Mediagazer: Afghanistan's first media mogul talks about the country's culture wars, his answer to ‘The X Factor’ … (Matthew Green/Financial Times)

1:40 AM ET, March 27, 2012

Top News:

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Don't build a paywall, create a velvet rope instead — As the newspaper industry continues to flounder, paywalls and other subscription models are becoming more common, with everyone trying to imitate the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Is there any other other option to putting up a turnstile around the news?

Discussion: Guardian, @carr2n, Noted, Guardian, Charlie Beckett and Journalism.co.uk, Thanks:@mathewi

Patrick B. Pexton / Washington Post:

Is a paywall coming to The Washington Post? — Will you soon have to start paying to use The Post's Web site? No, not in the short term, and maybe never, if I read the tea leaves correctly. Paying for online or digital content (called a “paywall” in media jargon) is much in the news right …

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk: Mission America: How the Guardian's US move has added 4m readers

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
The “Sharing” Mirage — This week's most stunning statistic …

Discussion: Guardian

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Al Sharpton's Conflicting Roles in the Trayvon Martin Case — He leads a Trayvon Martin rally and covers it for MSNBC. — Al Sharpton, who has been crusading in racial cases for three decades, has claimed a starring role in the Trayvon Martin case. — He's also assumed a starring role in MSNBC's coverage of the case.

Discussion: Mediaite, Gawker, Forbes, TVNewser, The Raw Story and Tampa Bay Times

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

Sourcing Trayvon Martin “Photos” From Stormfront — Business Insider runs a linkbait post with a graphic of Trayvon Martin images it found on the neonazi website Stormfront. — It doesn't run them to debunk them, mind you, but to back up its thesis that “The Media Is Getting the Trayvon Martin Story Wrong …

Discussion: Riptide 2.0, Business Insider, National Review and Strollerderby

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

For Martin's Case, a Long Route to National Attention — Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, was fatally shot on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla. The next day his death was a top story on the Fox-affiliated television station in Orlando, the closest big city to Sanford.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Media Decoder, Mashable!, Erik Wemple, Gannett Blog, Chickaboomer, The Informer, The Huffington Post and Mediaite

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:
ESPN drops ban on staff posting pics in hoodies

Discussion: The Wrap and The Maynard Institute

Mike Janssen / Current.org:

Digital journalists look for lessons in work of NPR's one-man newsroom … On a recent afternoon at NPR, Andy Carvin was watching a video of a protest purportedly shot in the Syrian city of Homs, a locus of that country's uprising against its repressive regime.

Jim Romenesko:

Philly.com 'doesn't much like news' — Former Philadelphia Inquirer metro columnist Tom Ferrick calls Philly.com “an anomaly among the newspaper-related web sites in America in that it doesn't much like news.” The people behind the site know they can't get millions of unique visitors with news stories …

Discussion: Metropolis, @davidfolkenflik and The Editorialiste

Dave Davies / newsworks:
More layoffs coming at Philly papers?

Discussion: Poynter

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre: American press ‘complacent’ and ‘self-regarding’ — Editor-in-chief of Daily Mail group, which runs most popular newspaper website in the world, airs views in New Yorker profile — The editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail group, which runs the most-viewed newspaper website …

Lauren Collins / New Yorker:
How the Daily Mail conquered England.

Discussion: Fashionista, Poynter, @lisaocarroll and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Tribune threatens to pull stations from DirecTV — Tribune Co., owner of 16 television stations across the country including KTLA-TV Los Angeles, is threatening to pull its channels from satellite broadcaster DirecTV. — At issue are fees that Tribune, which is also the parent of the Los Angeles Times …

Discussion: Adweek and Radio & Television …

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

The Future of Magazines Should Look a Lot Like Spotify — The options we have for reading magazine journalism in the digital format are pretty sad. We live in an era of self-driving cars, augmented reality, and we can keep a map of the entire planet in our pocket, but we are stuck reading …

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Why Gary Pruitt's move to the AP makes sense (for McClatchy too) — I'm not a fan of trying to predict major executive moves in the newspaper industry. (Who knows who will be the next CEO of The New York Times?) Once they do happen, though, as with CEO Gary Pruitt's decision last week …

Matthew Green / Financial Times:

Afghanistan's first media mogul talks about the country's culture wars, his answer to ‘The X Factor’ - and how he got into business with Rupert Murdoch — Afghanistan's first media mogul talks about the country's culture wars, his answer to ‘The X Factor’ - and how he got into business with Rupert Murdoch

Christopher Robbins / Gothamist:

Gothamist Finally Gets Press Passes (After 8 Years and Thousands Spent on High-Profile Lawyer) — After eight years, dozens of phone calls, two appeal hearings, countless emails, and $5,000, two Gothamist staffers have now obtained NYPD-issued press credentials.

BBC:

Murdoch firm used hacker site to target pay-TV rival — ITV Digital was plagued by piracy of its smartcards and went into administration in 2002 — A News Corporation company recruited a pay-TV “pirate” to post hacked details of a rival's secret codes online, BBC Panorama has found.

Discussion: The Verge, Guardian and Guardian

Jim Romenesko:

NYT negotiations update — The Newspaper Guild of New York says New York Times management “took a slightly less offensive approach to contract talks” on Monday, but “most major proposals were unchanged: Management still wants to freeze Guild members' pension accruals and eliminate Guild trustees …

Juana Summers / Politico:

Rick Santorum lashes out at New York Times reporter — FRANKSVILLE, Wis. — On the eve of the U.S. Supreme Court's debate over the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's health care law, Rick Santorum declared that Mitt Romney's support for a similar law in Massachusetts made him …

Discussion: Politico, @mlcalderone, @jeffzeleny, Guardian, ThinkProgress, Capital Tonight, @jaketapper, @nytjim and The Caucus

Dylan Byers / Politico:
Santorum ‘ready to take on the NY Times’

Discussion: Politico, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, The Jane Dough, Chickaboomer, Gothamist and KBOI

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Daily Telegraph publisher's chief attended Downing Street dinner — Murdoch MacLennan went to ‘thank-you dinner for major donors’ two months after 2010 general election — Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of the publisher behind the Daily Telegraph, attended a previously undisclosed …

Discussion: Media Week and Press Gazette