Mediagazer: MPA Levels Playing Field for Publishers' Tablet Data (Emma Bazilian/Adweek)

8:55 PM ET, April 2, 2012

Top News:

Philly papers sold at 10% of 2006 value — After changing hands three times in six troubled years, Philadelphia's legendary newspapers were sold Monday for a tenth of the half-billion dollar price they fetched as recently as 2006. — The stunning plunge in the value of the Philadelphia Inquirer …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Mike Armstrong / Philly.com:

Local group to buy Phila. Media Network for $55 million — A group of local investors agreed on Monday to buy Philadelphia Media Network Inc., the parent company of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, for $55 million with an additional $10 million in working capital for operations.

Discussion: Politico, Forbes, Media Decoder, Poynter, @wendywarren, @wendywarren, The Wrap, JIMROMENESKO.COM and The Newspaper Guild

Marisa Guthrie / Hollywood Reporter:

Current TV Retains Crisis PR Experts for Anticipated Battle With Keith Olbermann (Exclusive) — The network retains lawyers and crisis PR experts Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, who have represented Bill and Hillary Clinton and Lance Armstrong. — Current TV has hired crisis public relations …

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Mediaite

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Keith Olbermann's Angry Email Trail Traces Breakup With Current TV — His bitter divorce from Al Gore's network followed months of escalating complaints to Current TV executives. Howard Kurtz unearths the acrimonious correspondence. — It was a terrible marriage from the beginning.

Discussion: The Wrap, Mixed Media, Company Town, The Daily Caller, Capital New York and Business Insider

Brian Stelter / New York Times:
News Analysis: Olbermann Set the Tone at Current and MSNBC

Discussion: Media Decoder and Poynter

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Bloomberg and Reuters: The Future of News — There's no mistaking where Andy Lack feels Bloomberg LP is positioned versus its competitors. “We may be the last man standing,” says Lack, who oversees the news organization's multimedia operations. — A veteran of network television …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

John Koblin / WWD:

Editors and the ‘Cult of the Brand’ — Just after 1 a.m. on Jan. 31, the editor in chief of Condé Nast's Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport, looked like he was on an infomercial. Rapoport, in a taped segment on HSN, was working hard at selling Bon Appétit's newly debuted kitchenware.

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Judge Clarifies That Bloggers Can Be Journalists (Just Not One in Particular) — Back in December, United States District Court Judge Marco A. Hernandez created a stir by seeming to suggest that bloggers are not journalists as defined by Oregon's shield law.

Discussion: The Legal Satyricon and Free Press

Marc Randazza / The Legal Satyricon:
Judge rules, again, that blogger Crystal Cox is not a journalist. You know why? Because she ISN'T a journalist.

Discussion: Forbes

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Robert Redford to Produce a Documentary About Watergate — Rarely does reality intersect with role playing the way it did two Sundays ago in Bob Woodward's living room. — Meeting him there were Carl Bernstein, his writing partner at The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s …

Paul Smalera / Reuters:

The recession killed journalism - and saved it — Over the last few years, thanks to the global economic crisis - encapsulating everything from the 2008 housing crash to today's ongoing euro zone sovereign-debt debacle - much ink has been spilled about the reshaping of the world's economy, especially about the domestic job market.

Ilaina Jonas / Reuters:

Goldman fund to exit company owning sex traffic site — A private equity fund run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) has agreed to sell its stake in the media company that runs a sex trafficking forum back to company's management, a spokeswoman said on Sunday.

Discussion: CNBC and business.time.com

Adam Martin / The Atlantic Wire: Goldman Sach's Backpage Panic Is Real, Costly

NY Daily News:

Roger Ailes helps conservative writer out-Fox rival — What, Roger Ailes worried? We hear the Fox News CEO is helping conservative writer Zev Chafets fast-track a book about Ailes' and the “Fair and Balanced” cable-news network because he's worried about the exhaustively reported book …

Discussion: Inside Cable News, TVNewser and Chickaboomer

James Crugnale / Mediaite:

Geraldo Rivera Apologizes To Trayvon Martin's Parents For Hoodie Comments — On Fox News' Geraldo At Large Sunday night, Geraldo Rivera spoke with Trayvon Martin's parents and asked them for their forgiveness over his controversial comments that Martin's hoodie was as much responsible for his death as shooter George Zimmerman.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Journalism.org:
How Blogs, Twitter and Mainstream Media Have Handled the Trayvon Martin Case

Discussion: CJR, Mediaite, The New Yorker Blog and The Wrap

David Carr / New York Times:
A Shooting, And Instant Polarization

Discussion: Politico, The Atlantic Wire, The New Yorker Blog, Slate, CJR and New York Magazine

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Wallis: I gave PR advice to Met chiefs — The former deputy editor of the News of the World, Neil Wallis, acted as an unofficial adviser to a succession of Met police commissioners and helped Lord Stevens secure the top role in 2000, the Leveson inquiry has heard.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

MPA Levels Playing Field for Publishers' Tablet Data — The varying sets of rules determining how magazines can access their tablet subscribers' information across different platforms—Apple has always been especially stingy with the statistics—has long irked publishers.

Discussion: New York Times, Folio, paidContent and eMedia Vitals