Mediagazer: Get over it, haters - apps really are the future, says Wired publisher (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

4:30 PM ET, May 25, 2012

Top News:

New Orleans Newspaper Scales Back in Sign of Print Upheaval — The Times-Picayune, a 175-year-old fixture in New Orleans and a symbol of the city's gritty resilience during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has buckled under the pressures of the modern newspaper market.

Discussion: GigaOM, Media Nation, Capital New York, Poynter, Bloomberg, Gawker, Capital New York, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Prof Chris Daly's Blog, Forbes, Media Decoder, Chicago Reader, eMedia Vitals, Washington Post, Newspaper Death Watch and The Rural Blog

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Will New Orleanians follow The Times-Picayune online after it cuts back on print? — Starting this fall, New Orleans will become the largest U.S. city to go without a daily newspaper, but it won't be the first. — That distinction is held by Ann Arbor, Mich. In 2009 …

Discussion: Tampa Bay Times, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Reinventing the Newsroom, TheLensNola.org, Newsonomics and Forbes

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Press-Register editor on ‘Exciting changes’ headline: ‘Perhaps I got carried away’

Discussion: Charles Apple and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Jed Horne / The Lens:
Opinion: Changes at TP were necessary, but are they the right ones?

Discussion: Blog of New Orleans, Gambit, Forbes, NetNewsCheck Latest, Forbes and American Journalism Review

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Dish Network Doesn't Want to Blow Up TV. It Wants to Pay Less for It. — Does Charlie Ergen really want to blow up the TV business, using his ad-skipping “Auto Hop” feature? — You can make that case, and if you want to hear an entertaining rendition of it, check out Peter Lauria's live-on-tape report from Times Square here.

Discussion: Multichannel and Home Media Magazine

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media: Lawsuits Over Dish Network's Ad-Skipper Reveal Networks' Hypocrisy

Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Battle Over Dish's Ad-Skipping Begins as Networks Go to Court

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, PC Magazine, VentureBeat, Techdirt, MediaFile, Chickaboomer, Adweek, Radio & Television …, Mashable!, CNET, Media Law Prof Blog and Broadcasting & Cable

Matthew Belloni / Hollywood Reporter:
Fox, CBS, NBC Sue Dish Network Over AutoHop Ad-Skipper

Discussion: Reuters, Hollywood Reporter, Digital Trends, @jbflint, AdAge, @laureni, @theharryshearer, paidContent, Forbes, The Verge, The Next Web, Engadget and Lost Remote

New York Times:

Albany Times Union Editor Says Police Targeted His Wife's Spa — ALBANY — In early spring, the police raided a spa near the Capitol, alleging that a masseuse was actually a prostitute. — It appeared to be a minor arrest, except that the spa's owner is the wife of the investigations editor at the local newspaper, The Times Union.

Discussion: Albany Times Union, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter, New York Magazine and Gothamist

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Financial Times exec: iOS apps don't work for publishers — It's been close to a year since the Financial Times left the iTunes app store to launch a a web app for its paid content, and FT.com Managing Director Rob Grimshaw told the audience at GigaOM's paidContent 2012 conference that this move has more than paid off.

Discussion: Beet.TV

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

BOMBSHELL: Business Insider Kinda Brilliant — A defense of the rapacious news aggregator. — Imagine a used car salesman who learns that the shiny Mercedes in his lot has a busted engine. He tells his friends not to go near the lemon, but when he notices a long line of people coming in to see the car …

Discussion: Business Insider, @mattrosoff, @reformedbroker, Politico, MediaPost, Techdirt and ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:@rossneumann

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Yahoo Kills Livestand After Just Six Months — Mobile Newstand App Had Trouble Gaining Traction — Has Ross Levinsohn put his first stamp on Yahoo as CEO? Yahoo is shutting down Livestand, its mobile newsstand app, only a little more than six months after it launched, the company just announced.

Discussion: The Next Web, Wired.co.uk, Yodel Anecdotal and Digital Trends

Journalism.co.uk:

NUJ may cut one fifth of staff in face of ‘severe financial crisis’ — A leaked report to the union's National Executive Council states the union has ‘around £300,000 in cash’ said to be the equal of ‘three weeks running costs’ — The National Union of Journalists is …

Discussion: Jon Slattery and Press Gazette

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

The Indianapolis 500: a remarkable test-case in the future of transmedia programming — Sports and sports media compose a gigantic global business. Neither are untouched by technology. In many respects, sports are leading the way in bringing live video and information to alternate computing devices both inside and outside the home.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Denver Post, Contra Costa Times revamp story editing with fewer copy editors — In some ways, the Denver Post and Contra Costa Times' cutbacks in copyediting, announced last month and now final, is a common story these days. Less common are the other changes they're making in how they handle print stories.

Discussion: Baltimore Sun, The Buttry Diary, Poynter, The Latest Word and Common Sense Journalism

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

A push to outlaw anonymous commenters in New York gets big eye-roll from digital media — One might have expected the news that several Republican state lawmakers in New York want to pass a law essentially banning anonymous comments on the web to be met with outrage.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, CNET, Erik Wemple and ThinkProgress

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Publishers can finally sell digital subscriptions on Android devices — Publishers and other app developers can now sell subscriptions with recurring payments through their Android apps. For the past year Android developers could conduct one-time transactions, such as single-issue sales, through in-app purchases.