Mediagazer: Layoffs Are Last Week's AOL News. This Week: “Giving Back” (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

11:50 AM ET, March 14, 2011

Top News:

John Montorio Joins HuffPo: Journalism vs Churnalism Battle Rages On — TechCrunch has learned that John Montorio has been named Culture and Entertainment Editor for Aol's Huffington Post Media Group content division. — Montorio is a 30-year veteran of two of the country's biggest newspapers …

Discussion: Bloggasm, On Media's Blog, SAI, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post and LA Observed, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Layoffs Are Last Week's AOL News. This Week: “Giving Back” — Last week's AOL news: Major layoffs in the wake of the Huffington Post acquisition. — This week's AOL news: All sorts of let's-move-ahead-and-get-on-with- it pronouncements from CEO Tim Armstrong and content head Arianna Huffington.

Discussion: Mixed Media, New York Observer, SAI, PC Magazine and Marketing Pilgrim

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Going Rogue on Ailes Could Leave Palin on Thin Ice — Before Sarah Palin posted her infamous “Blood Libel” video on Facebook on January 12, she placed a call to Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. In the wake of the Tucson massacre, Palin was fuming that the media was blaming her heated rhetoric …

Discussion: The Politico, Mediaite, The Atlantic Wire, The Wire, TVNewser, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, The Raw Story and Gawker

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

British Publisher Buys Mental Floss — A decade after he flouted publishing's grim economic realities and launched a weekly news magazine in the U.S., British-born magazine publisher Felix Dennis is betting on another long-shot. — The 63-year-old Mr. Dennis has agreed to buy Mental Floss …

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

The News, in Bright Bits — Somewhere along the line, utility became a bad word at news magazines. And that's where The Week saw an opening. — While magazines like Time and Newsweek published heavy essays, distinguished guest columnists and artful photo spreads, The Week embraced magazine journalism …

Discussion: Poynter

Frank Rich / New York Times:

Confessions of a Recovering Op-Ed Columnist — THE first political columnist I ever encountered, after a fashion, was Walter Lippmann. It happened on a snowy afternoon when I was a kid of 11 or 12 growing up in Washington during the J.F.K. years. My wallet had somehow slipped out of my pocket …

Discussion: The Wire

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Founder of a Provocative Web Site Forms a New Outlet — AUSTIN, Tex. — For most entrepreneurs, running a Web site that is rife with pornography and frequently criticized as a menace to society would not be considered a résumé booster. Many venture capitalists would head in the opposite direction.

Discussion: Fortune

Jennifer Preston / New York Times:

When Unrest Stirs, Bloggers Are Already in Place — As the protests spread across Tunisia for weeks, many international news organizations scrambled to cover the unrest just before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled on Jan. 14, ending 23 years of authoritarian rule. But Amira al-Hussaini was all over the story.

Discussion: Media Decoder

Deborah Potter / NewsLab:

Local TV news bounces back — After two grim years, the state of local television news is much improved, thank you. That's the bottom line of the chapter I wrote for this year's State of the News Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, released today.

Liz Shannon Miller / GigaOM:

Will Girl Walks Into a Bar Lead Indie Films to the Web? — The idea that Girl Walks Into a Bar, an independent feature with a Hollywood-friendly cast and a $1 million dollar budget, is “The First Major Motion Picture Made For The Internet,” could be up for debate.

Discussion: ArtsBeat

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Flipboard: game-changer or just a fad? — The founder of the social magazine application, Mike McCue, on its relationship with publishers, its funding, and his love of Apple — A great interviewer makes so much difference to a panel, as proven by Kara Swisher of AllThingsD interviewing Flipboard founder Mike McCue.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Peter Preston / Guardian:

Does the i have it for quality journalism? — Small, cheap and modest, the mini-Independent may be proving a good idea — One figure stands out from a generally grisly set of national newspaper circulation statistics in February. It's not unexpected: Indy people have been bragging …

Aljazeera:

Al Jazeera staffer killed in Libya — Cameraman Ali Hassan Al Jaber was returning to eastern city of Benghazi from filing report when he was shot and killed. — An Al Jazeera cameraman has been killed in what appears to have been an ambush near the rebel-held city of Benghazi in eastern Libya.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Clusterstock, Committee to Protect …, Guardian, Global Voices in English and Boing Boing

Bill Keller / The 6th Floor:

Postscript: Aggregation Aggro — Nothing sucks the joy out of a column like explaining it. And judging from the reaction to my little poke at the self-obsession of the media tribe, most readers needed no explanation. They got it. But for those who may have been misled by some of the more clueless commentary:

Discussion: FishbowlDC, @innovations, The Daily Dish, @lavrusik, @mathewi and @digiphile

Arthur S. Brisbane / New York Times:

A Cocktail Party With Readers — EARLY adopters at The Times boldly went there four years ago. I made the move only in the last few weeks — to Twitter, that is, that curiously named domain where Middle Eastern revolutions erupt and Charlie Sheen, too. — I haven't been tweeting long enough to judge its merits.

Discussion: @palafo

Steve Myers / Poynter:

What James O'Keefe knows about media (and you should too) — It's a credit to James O'Keefe that amid the diverse vocabulary in the English language, so many terms inadequately describe him and what he does. — Is he a provocateur, a prankster, an activist, a muckraker, a citizen journalist, an investigative journalist?

Discussion: NPR, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Guardian, NPR, Outside the Beltway and The Wire