes Emily Nipps.

Om Malik / GigaOM:

For Amazon & Kindle, brick & mortar stores key to success — When it comes to tablets, it has so far been a one-tablet show. Apple's iPad has been and continues to be the dominant player. Amazon's Kindle Fire is being considered a legitimate contender and if Amazon's spin is to be believed …

Discussion: TeleRead, Amazon.com and ReadWriteWeb, more at Techmeme »