Mediagazer: iVillage to Launch New User-Gen Content Section (Mike Shields/Mediaweek)

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

As Combat Troops Leave Iraq, News Media Ride Along — The combat mission in Iraq doesn't officially end until Aug. 31 but viewers and readers could be forgiven for thinking it ended tonight. — In a broadcast that Brian Williams said constituted an “official Pentagon announcement,” …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Romenesko, The Huffington Post, CNN, Washington Post, Mediaite, The Wire, B&C, Inside Cable News, On Media's Blog, Online NewsHour, Hot Air, Aljazeera, Los Angeles Times, Wonkette, Gawker and New York Magazine

Frances Martel / Mediaite:

NBC/MSNBC All-Stars Exclusively Report On Last US Combat Troops Leaving Iraq — Now we know where Rachel Maddow has been hiding these past few days: Baghdad. The MSNBC primetime star traveled to Iraq, along with embedded NBC reporter Richard Engel, to deliver an exclusive report …

Discussion: TVNewser, Media Decoder, Online NewsHour, Chickaboomer, Romenesko, Florida News Center and Inside Cable News

Mike Shields / Mediaweek:

iVillage to Launch New User-Gen Content Section — iVillage has always maintained a close relationship with its community—particularly its more vocal and active members. — Now the NBC Universal-owned site is looking to channel the energies of several of its vociferous users …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

The Wire:

We Need To Change Copyright Laws To Save Newspapers — Copyright and patent laws were introduced to benefit society by providing authors and inventors incentives to create; by giving authors and inventors an opportunity for personal gain from their own creativity intellectual property protections create …

Discussion: Zombie Journalism, TeleRead, NetNewsCheck Latest and Journalism.co.uk

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Gawker's No Longer a Blog — Gawker is no longer a blog. And Nick Denton no longer runs a blog network. — Gawker Media - which, for better or worse, defined and largely influenced the modern blogosphere as we all know it — is undergoing a massive redesign that will render its collection …

Discussion: NYConvergence

C.W. Anderson / The Atlantic Online:

Print Culture 101: A Cheat Sheet and Syllabus — Editor's Note: So, people no longer just read ink printed on paper. Now that the electronic word has become embedded in our lives, we have a new perspective on what might have been special and specific about the last few hundred years of information dissemination.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Skype's Chief Development Officer Leaves Amid TechCrunch Comment Fiasco — Madhu Yarlagadda, who joined Skype as Chief Development Officer last month, has left the company. Generally speaking executives don't leave a startup as it jumps into the IPO process, and they certainly don't leave after just a month on the job.

Discussion: Bits, VentureBeat, AdScam/The Horror! and paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Financial Times launches new audience measurement — The Financial Times has launched a print and digital circulation measure that calculates the total number of people who access paid-for FT content each day. — The paper believes the measure is the first of its kind produced by a media owner.

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Print Subscribers Rejoice: People Magazine IPad App Is Free for You — Existing Subscribers to Time Inc. Title Won't Get Charged Again — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Magazines have been aggressive about pricing their app editions for the iPad so far, charging consumers the full print cover price …

Discussion: Romenesko, Poynter Online, Digital Daily and TeleRead

Emily Steel / Wall Street Journal:

As Web Surfers Share, Marketers Track — Add this to the list of consumer-data collection tactics that can raise eyebrows: Clearspring Technologies' “AddThis” button. — The button allows users to alert friends and contacts to interesting or useful material on the Web.

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

Internet use in the UK - implications from Ofcom's research for publishers — I've just been scanning through the internet section of Ofcom's latest report on The Communications Market 2010. As always, it's an essential read and this year the body have done a beautiful job in publishing …

Michael Malone / Broadcasting & Cable:

Gannett Debuts School Sports Microsites — 38 media markets get local HighSchoolSports.net sites this month — Gannett is launching more than 100 co-branded local sports sites out of its HighSchoolSports.net division. Gannett says the “microsites,” a joint operation between Gannett's TV …

Discussion: paidContent, eMedia Vitals and NetNewsCheck Latest

BBC:

Ofcom report highlights ‘multi-tasking media users’ — Multi-tasking allows people to consume even more — The average Briton spends almost half of their waking life using media and communications, data suggests. — The statistics from regulator Ofcom suggest people in the UK spend seven hours …

Jolie O'Dell / Mashable!:

YouTube Launches Charts to Rank Top Web Videos — YouTube has just announced it will be featuring its top videos in a new section called YouTube Charts. — This page will keep you updated on which videos are trending right now, which are all-time classics, how various vids stack up against one another and more.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and The Next Web

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Zakaria Jumping to Time From Newsweek — Time magazine will announce Thursday that Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for The Washington Post and Newsweek and editor of Newsweek's international editon, has been named a contributing editor for Time and will write a column for the magazine every other week.

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, Folio, New York Observer, FishbowlNY, Romenesko, The Wrap, Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Gawker, The Wire, TVNewser, Mediaite, On Media's Blog and Inside Cable News

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Where Do Media Companies Give Their PAC Money? — News Corp. the parent company of Fox News Channel, gave a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association in June through its News America PAC. The news was buried in a story in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Discussion: Mediaite, Slate, Guardian, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, On Media's Blog and The Politico

How Training Citizen Journalists Made a Difference — I recently attended the Walkley Media Conference in Sydney, Australia. It is run by the Walkley Foundation, a very interesting outfit that I'm learning more and more about. The Foundation aims to encourage professional and ethical journalism …

Quentin Hardy / Neural Net Worth:

The Tech News Pyramid Scheme — It is a rare time of year: The Tech Conference Latitudes. Behind us are News Corp's AllThingsD, AlwaysOn's AlwaysOn at Stanford, TimeWarner's Fortune Brainstorm, and the eponymous Techonomy. In a few weeks we will have TechCrunch, GigaOm, and Web 2.0.

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Newsonomics of the FT as an Internet retailer — [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] — Back in 2002, the Financial Times took …

Christopher K. Sopher / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The kids are alright: How news organizations can tap the vast potential of younger consumers — [Christopher Sopher is a senior at the University of North Carolina, where he is a Morehead-Cain Scholar and a Truman Scholar. He has been a multimedia editor of the Daily Tar Heel and has worked for the Knight Foundation.