Mediagazer: Billboard's Website Redesign Makes Music Charts Playable (Brian Anthony Hernandez/Mashable!)

3:00 AM ET, January 29, 2013

Top News:

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Nick Denton Is Resurrecting Valleywag — Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog Gawker killed off in 2009, is making a comeback. — Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, says he'll be bringing the site back to life, and he's currently hunting for an editor or two to run it.

Discussion: @mattbuchanan, @brooke, @stevekovach, @grobertson, PandoDaily and @megan

Connor Simpson / The Atlantic Wire: What Old Valleywags Think About the New Valleywag

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

After Staff Reductions, New Appointments at The Times — 9:06 p.m. | Updated The New York Times announced on Monday a restructured masthead and some significant newsroom appointments, while also saying that the staff reductions the company was seeking had been accomplished primarily through voluntary buyouts.

Discussion: Politico, Poynter and Talking Biz News

David Carr / New York Times:

“South Park” Creators Fortify Their Content Empire — When it comes to success stories in the entertainment world, it doesn't get much better than the one about a pair of regular guys from Colorado, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who took cutout paper dolls, animated them and triumphed on cable television …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Splitsider, The New York Observer and The Corsair

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Ends 2012 With A Solid Q4: $1.22 Billion Ex-TAC Revenue, Non-GAAP EPS 32 Cents — Yahoo today released its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2012, marking the end of a key year for the long-running web portal. — Q4 2012 was Yahoo's second full quarter with Marissa Mayer …

Discussion: AllThingsD, MarketWatch and Forbes

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Q4: Will Marissa Mayer's “Back to Its Roots” Strategy Get Yahoo Back to the Future?

Discussion: Yahoo! Inc., Street Fight, Adweek, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Forbes, Bloomberg, Broadcasting & Cable and NetNewsCheck Latest

Eric Ostermeier / Smart Politics:

The Price of Palin: $15 per Word Spoken During FOX Contract — Sarah Palin uttered more than 189,000 words over 150 appearances on various FOX broadcasts during her three years as an analyst at the network, or $15.85 per word — With the three-year contract now expired between FOX News and Sarah Palin …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, msnbc.com, Chickaboomer, Change of Subject, Mediaite, The Raw Story, The Huffington Post and The Wrap

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Print Media Bastion May Be Giving Way — MUNICH — Long after newspaper audiences started defecting to the Internet in other Western countries, Germany still looks like a bastion of print. — On any train, plane or bus, readers unfurl broadsheets that still do justice to the word, thick with advertising.

Jim Romenesko:

Ben Yagoda claims The New Republic ‘borrowed’ from his ‘lady resurgence’ piece — From BEN YAGODA: The new-look New Republic may be cool and rich and everything, but the extent to which its piece (posted yesterday) about the resurgence of the word “lady” borrowed (that is the polite word) …

Discussion: Melville House Books and http://annfriedman.com/

Barry Petchesky / Deadspin:

How Two Newspapers Wound Up Staging The Same Sob Story About The Ray Lewis Murder Case — Richard Lollar was one of two men killed in the 2000 Super Bowl week stabbing outside an Atlanta nightclub that led to Ray Lewis's pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.

Discussion: Poynter

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

German rights holders sue YouTube in escalating royalty fight — German music rights group GEMA has filed a lawsuit against YouTube, alleging that the video site is misleading users about the details of an ongoing licensing dispute between the two parties. The lawsuit is the latest escalation …

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Start-Up Puts Streaming TV on Campus — At Harvard, resident students do not have to borrow their parents' HBO GO passwords to watch “Girls” and “Game of Thrones” online. They can log in with their own college credentials, getting in the habit of having a cable subscription at an early age.

Discussion: Media Decoder

Emily Greenhouse / The New Yorker:

Twitter's Speech Problem: Hashtags and Hate — On October 19, 2012, Twitter turned censor. In response to complaints from the Union of French Jewish Students, Twitter pulled tweets that used the hashtag #UnBonJuif, or “a good Jew,” which had been worked into slurs and jokes, some using concentration-camp photographs as illustrations.

Discussion: Daily Dot and Business Insider

Brian Anthony Hernandez / Mashable!:

Billboard's Website Redesign Makes Music Charts Playable — Billboard this week gave a facelift to its magazine, launched an iPad app and refreshed its business-focused Billboard.biz. What's more, the music brand unveiled a revamped Billboard.com. — The new Billboard.com …

John Jannarone / Wall Street Journal:

Warner Bros. New CEO Brings Digital Know-How — Time Warner Inc. named its home video and digital chief, Kevin Tsujihara, as the new chief executive of Warner Bros. Entertainment, handing one of Hollywood's biggest jobs to an executive best known for his work on digital distribution strategies.

Discussion: Adweek and MediaPost

Wall Street Journal:

Media Firms Probed on Data Release — Investigators Examined if Economic Figures Were Given Early to Clients; No Criminal Charges Seen — WASHINGTON—Law-enforcement authorities have conducted a wide-ranging investigation into whether media companies facilitated insider trading on Wall Street …

Discussion: @spenchey and @daschles

Gregory Ferenstein / TechCrunch:

Whoops! Google Map Of Gun Permit Holders Was Woefully Inaccurate — When the Journal News caused a national uproar and endangered the lives of its staff to create a Google Map of gun permit holders in New York, it was justified for the cause of transparency and civic dialog.

Discussion: Newser, CNET and The Verge

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

New Republic, Old Pay Wall — Information wants to be free, but Chris Hughes wants to get paid. So how will the new owner of the New Republic handle that balancing act? — The same way lots of other online publications are handling the balancing act: A freemium/pay wall model.

Chris Hughes / The New Republic:
Welcome to Our Redesign - A letter from The New Republic's publisher and editor-in-chief

Discussion: Adweek, Kirk LaPointe's … and New York Times

Ken Wheaton / AdAge:

For a Master Class in Trolling, Just Turn to The New York Times — Forget Buzzfeed or Gawker, Times' Real Estate and Lifestyle Sections Are Have the Formula Down — It's become fashionable to complain about the state of online “journalism” as various sites do what needs to be done to boost page views and goose the most-emailed list.

Abe Epton / Chicago Tribune:

From Google News to the Chicago Tribune: Observations after a month in the newsroom — In my five years at Google News, I'd barely ever heard anyone use the phone or raise their voice. But the newsroom at the Chicago Tribune, a 165-year-old urban stalwart, is a much more boisterous cubicle suite than anything at the Googleplex.

Ian Burrell / The Independent:

Murdoch apologises for ‘offensive’ Scarfe cartoon in Sunday Times denounced as anti-Semitic — Rupert Murdoch last night personally apologised for a “grotesque, offensive” cartoon in the Sunday Times which has provoked a wave of protest from Jewish organisations who have declared it anti-Semitic.

Discussion: @michaelwolffnyc, Telegraph, The Atlantic Wire, Politico, Deadline.com, Associated Press and Yahoo! Movies

Dan Kennedy / Media Nation:

TNR's new owner crosses a line with Obama interview — The New York Times goes deep on The New Republic's latest reinvention. I wrote a couple of pieces for the venerable magazine many years ago, and I wish it well. But I also wish Times reporter Christine Haughney had explored a conflict …

Discussion: Mediaite, Mashable! and The Rural Blog