Mediagazer: Engagement, shovelware, magic bullets, and expanding the idea of journalism: Six themes from ISOJ (Mark Coddington)

9:20 PM ET, April 4, 2011

Top News:

Katie Couric Has a Few Regrets — When you started hosting the “CBS Evening News” in 2006, there was a lot of talk about mold-breaking. Now the show looks very much like the other network broadcasts. — In retrospect I would have given people what they were used to, a traditional newscast.

Discussion: TVNewser, The Wire, newsfeed.time.com, Tuned In, PopWatch, The Huffington Post and Random Pixels and Loose Talk

Associated Press:

AP source: Couric leaving news anchor post — NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast. — A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity …

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:
Amid Rumors She's Leaving CBS, Couric Heads to Iraq

Discussion: The Wire and TVNewser

Hollywood Reporter: Katie Couric Eyeing AOL, Yahoo Partnership With Talk Show

Henry Blodget / The Wire:

IT'S OFFICIAL: AOL Fires Freelancers* — A couple of weeks ago, AOL threw its freelance journalists into purgatory: — They were supposed to sit tight and wait to hear from their editors on their roles in the post-merger Huffington Post Media Group. — The freelancers, naturally …

Discussion: Guardian, Marketing Pilgrim, WebProNews, FishbowlNY and mediabistro.com

Henry Blodget / SAI:
AOL: We're Not Firing All Our Freelancers — We're Hiring Some Of Them Full-Time

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Who's afraid of Arianna Huffington? — The New York Times has been gunning for The Huffington Post lately, which makes me wonder what exactly Arianna Huffington has done to scare or anger them so. Or perhaps that's the wrong question. Given that our enemies are often those we don't understand …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, NetNewsCheck Latest, Stowe Boyd, FishbowlDC, New York Observer, Rebooting The News and On Media's Blog

Robert Niles / Online Journalism Review:

Whining isn't winning — Please quit whining about “aggregation,” or whatever other phenomenon on the Internet you're blaming today for the fact you no longer enjoy the monopoly over local publishing you once had. — To be blunt, whining about the competition is the act of a loser.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Damon Kiesow / Poynter: Six things aggregator app News.me must do to beat Zite, Flipboard

Great Speculations: Arianna, AOL Get Nice Goose If Gray Lady Chases Away Readers

Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:

INTERVIEW-FT won't give up subscriber relationship to Apple — * Hopeful of positive outcome to negotiations with Apple — The Financial Times wants to keep selling subscriptions for its digital news directly to readers rather than surrender control of new customers who sign up via Apple's iPad, the managing director of FT.com said.

Discussion: Talking Biz News, iClarified, App Advice, Gizmodo, MacRumors, MacStories, thinq_, Electronista, MobileBurn.com, TUAW, Gizmodo Australia and Daring Fireball, more at Techmeme »

Ian Burrell / The Independent:

FT: The Pink 'Un powers on — The Financial Times's online subscription model is 10 years old and has just posted huge subscription figures. What's its secret? — It's the 10th anniversary of the Financial Times introducing subscription charges for access to its digital content.

Discussion: Editors Weblog and Press Gazette

David Carr / New York Times:

Team From Engadget Makes Jump to SB Nation — In 2005, Jim Bankoff was working at AOL as executive vice president in charge of products and programming. He decided that AOL needed to move aggressively into news if the business, then still a portal clinging to dial-up customers …

Nicholas Carlson / The Wire:
THE ENGADGET EXODUS: Hate To Be Rude, But Readers Don't Care

Discussion: Engadget

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC

Discussion: BoomTown, Engadget, NetNewsCheck Latest, VatorNews, everwas, Stowe Boyd, TDW Geeks, Talking Biz News, @karaswisher, mediabistro.com and Soup

Informer:

Conde Nast Paid $8 Million To Scammer Who Sent One Email — By William P. Barrett and Janet Novack — With a Parade of fancy fraud cases centered on Wall Street so much in Vogue, here is Chatter about a swindle with no Glamour at all but still a certain amount of Allure.

Discussion: New York Magazine, Threat Level, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Gawker and Geekosystem

Neil Vidyarthi / SocialTimes.com:

Tumblr's Mark Coatney: Do Most Websites Treat Commenters As Second Class Citizens? [Video] — Mark Coatney, Media Evangelist for Tumblr, recently made the trip down to our mediabistro office in Manhattan to let us in on a few secrets about Tumblr's growth and progress over the last year.

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:
The New York Times launches its first Tumblr blog

Discussion: FishbowlNY

rickwebb's tumblrmajig:

On The Bubble — Okay, a few more thoughts on this Chris Dixon article and whether it's a bubble, since going and reading the article, I am surprised to see Dixon arguing that not only is it a safer bubble (private investors, discussed in my last entry) but that perhaps it's not a bubble at all.

Discussion: Betabeat, AdAge, digiday:DAILY and NoahBrier.com

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspapers get 3x too many ad dollars, says study

Newsweek:

Save the Media! — Let the ‘Times’ charge readers, says ad titan Martin Sorrell—but news needs subsidies, too. — Sir Martin Sorrell has always been a bit of a flamethrower. Today, the British advertising tycoon—who amassed one of the largest ad-agency groups in the world …

Discussion: Poynter and GigaOM

Jon Lafayette / Broadcasting & Cable:

EXCLUSIVE: Bounce TV, New Broadcast Net Aimed at African Americans, To Launch in Fall — Andrew Young, Martin Luther King III among founders — A group led by Ambassador Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III is expected on Monday to announce plans to launch a new over-the-air television network aimed …

Discussion: rbr.com, MediaPost, Company Town, Multichannel News and TVWeek.com

Jared Keller / The Atlantic Online:

Photojournalism in the Age of New Media — Social media have given photojournalists a million extra eyes in conflict zones. But if a picture can say a thousand words, the trick is finding the right one. — An elderly woman kisses a riot solider in the streets of Cairo. A building collapses in Tokyo.

Thanks:jaredbkeller

Brian Steinberg / AdAge:

Why the Newspaper Ad Column Seems to Be Going the Way of the Three-Martini Lunch — Dedicated coverage of the advertising industry in U.S. newspapers may be headed for a commercial break — except this break may never end. — A host of business concerns, ranging from scarcer editorial resources …

Discussion: Poynter

Tanzina Vega / Media Decoder:

Center for Public Integrity to Start New Site for Investigative Journalism — The Center for Public Integrity will start a new Web site this month dedicated to investigative journalism. — The Web site, called iWatch News, will be updated daily with 10 to 12 original investigative pieces and aggregated content from other sources.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, Big News Network.com and Free Press

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

At Washington Post and Register Citizen, ‘report-an-error’ forms make it easier to identify, respond to mistakes — When news organizations make mistakes, they can usually count on their audiences to tell them when they're wrong. But most news sites don't make it easy for readers to submit correction requests.

Dan Levy / Sparksheet:

Slate of Mind: Q&A with David Plotz — Slate has always labeled itself an “online magazine,” even as a whole ecosystem of blogs and content websites and tablet newspapers has sprouted around it. How is Slate different from the Gawkers and HuffPosts and Daily Beasts, not just in terms …

Discussion: Poynter.