Mediagazer: Hashtags Are The New Lawn Signs: Why Twitter Won't Predict The 2012 Cycle (Talking Points Memo)

3:15 PM ET, March 24, 2012

Top News:

Daily Variety up for sale — Reed Elsevier is seeking a buyer after previously offering the trade publication in 2008. Industry observers say its status as a ‘trophy brand’ might boost its sales price. — Variety, Hollywood's oldest entertainment industry trade publication, has been put up for sale.

Discussion: @jeffjarvis and @romenesko

Variety:

Variety up for sale — Reed Business Information ("RBI") today announced it is beginning a process to sell Variety, the leading title for the entertainment industry. This follows the divestment by RBI of its other US business magazines over the past three years.

Discussion: The Wrap, AdAge, Company Town, MediaPost, FishbowlLA, FOLIO, @tcarmody, @learmonth, Radio & Television …, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, New York Times and Deadline.com

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

James Murdoch Resigns From Another Corporate Board — In a continuing effort to distance himself from News Corporation's embattled British newspaper unit, James Murdoch has stepped down from the board of Times Newspapers Holdings. — The group, established by Rupert Murdoch …

Discussion: Reuters and Bloomberg

Michael Kugelman / Foreign Policy:

Pakistan's pugnacious press — In recent days, details have emerged about the Pakistani government's pursuit of Internet filtering technologies that would enable it to block up to 50 million websites. This news comes just weeks after a parliamentary committee proposed a ban on “anti-Pakistan” …

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Hachette UK succeeds in having its eBooks removed from pirate website — Publisher Hachette UK has succeeded in having all its books removed from Mobiles24, a user-generated mobile content platform. — Hachette UK is is one of the largest book publishers in the UK, and consists …

Discussion: Bookseller news

Talking Points Memo:

Hashtags Are The New Lawn Signs: Why Twitter Won't Predict The 2012 Cycle — Hashtags Are The New Lawn Signs: Why Twitter Won't Predict The 2012 Cycle — Ask any political operative tasked with managing “presence” and volunteers in past campaigns what their biggest frustration is, and it's usually not a contest.

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

WSJ Can Change Digital Subscriber Price On The Fly, Says Court — In 2006, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal (NSDQ: NWS) spun off financial magazine Barron's Online and required subscribers to pay more if they wanted to keep reading Barron's. This week, angry customers who sued learned …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Erik Wemple:

C-SPAN knocks, Politico answers — As a news outlet devoted to covering national politics, Politico has national ambitions. Back in September 2008, the outlet launched an elaborate beast called the Politico Network, a countrywide web of partnerships with newspapers and TV stations.

Thanks:@erikwemple

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Location, location, location: NPR customizes the news with local content — NPR is trying another experiment with geotargeted news, partnering with 13 member stations to deliver local headlines on the NPR.org home page. Location-sensing technology detects whether a user is in one of the test markets and …

Erik Wemple:

Geraldo on Trayvon Martin's hoodie: It's got to be a hoax — The video above appears to feature Geraldo Rivera on Fox News attributing Trayvon Martin's killing to his wearing a hoodie. Here's the apparent comment: … No way, I told myself. This has to be another Internet hoax.

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:
Geraldo's hoodie comments: Definitely not a hoax

Discussion: Poynter and TVNewser

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

The AP's Weak Coverage of Its New Boss — The Associated Press has a new CEO. So how does the AP cover it? Not very well. — AP hired McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt to be its new CEO, which raises a couple of obvious questions. First: The AP hired an old-line newspaper executive to be their digital-age CEO?

Eric Alterman / Center for American Progress:

Think Again: The End of Newspapers and the Decline of Democracy — A newspaper rack is shown in Palo Alto, California. Newspaper revenue fell to its lowest level since 1984 last year. — If newspapers were a baseball team, they would be the Mets—without the hope for “next year.”

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Looking for answers for nypost.com, Rupert Murdoch and Col Allan rely on a standby general: Jesse Angelo — It's been a few weeks since The New York Post lost the editor of its website, Erle Norton, to Reuters, where he is now working for fellow ex-Post editor Dan Colarusso.

Discussion: New York Magazine