Mediagazer: Variety.com Redesign Launches (Variety)

6:35 AM ET, March 2, 2013

Top News:

Joe Pompeo / New Republic:

The National: Abu Dhai's brief experiment in press freedom — In 2008, when a new government-owned newspaper debuted in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, it was greeted as the latest sign of the formerly sleepy oil town's cosmopolitan ambitions. The island city of around 900,000 …

Discussion: @emile_hokayem, @sultanalqassemi, @jessradio and @tnr

Michael Moynihan / The Daily Beast:

Publisher Pulls Jonah Lehrer's ‘How We Decide’ From Stores — Disgraced pop-journalist Jonah Lehrer's publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has just announced that his second book, How We Decide, will be pulled from stores, and customers will be refunded. Michael Moynihan reports on the latest in the Lehrer fiasco.

Discussion: Globe and Mail, New York Times and New York Magazine

Katharine Weymouth / Washington Post:

A reader representative for The Post — The world has changed, and we at The Post must change with it. We have been privileged to have had the service of many talented ombudsmen (and women) who have addressed readers' concerns, answered their questions and held The Post to the highest standards of journalism.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Tampabay.com and The Wrap

Horace Dediu / asymco:

Measuring the iBook market — In June of 2011 Apple announced that 130 million ebooks were sold through iTunes. In October of 2012 it announced that 400 million sold. — That means 270 million ebooks were sold in 16 months. Or about 17 million units per month, on average.

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

Rupert Murdoch is on Tumblr, and the photos are kind of amazing — News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, having conquered Twitter, has moved on to Tumblr. Murdoch's chief of staff, Natalie Ravitz, has been maintaining a Tumblr blog for the past several months called “Murdoch Here.”

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, The Huffington Post, @nravitz, @chrishams and @albertonardelli

Jim Romenesko:

‘I love newspapers,’ Warren Buffett tells Berkshire Hathaway shareholders — Warren Buffett's latest report to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders includes these observations about newspapers I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Is Now Officially Calling Itself A ‘Technology Company’, Ditching The ‘Digital Media’ Tagline — Yahoo today issued its annual 10-K report to the Securities And Exchange Commission. These kinds of forms have a lot of boilerplate language that is reused again and again — often …

Discussion: ZDNet and Forbes

Curtis Brainard / Columbia Journalism Review:

NYT cancels Green blog — No explanation from editors following surprise announcement — At 5pm on Friday afternoon, The New York Times posted the following announcement: … This is terrible news, to say the least. When the Times announced in January that it was dismantling …

Discussion: Green

Variety:

Variety.com Redesign Launches … The evolution of Variety continues with today's live launch of the redesigned Variety.com. And, to the relief of readers and staffers, the paywall has come down. — The new website addresses years of requests from readers, with a site that's easy to navigate …

Discussion: FishbowlLA

Victoria Bryan / Reuters:

German book retailers team up against Amazon with new eReader — (Reuters) - German book retailers have teamed up with Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) to produce their own eReader to challenge the dominance of Amazon.com (AMZN.O) in the growing market for digital books.

Discussion: Telecompaper, GigaOM and Good E-Reader

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Jane Pratt Launches Beauty Site xoVain — This morning, at the Waterworks showroom in New York's Flatiron district, Jane Pratt presided over the launch party for her new beauty site, xoVain, wearing a bathrobe. It's not an outfit you'd expect to find Pratt wearing in public …

Discussion: MinOnline