Mediagazer: The Missed Opportunity of HuffPost's “Good News” (Josh Stearns/Groundswell)

4:50 PM ET, January 13, 2012

Top News:

Ed Strapagiel / INMA:

Newsmedia executives cautious about 2012 — 2012 study finds North American newspapers pessimistic about ad revenues, looking to digital for growth. — Newspapers — and many other industries — expected at least some economic recovery in 2011. This simply did not happen.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and freefromeditors

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Piers Morgan's 2012 Resolution: Be More Like Bill O'Reilly — One nice thing about success is the way it shuts up critics. One year ago, Larry King had ended his 25-year run as CNN's marquee interviewer, and Piers Morgan was gearing up to replace him. How could Morgan, a former gossip reporter …

Discussion: TVNewser and Inside Cable News

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Future Publishing sells New York operation for $3m — Magazine publisher Future has sold its loss-making New York division to NewBay Media — Future Publishing has sold off its loss-making New York operation - home to magazines including Guitar World, Revolver and Guitar Aficionado - in a deal worth $3m (£1.9m).

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Folio, MinOnline, Media Week and eMedia Vitals

Felicia Pride / FishbowlNY:

Arianna Huffington Says Media Needs More Good News, Launches Vertical — What seems to be dominating headlines these days? War. Political mudslinging. Economic distress. Prejudice diatribes. Pure foolishness. — Does media need more feel-good stories? — Arianna Huffington thinks so.

Discussion: Gawker and The Huffington Post

Josh Stearns / Groundswell:
The Missed Opportunity of HuffPost's “Good News”

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Rupert Murdoch / @rupertmurdoch:

Many questions and jokes about My Space.simple answer - we screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons.

Discussion: NME, Techland, BetaNews, PC Magazine, SlashGear, FishbowlNY, London Calling Blog, Epicenter, The Huffington Post, The Next Web and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Stephen Colbert to Explore (or Pretend to) Run for President — If anyone can make a mockery of the newest campaign finance innovation, the “super PAC,” it's Stephen Colbert. — Mr. Colbert, the Comedy Central television host, has made jokes at the expense of super PACs for months …

Discussion: Soup, The Caucus, The Raw Story, Washington Wire, msnbc.com, Media Decoder, The Huffington Post, The New York Observer, Speakeasy, New York Magazine and PopWatch

Lucas Shaw / The Wrap:

Larry King, Carlos Slim Planning ‘Huge’ Online Venture (Exclusive) — Larry King is launching a “huge” online initiative backed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, TheWrap has learned. — Two individuals close to King confirmed that the venture was underway, though details remain sketchy.

Discussion: Globe and Mail, FishbowlNY, WebProNews, New York Magazine and Jim Romenesko

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

Deal Would Lead Letterman to a Late-Night Milestone — David Letterman as a guest on “The Tonight Show” with his idol, Johnny Carson. It appears that he will extend his contract, and surpass Mr. Carson's 30 years as a late-night host. — PASADENA, Calif. - It appears increasingly likely …

Discussion: Business Insider, TVLine, Company Town, Splitsider, Inside TV, The New York Observer, Deadline.com, The Huffington Post and Gothamist

Russell Adams / Deal Journal:

Why It's Tough to Sell the Boston Globe … New York Times Co.'s recent sale of 16 local papers suggested it may be only a matter of time before the company consists of little more than the flagship newspaper. But the next likely target for disposal, the Boston Globe, comes with some complicating factors.

Discussion: @romenesko

Clay Shirky / Guardian:

The New York Times public editor's very public utterance — Brisbane's question on reporters' duty to challenge misleading political speech has permanently altered readers' expectations — Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went to his readers with a question:

Discussion: paidContent, Salon, Free Press, Mother Jones, Nieman Journalism Lab, Big Journalism, The FJP, Editors Weblog, Media Research Center, FishbowlNY, The Atlantic Online, JIMROMENESKO.COM, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Public Editor's Journal, Washington Post, The New York Observer and Online Journalism Review

Arthur S. Brisbane / The Public Editor's Journal:
Update to my Previous Post on Truth Vigilantes

Discussion: AdAge, rbr.com, GigaOM, Poynter, Mediaite, Strange Attractor, Crikey, Future of Journalism, The New York Observer, Jack Shafer, The Raw Story and Kirk LaPointe's …

Adam Penenberg / Fast Company:

Amazon's Plagiarism Problem — Amazon's erotica section isn't just rife with tales of lust, incest, violence, and straight-up kink. It's also a hotbed of masked merchants profiting from copyright infringement. And even with anti-piracy legislation looming, Amazon doesn't appear too eager …

Discussion: WebProNews, Betabeat, Fortune, The FJP and The Awl, more at Techmeme »

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Facebook Gives Politico Deep Access to Users' Political Sentiments — Counting Twitter mentions would have you believe that Ron Paul is the most popular Republican candidate in the ongoing U.S. primaries. Umm, right. — But some social media analysis of politics is going beyond that.

Discussion: Forbes, NetNewsCheck Latest, Facebook, Inside Facebook, FishbowlDC, Medacity, The Politico, The Hill, VatorNews, ZDNet, Poynter, Gawker, The Next Web and Mashable

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

“Soft” Ad Sales Ding Hulu's 2011 Growth — Remember back in the fall of 2011, when we started hearing anecdotal reports about slowing ad sales? Add Hulu to the list of examples: The company just reported a 60 percent jump in overall revenue for 2011 — which isn't as much as it had thought it was going to do a year ago.

Discussion: MediaPost, rbr.com, Company Town, GigaOM, Hulu Blog, Betabeat, PC Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Business Insider and SplatF

Kevin Lincoln / Business Insider:
Hulu's 2011 Revenue Comes In At $420 Million

Discussion: Forbes, SocialTimes.com, Epicenter and TechCrunch

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

BBC considers charging viewers for archive TV shows online — Corporation examines whether to introduce ‘pay-per-view’ scheme to watch shows after they have appeared on iPlayer — The BBC is considering introducing controversial plans to charge viewers for watching TV shows from its huge archive of content online.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and The Next Web

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

What would a Google News Plus Your World look like? — How soon until we get a Google News “Plus Your World?” — With the introduction of the oddly extraterrestrial-sounding Google “Search Plus Your World”, the company proclaimed their latest experiment is “transforming Google …