Mediagazer: Barnes & Noble Mulls Splitting Nook Business And Selling “Dead Tree” Publishing Company (John Biggs/TechCrunch)

11:10 AM ET, January 5, 2012

Top News:

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

News Int gears up for launch of iPad focused project — News International is gearing up a new digital project which is believed to be largely aimed at iPad users and is partly staffed by former employees of the News of the World. — At least 11 former News of the World journalists …

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Barnes & Noble May Spin Off Its Nook Business — Buried in the middle of a holiday sales report, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) announced that it will “pursue strategic exploratory work to separate the Nook business” from the rest of the company. “We see substantial value in what we've built …

Discussion: Forbes, AllThingsD, Business Wire, Business Insider, ZDNet, Fast Company, CNET, Wall Street Journal, @pkafka, mediabistro.com and msnbc.com, more at Techmeme »

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Barnes & Noble to Put Sterling Publishing Up for Sale — Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest bookstore chain, has put its Sterling Publishing business up for sale, say people familiar with the situation. — The move comes at a time when Barnes & Noble is recasting itself …

Discussion: paidContent, GeekWire, Gizmodo, Media Decoder, Electronista and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

John Biggs / TechCrunch: Barnes & Noble Mulls Splitting Nook Business And Selling “Dead Tree” Publishing Company

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Current says Keith Olbermann refused to anchor Iowa caucus coverage — Analyses of Tuesday's Iowa caucuses are the top of most news sites right now—including Current TV's homepage, which features images of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich above a video featuring former U.S. vice president …

Matthew Belloni / Hollywood Reporter:

Olbermann Attorney: 'Keith's Lawyers and Current's Lawyers Are Communicating' — The lead attorney for Keith Olbermann tells The Hollywood Reporter that the disgruntled Current newsman is negotiating his next moves with his employer in the wake of a falling out over his participation in coverage of the Republican primaries.

Discussion: Gawker, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, The Wrap, TVNewser, Mediaite, Inside Cable News, New York Times and New York Magazine

Marisa Guthrie / Hollywood Reporter:
Keith Olbermann Blasts Current TV; Internal Memo Reveals Tension Over GOP Primary

Discussion: Company Town, Wonkette, Inside Cable News, Hot Air and Mediaite

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Keith Olbermann's Days on Current Are Numbered

Discussion: Poynter, Wannabe Hacks and The Politico

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Thurlbeck says Leveson should spark ‘tabloid revolution’ — Former chief reporter of the News of the World Neville Thurlbeck has said that the Leveson Inquiry should be “the spark that ignites a tabloid revolution”. — Writing on his own blog, Thurlbeck said today: “Without radical reform …

Discussion: Neville Thurlbeck

Scott Martin / USA Today:

Apple television gamble the talk of CES — Apple is the only company that consistently gets big buzz out of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — without even attending. — This year will be no different. — Connected TVs — TVs that connect to and can access content …

Discussion: TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Pocket-lint, The Verge, Gizmodo, Softpedia News, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Electronista, Fox News and Business Insider, more at Techmeme »

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Colin Myler: the great survivor — Former News of the World editor is back - as editor-in-chief at Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News — The man who was editing the News of the World when it was closed by Rupert Murdoch, and whose editorship of the Sunday Mirror ended after his paper collapsed a trial …

Discussion: Poynter and Gawker

Azi Paybarah / Capital New York:
Mort Zuckerman changes editors, again: Kevin Convey's out, former News Corp. guy Colin Myler is in

Discussion: Media Nation, Guardian, Associated Press, Gawker, Press Gazette, Adweek, New York Magazine, Future of Journalism, Poynter, Capital New York, Media & Entertainment, The Huffington Post, Jon Slattery, The Politico, The New York Observer, Media Decoder and FishbowlNY

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
At ‘Daily News,’ a culture of using ‘permalancers’ gets shaken up

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Where Did Nine Million Cable Subscribers Go? — New year, new chance to talk about cord-cutting/shaving/avoiding. Which is either a big deal that's going to get bigger, or basically imaginary, depending on who you like to listen to. — If you're in the big-deal camp …

more at Techmeme »

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

The Case of the Unfortunate Underscore: How Twitter Verified the Fake Wendi Over the Real Wendi — I went all Encyclopedia Brown yesterday after I and many others had been led astray by an account — @wendi_deng — that Twitter had verified with its famous blue check mark over the holiday weekend …

Discussion: FT Tech Hub, MediaFile, Erik Wemple, Gawker, Business Insider and The Daily Beast, more at Techmeme »

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

FT Buys Its Web App Maker; CEO Ridding's Memo — The Financial Times has acquired London-based web and application developer Assanka, which made the web app on which the publisher has based its independence from iTunes. — Assanka launched the HTML5 web app with the paper's in-house product team …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Poynter, Beyond Search and TechCrunch Europe

Lucas Shaw / The Wrap:

New York Times, Washington Post, AP Found NewsRight — Newspaper organizations are banding together under an organization titled NewsRight to license and profit from the spread of their content online. — A project first developed by the Associated Press and initially named the News Licensing Group …

Clay Shirky:

Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users — This may be the year where newspapers finally drop the idea of treating all news as a product, and all readers as customers. — One early sign of this shift was the 2010 launch of paywalls for the London Times and Sunday Times.

Discussion: Recovering Journalist, Media, disrupted, stdout.be and Boing Boing