Mediagazer: Matt Cutts: “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done” (Matt McGee/Search Engine Land)

4:32 PM ET, January 20, 2014

Top News:

Print focus at OC Register fails to stem bleeding as publisher Aaron Kushner tries to scale — Publisher Stumbles in Wild Chase for Growth — Timing matters when it comes to news. I had been reading about Aaron Kushner's audacious strategy to invest in journalism ever since he bought …

Discussion: Street Fight, @jennifersaba, @peterlattman, @ezraklein, @carr2n, @publiceyestl and @mattdpearce

Josh Levin / Slate:

Digging Too Deep — Every journalist has worked on a story that started out being about one thing and ended up as something else entirely. That's what happened to Caleb Hannan, who got curious about a weird-looking golf club he found on YouTube and started quizzing the inventor about her far-out scientific theories.

Discussion: The New Republic, BuzzFeed, Nieman Storyboard, VICE, Kirk LaPointe's …, Boing Boing, GLITTERING SCRIVENER, Grantland, ThinkProgress, Jezebel, @adrianchen, The Huffington Post, Shakesville and Autostraddle

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
Grantland and Dr. V: What happens when niche journalism meets the network effect

Discussion: Guardian, Beautiful, Terrible … and BuzzFeed

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Matt Cutts: “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done” — Google, and Matt Cutts in particular, has made a number of statements about guest blogging over the past year as the tactic has grown as a linkbuilding tactic. — None of those statements are as clear as the one Cutts wrote today on his personal blog.

Discussion: Matt Cutts and @dannysullivan

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Michael Kinsley to Join Vanity Fair and Write a Monthly Column — Mr. Kinsley will write a monthly column for Vanity Fair, which is likely to cover “what I've written about most of the time: politics, in one form or another,” he said.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @romenesko, @raju, @dkthomp and Mediawire Daily

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing.com:

UsVsTh3m at nine months and Ampp3d at six weeks: What has Trinity Mirror learned? — For any established media company, coming up with new ideas and finding out fast if they've got a future is a big challenge. — So for Trinity Mirror to place an (admittedly small) bet on UsVsTh3m last last May was a pretty ballsy move.

Discussion: @iainpope73 and @joannauk

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

In France, value of legacy media companies plummets — Those media assets that are worth nothing — The valuation gap between high tech and media companies has never been wider. The erosion of their revenue model might be the main culprit, but management teams, unions and boards …

Discussion: @s_m_i, @blathnaidhealy and @frasermatthew

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

After Mulling Sale, Business Insider Raising a New Round of Funding — Business Insider — which rejected an informal acquisition offer of around $100 million floated by AOL last year and has discussed other sale efforts — is likely to be raising a new round from its existing investors, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Discussion: VatorNews, @pkafka, @carney, Mediawire Daily, @zseward and @peterlauria3

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

After the Times Redesign, Complaints and Changes — I've seldom had as much response to any post as to one last week - from the first day of the redesign of The Times's website: about 1,000 comments on this blog, in addition to hundreds of emails to my office.

Discussion: @tonybrancato, @wblau, @vivianschiller, @janinegibson, @katierosman, @albertocairo, @sulliview and @bdeskin

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Magazine industry ad decline slowing, but 4th quarter not good — The final tally came in this week for print magazine advertising in 2013. It is the typical good news/bad news scenario. — Ad pages — the industry's traditional measure — were down 4.1 percent for the year.

Discussion: @rickedmonds and @poynter

Jarvis DeBerry / The Maynard Institute …:

NABJ Executive Director Resigns — Interim Successor Led Medical Association, Alpha Phi Alpha — Maurice Foster, executive director of the National Association of Black Journalists, has resigned after three years in the job, NABJ President Bob Butler announced on Monday, the Martin Luther King holiday.

Mark Rachkevych / Kyiv Post:

Watchdog: 26 journalists injured in police clashes, two detained (UPDATE) — Police have detained two journalists in Kyiv on Jan. 19-20 amid a standoff between anti-government protesters and law enforcement, according to the Institute of Mass Information, a local watchdog.

Discussion: @christopherjm

Amy Wallace / New York Times:

Life as a Female Journalist: Hot or Not? — LOS ANGELES — IN 2009, I wrote a cover story for Wired magazine about the anti-vaccine movement and profiled Paul Offit, a leading proponent of vaccines for children. Dr. Offit is a man. I am a woman. That was sufficient grounds for things to get ugly.