Mediagazer: Warren Buffett's Newspaper Purchase (Clay Shirky)

6:10 PM ET, May 29, 2012

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Media General execs realized in 2011 newspaper decline wasn't cyclical — Media General President and CEO Marshall Morton tells Michael Schwartz that the company didn't realize until 2011 that its newspaper revenue declines were not simply due to the recession:

Discussion: Richmond BizSense and NetNewsCheck Latest

Clay Shirky:

Warren Buffett's Newspaper Purchase — Last week, Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, purchased two dozen small newspapers and their related online properties from Media General, a conglomerate with holdings mainly concentrated in the southeast Unites States.

Discussion: GigaOM

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

DEAR JOURNALISM STUDENTS: Don't Mean To Intrude, But Your Professor Doesn't Get It — We had a good laugh in the (virtual) newsroom this weekend when folks started passing around this letter-to-students from a journalism professor at the University of Tampa.

Discussion: College Media Matters and Poynter

Jay Rosen / Quote and Comment:

Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, made up a story about his victimization by the New York Times. — Seriously. “Made it up” is not too strong a term. As best we can determine, it never happened. But it's important to understand that he thinks it happened. Because this expresses so well what Fox sells: resentment news.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Politico, Mediaite, Erik Wemple, Gawker, @jayrosen_nyu, Inside Cable News and The Huffington Post

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Business Insider goes investigative on anti-Semitism — Right now the headline on this Business Insider post reads, “What Are the Sources of Anti-Semitism.” Don't get too attached to that formulation, however. The post has been changing at a Business Insiderish pace, as the notes and updates at the foot of the item explain:

Discussion: Business Insider, The Atlantic Wire, Mediaite and HyperVocal

Adam Martin / The Atlantic Wire:
Just In Case You Were Starting to Respect Henry Blodget...

Discussion: Gawker, The Huffington Post and The New York Observer

Lynne Marek / Chicago Business:

Chicago Tribune to leap over pay wall — The Chicago Tribune is mulling a plan to charge online readers premiums for different kinds of content, a structure similar to the fee it charges for the print literary magazine it introduced this year. The city's largest newspaper is charting …

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Anthony Bourdain to Join CNN for Weekend Show — Anthony Bourdain is about to take a television trip. The chef and author will host a weekend program on CNN beginning early next year, once his shows for the Travel Channel end, CNN announced on Tuesday. CNN said in a news release that the program …

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, FishbowlDC, Radio & Television …, TVNewser, The Wrap, CNN, Multichannel and Adweek

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Amid Tweets and Slide Shows, the Longform Still Thrives — In the age of 140-character tweets, aggregated blog posts and throwaway slide shows, common sense says you can't expect the Web generation's ADD-addled minds to spend more than a few minutes with any sort of content.

Discussion: Free Press and eMedia Vitals

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Local TV Stations Cut Costs by Sharing News Operations — SAN ANGELO, Tex. — Call a reporter at the CBS television station here, and it might be an anchor for the NBC station who calls back. Or it might be the news director who runs both stations' news operations.

Discussion: Free Press, The Rural Blog, Media Decoder, B&C, Free Press, TVSpy and Gannett Blog

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Pundits, Platitudes, and Patriotism: War Heroes and Their Enemies — On Sunday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said the following, in a discussion about war, soldiers, and death: “It is, I think, very difficult to talk about the war dead, the fallen, without invoking valor, without invoking the word ‘heroes’ …

Discussion: msnbc.com, Close Read, The Daily Beast, NewsBusters.org blogs, NewsBusters.org blogs and Inside Cable News

David Roeder / Chicago Sun Times:

Executive editor John Barron leaving Sun-Times — John Barron said Tuesday he is stepping down as executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, effective immediately. — Jim Kirk, who is editor in chief of the Sun-Times and the suburban newspapers joined under the ownership of Wrapports LLC, said he will assume Barron's duties.

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Coming Soon: A New Spanish-Language Evening Newscast From Fox — 2012 is shaping up to be a big year for Hispanic news outlets, with Univision and ABC News preparing to launch a new English-language cable news channel, and Telemundo and Univision preparing to cover the 2012 election.

Discussion: Inside Cable News and TVSpy