One thing that Tesla’s’ battle with the New York Times has reinforced is how the balance of power has shifted in media now that everyone — companies included — has the ability to publish their side of a story. Read more »
Blogger Maria Popova has come under fire from a number of critics for her use of undisclosed affiliate links on her blog Brainpickings, which highlights how heated the debate over alternative forms of advertising has become. Read more »
According to Harvard business professor and best-selling author Clay Christensen, the disruptive effects of the web are being felt the most by the media and advertising industries, but the education business is next in line. Read more at GigaOM »
Dutch newspaper publisher Jan-Jaap Heij talks about why he decided to launch a mobile app that allows readers to subscribe to individual writers for a monthly fee, and how personal brands are the future of journalism. Read more »
Comcast’s purchase of the 49 percent of NBCUniversal that it didn’t already own was expected to take several years, but the cable provider said Tuesday it has bought the rest of the company for $16.7 billion. Read more »
Most of the startups and networks focused on hyperlocal or community news and information try to be as open as possible, but Nextdoor is taking the exact opposite approach and making the barrier to entry for users as high as it can. Read more at GigaOM »
Although many traditional media outlets and journalists see reader comments as having little or no value, publishers like Gawker and The Verge see them as a potential source of revenue — and even potential hires. Read more »
Research by the Pew Center has turned up several examples of newspapers that seem to have reversed the declining revenue most of the industry is suffering from, although the methods they have chosen to do this are very different. Read more »
Hundreds of traditional publishers have erected paywalls around their content, but there is much to be gained by focusing monetization on individuals rather than an entire newspaper. Here are a few suggestions on how publishers could do this. Read more »
Hyperlocal used to be a popular buzzword in media circles, but NBC says it has shut down one of the pioneers of the genre — data-driven startup EveryBlock — because it wasn’t a good fit with its core strengths. Read more »
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, has launched a new platform that he hopes will improve the nature of online comments by adding trust metrics — but there are no shortcuts to healthy online communtiies. Read more »
Some call it aggregation, while others call it copyright infringement or even theft. In a recent Twitter debate sparked by a post on the topic, Digiday’s editor-in-chief and Business Insider founder Henry Blodget traded theories. Read more »
Twitter is said to be looking at acquiring Bluefin Labs, which would fit the trajectory that the real-time information network has been on for some time. But is cozying up to traditional TV the only future for Twitter? Read more at GigaOM »
John Paton, the CEO of the Digital First Media chain, says that he doesn’t believe paywalls or subscription models are the solution to the industry’s problems, but he is experimenting with them anyway. Read more »
Until now, the Atlantic has been the poster child for traditional media entities that have succeeded online, but the New Yorker looks to be planning some major moves of its own to boost its online presence. Read more »
Both Andrew Sullivan — the conservative blogger who recently announced that he is going independent — and former Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer are taking the same approach to media: connect with your fans, and then ask for help. Read more »
Hammered by declining print advertising revenue in much the same way newspapers have been, Time Inc. announced that it is laying off about 500 of its staff. But are the cuts the end, or just the beginning? Read more »
Are new blogging platforms like Medium, Quora, Svbtle and LinkedIn’s Influencers program an attempt to recreate the bad old days of “content farms?” Not really — their focus is much more on quality content than on direct monetization. Read more »
Truth Teller is a prototype launched by the Washington Post — with funding from the Knight Foundation — that is designed to fact-check political speeches in real time. But can it do this? And will anyone care? Read more »
Andrew Sullivan’s breakaway from traditional media to run his own standalone blog — for which he has raised almost $500,000 before it even launches — is a sign of that the balance of power in media is still shifting. Read more »
Twitter has been expanding the idea of what a tweet consists of for some time now, and has just added the ability to include short video clips. But is the service at risk of losing the simplicity that once made it unique? Read more at GigaOM »
In a leaked internal memo, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton says that what the network describes as “a new type of service journalism” — posts filled with affiliate links — will become a major focus for the company. Read more »
Evidence of Twitter’s ambition to become a media entity continues to accumulate, but if it wants to fulfil its role as a digital-media player, it is going to have to get a lot better at finding relevant content for its users. Read more »
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the past decade has seen a dramatic decline in longer stories at some of the industry’s leading newspapers. But does that mean longform journalism is dying, or just evolving? Read more »
Journalism professor C.W. Anderson argues in a new book about the decline of traditional media outlets in Philadelphia that one of the main stumbling blocks in adapting to a digital future has been traditional journalistic culture. Read more »
Paywalls are being erected at hundreds of newspapers around the world, but Guardian Media CEO Andrew Miller says his newspaper is still opposed to a subscription wall because it wants to expand its readership as much as possible. Read more »
Many publishers are trying to adapt to the way media works in a digital age, but some still see Google and the web as parasites — and Harper’s publisher seems determined to stay in the latter category. Read more »
The Atlantic caused a furore this week with a piece of sponsored content about the Church of Scientology, which raised a host of questions about the risks of “native advertising” — which many see as the future of online media. Read more »
The Hopper from Dish Network was a finalist in CNET’s “Best of CES” awards — until parent company CBS told the tech news-and-reviews site that it couldn’t include the company because CBS is suing it. How can readers trust CNET’s journalism after such a decision? Read more »
The debate over whether WikiLeaks should be seen as a media entity like the New York Times took on a new urgency this week after the military prosecutor in whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial said he sees no difference between the two. Read more »
Henry Blodget of Business Insider has opened up about his site’s growth and other metrics, but for someone who is promoting transparency, he hasn’t told us the most important things we need to know in order to tell whether BI is successful or not. Read more »
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan says in some cases transparency by journalists can trump the principle of objectivity, although she still argues that reporters should refrain from expressing opinions. Unfortunately for the Times, that horse has already left the barn. Read more »
Just when many people seemed to think it was dead, new ventures like Svbtle and Medium are trying to reinvent blogging by adding curation and other elements. How they plan to monetize their content, however, remains a mystery. Read more »
Gawker Media has embarked on an ambitious international expansion plan, including the launch of a new partnership with the Times of India. The network also has a Spanish-language site and a series of Brazilian sites, and founder Nick Denton says China is next. Read more »
The Associated Press is running sponsored tweets as part of a deal with Samsung during the Consumer Electronics Show. While this is allowed under Twitter’s rules, it also clearly threatens the network’s future as an advertising medium. How long will it allow this to continue? Read more »
Reddit, the online community that gained fame last year for a Q&A with President Obama, is said to be raising venture funding that could value the company at $400 million — and would give it ammunition to compete with other new-media players such as BuzzFeed and Tumblr. Read more »
As Twitter becomes an increasingly global media entity — and one that controls its own platform — it is running into demands from governments in countries like France and Germany to censor or block access to certain kinds of speech. How will it respond? Read more »
The body that represents Ireland’s major newspapers says a charity group’s website should pay substantial licensing fees for simply linking to its members’ content — and it is also lobbying to have the country’s copyright laws define the simple act of linking as copyright infringement. Read more »
BuzzFeed has built the site from just a repository for animated cat GIFs into a substantial media entity, and just raised a new round of financing — and Tumblr also has a fairly deep war-chest and dreams of expansion. And both are aiming at the same targets. Read more »
Blogging superstar Andrew Sullivan dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by saying he is leaving The Daily Beast and setting up his own subscription-based website. Can he become the first prominent success story in what some have called the move towards “post-industrial” journalism? Read more at GigaOM »
