Mediagazer: Techdirt and the value of the velvet rope approach to media (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

8:30 AM ET, August 17, 2012

Top News:

Apple's TV Vision: Sharing, Full On-Demand, Icons — TV Device Interface Would Simplify Programming; Company Faces Hurdles With Cable Operators — Apple Inc.'s vision for a new device that can be used as a set-top box includes features designed to simplify accessing and viewing programming …

Discussion: MacRumors, Softpedia News, CNET and VentureBeat

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Apple, Microsoft, Google and the sad state of TV — The latest news on Apple's plans for the future of television is that the company is in talks with big pay TV operators to carry their live programming. This would turn a future Apple TV product into a kind of set-top box, reported the Wall Street Journal Wednesday.

Discussion: Business Insider, TUAW and Forbes

Josh Lowensohn / CNET:
Apple TV could double as cable box, report says

Discussion: TechCrunch, /Film, ReadWriteWeb, VideoNuze Analysis, Los Angeles Times, Media Money …, AdAge and Multichannel News

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

At the ‘Times,’ a new mission statement — Some new corporate jargon is being tossed around at The New York Times Company's 8th Avenue headquarters: A growth strategy known as “Invest in the Times.” For a company named after its flagship newspaper, “Invest in the Times” may not actually sound like much of a strategy.

Discussion: Bloomberg, CJR and The Journalism Foundation

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:
New York Times Has Enough Cash To Go Private

Discussion: Poynter

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations — OVERVIEW — For the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines. In the new survey, positive believability ratings have fallen significantly for nine of 13 news organizations tested.

Discussion: Trends in the Living Networks, Kirk LaPointe's …, NetNewsCheck Latest, TheBlaze.com and TVSpy

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

As Ecuador Grants Assange Asylum, Former UK Ambassador Says Embassy Raid Is Coming — As Ecuador puts its weight behind protecting Julian Assange, tension is building in the tug-of-war between the small South American country and the United Kingdom over the WikiLeaks founder's fate.

Discussion: Guardian, ZDNet, AJE, Craig Murray, Media Law Prof Blog and BBC

@wikileaks: ANNOUNCEMENT: Julian Assange will give a live statement infront of the Ecuadorian embassy, Sunday 2pm.

AAP: Assange to appeal if Britain blocks exit

Mohammed Abbas / Reuters:
Hague says will not give Assange safe passage

Discussion: @davidallengreen, @producermatthew and @foreignoffice

New York Times:
Ecuador Grants Asylum to Assange, Defying Britain

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Thrillist Raises $13 Million From Oak, Lerer Ventures, Pilot Group — In 2008, Fred Harman and Oak Investment Partners bet big on Ken Lerer and the Huffington Post, and that worked out pretty well. Now Harman is putting his money into another Lerer project.

Discussion: Betabeat and paidContent

Andrew Jacobs / New York Times:

China's News Media Are Making Inroads in Africa — NAIROBI, Kenya — China's investment prowess and construction know-how is widely on display in this long-congested African capital. A $200 million ring road is being built and financed by Beijing. The international airport is undergoing …

Discussion: CJR

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Techdirt and the value of the velvet rope approach to media — We've argued before that many media companies seem to be taking the easy way out by implementing paywalls — hoping to duplicate the New York Times' experience — instead of trying a more membership-based “velvet rope” type of model.

Discussion: Techdirt and eMedia Vitals, Thanks:@mathewi

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Georgia students will return to newspaper for meeting — Some of the student journalists who walked out on the University of Georgia student newspaper The Red & Black on Wednesday will return for a meeting Thursday afternoon, publisher Harry Montevideo said in a phone interview.

Discussion: Red & Dead, College Media Matters, The Red and Black and splc.org

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Students walk out on University of Georgia newspaper

Discussion: Red and Dead, New York Times, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Huffington Post, Gawker, Athens Daily News and College Media Matters

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

More Guardian paid content - photos go freemium — Slowly but surely, The Guardian is starting to charge for more of its digital content. An upgrade to its popular Eyewitness photography iPad app last night adds a new professional photographer tip for each daily photo - and an Eyewitness Premium option.

Erin Griffith / PandoDaily:

Songza's Founders Realized They Weren't Thinking Radically Enough-Here's How They Changed That — Songza worked on its music streaming product for over a year before it struck gold. Since launching its “Concierge” service in March, the service has blown up.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Olbermann Who? MSNBC Abandons Neutrality Pose For Convention Coverage — Here's one indication of how much the news landscape has changed in the past four years: In 2008, with the presidential election heading into the home stretch, MSNBC pointedly took its top on-air personality …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Charlie Warzel / Adweek:

Overdosing on HuffPost Live Streaming network innovates, though lacks gravitas — On Monday morning, at 10:00 am EST, a stopwatch timer finally ticked to zero and Arianna Huffington's trademarked accent broke the silence from a burgundy-colored leather couch to launch a next-level experiment that …

Discussion: Globe and Mail and Beet.TV

Katherine Fung / The Huffington Post:

Fareed Zakaria Cleared By Time, CNN In Plagiarism Investigation — Fareed Zakaria is off the hook at both Time magazine and CNN after he was accused of plagiarism last Friday. — Zakaria, Time's editor-at-large, was suspended for a month over his most recent column, which shared suspicious similarities …