Mediagazer: Magazines vs digital startups (Felix Salmon)

12:50 PM ET, October 22, 2012

Top News:

Simon Dumenco / AdAge:

Would You Rather Own a Magazine or a Digital Startup? — On the evening of Sunday, Oct. 14, Ad Age Editor Abbey Klaassen and I stood on a small, remote-controlled boat — one not much bigger than a queen-size bed — floating in the pool at the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar at the historic Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

Discussion: Betabeat, Capital New York and AdPulp

Felix Salmon:

Magazines vs digital startups — Simon Dumenco has a question: would you rather own a magazine, or a digital startup? He notes that some magazines are making real money these days, including Marie Claire, even as most digital startups fail. Old Media isn't sexy, he says, but …

Reuters:

Analysis: Yahoo CEO's comeback plan hones in on technology, not media — (Reuters) - Marissa Mayer, who earned a reputation for decisive action and intensity during her 13-year stint at Google Inc, has spent her first months as Yahoo Inc CEO quietly moving the Internet pioneer back to its roots in technology.

Discussion: Forbes, Business Insider, Mashable!, Softpedia News, AdExchanger, Quartz, The Next Web and VentureBeat

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD: With Low Expectations for 3Q, Wall Street Hoping for New Yahoo CEO Mayer to Shine a Light at End of Tunnel

PressGazette:

Newsnight editor steps aside as BBC faces ‘worst crisis for 50 years’ over Savile documentary — Newsnight editor Peter Rippon has stepped aside “with immediate effect” while the BBC reviews its response to the Jimmy Savile sex scandal, the corporation said today.

Discussion: Guardian, New York Times, BBC, The Independent, @lucymanning, @tomjharper, @lucymanning, @grainnemaguire, fleet street fox, @tomjharper, @themediatweets and @davidleigh3

Telegraph:
Jimmy Savile: BBC scrapped investigation after Newsnight came ‘under pressure’ from senior managers

Discussion: Business Insider, blogs.telegraph.co.uk and @christopherhope

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Did The Daily Beast Eat Newsweek? — The shutdown of the venerable print edition of Newsweek is yet another step in the long, inexorable march of all things print to digital — a familiar storyline. Except when it's not. Many pundits will proclaim Newsweek as simply the latest …

Jim Romenesko:

New York Times staffers mull byline strike — A Sunday dispatch from the Newspaper Guild of New York says hundreds of New York Times staffers have in recent days “quietly signed pledges to withhold their bylines, photo credits, and producing credits” and “have also pledged to work strictly to the terms of the contract.”

Discussion: The Huffington Post and New York Magazine

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Jayson Blair on the first time he plagiarized: 'I can't believe no one caught that' — In the course of a wide-ranging report on plagiarism, Lee Cowan talked with disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair about how he got his start as journalism's most famous plagiarist.

Discussion: CBS News

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon apparently discontinues Kindle Touch in favor of Paperwhite — It appears that Amazon is no longer selling the Kindle Touch, the touchscreen e-reader that preceded the front-lit Kindle Paperwhite. Amazon also seems to have discontinued the large-screen Kindle DX last week.

Guardian:
Amazon makes UK publishers pay 20% VAT on ebook sales

Discussion: This is Money

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Weather Channel's Parent Company Is Renamed — In a move it compared to Apple Computer's shedding of the word computer, the Weather Channel Companies has dropped “channel” from its name. — It's not ridding itself of the actual Weather Channel, a staple of cable lineups across the country.

Discussion: Media Decoder and The Huffington Post

Matthew Belloni / The Hollywood Reporter:

Ex-L.A. Times Editors Join BuzzFeed in Push to Cover Hollywood (Exclusive) — Richard Rushfield will head a new Los Angeles bureau for the social news site as Kate Aurthur joins to cover television, film and celebrities. Social news website BuzzFeed is going Hollywood …

Discussion: LA Observed and FishbowlLA

Noreen Malone / The New Republic:

The Critic Wall Street Loves to Lunch With — Felix Salmon's foppish war on the banks. — THERE AREN'T MANY people who can get the Treasury secretary on the phone—and fewer still who can get away with yelling at him on the call. His wife, sure. Probably the president.

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

Without Arianna, the Huffington Post mafia is taking Manhattan — “Do you know the moment I knew it was over?” Jonah Peretti says, with a half-nostaligic, half-stockholm-syndrome smile looking across the table at Ken Lerer. — Lerer doesn't know. — “That last Christmas party we had as an independent company,” Peretti says.

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

New ‘Observer’ hires include Faye Penn, Duff McDonald — The New York Observer's masthead is continuing to take shape under the paper's latest editor, Aaron Gell. — The weekly's new managing editor is Emily Anne Epstein, who was most recently a reporter for the Daily Mail's U.S. web operation.