It’s the third year for our one-day, cross-sector signature event bringing together industry leaders and entrepreneurs, innovators and disruptors from across media, book and magazine publishing, entertainment and information — and it couldn’t come at a more pivotal moment.

Tablet momentum is spreading beyond Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and the iPad with the less expensive Kindle Fire from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and other contenders. Add that to the e-reader finally taking hold thanks to the price war between Amazon and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), and you have a new publishing landscape with e-books bringing in real dollars. Branded content from marketers large and small is becoming more sophisticated and more prevalent. The cloud is shifting the way media is sold, stored, shared and distributed. Meanwhile, efforts to add digital revenue streams with various forms of paywalls, new subscription products, apps and more are multiplying. Coincidentally, we will be meeting at TheTimesCenter just as the The New York Times completes its first year with a meter ticking.

paidContent 2012 isn’t just a conference: It’s where digital media news breaks first. paidContent 2010 participants were the first to meet with New York Times (NYSE: NYT) top brass following the metered paywall announcement. paidContent 2011 heard first hand from Current’s Keith Olbermann during his off-the-air transition from MSNBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) to Current; from NBCU’s Lauren Zalaznick in her first post-Comcast merger interview; from The Daily Publisher Greg Clayman post-launch, and from Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong in their first New York City appearance following news that AOL (NYSE: AOL) was buying The Huffington Post.

What stories will break at paidContent 2012? Find out. Get ready to join the conversation and take advantage of our early registration rate.

Register now.

Contact us if you’d like to suggest speakers, if you’d like to advertise with us, or if you have general questions.

Check out coverage of last year’s paidContent 2011 conference and the previous year’s paidContent 2010 conference.

Full uncut session

Two other panelists at paidContent2010′s The Business of Digital News session, KC Estenson, CNN.com’s SVP and GM, and Lincoln Millstein, Hearst’s SVP of digital media, talked about the opportunities that apps and e-devices present for publishers looking for new revenue streams. Josh Cohen, Google’s senior business product manager, meanwhile, explains why news organizations that blame on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) are shooting the messenger. See highlights of the panel below.

Full uncut session

He says the company plans to introduce paid services on Reuters.com this year, predicts that media M&A activity will pick up again by the end of the year, and even talks about how cannabilization can be a helpful spur for companies. See highlights of the interview below.

Full uncut Q&A

For full uncut Q&A, go here.

Video of McQuivey’s session is here.

Meanwhile, Bart Decrem, co-founder and CEO of Tapulous, and John Kosner, SVP and GM of digital media for ESPN (NYSE: DIS), talked about the trends and challenges for mobile. Decrem says letting users download free apps with credits to purchase additional content, such as music, will be a significant source of revenue. Kosner sees growth and innovation in both text and video alerts. The beauty in those campaigns, he says, is that target audiences don’t need a smartphone for those campaigns to be effective.

Check out video of the full session, A Plethora Of Portability: How Smartphones, E-Readers And, Yes, Tablets, Are Changing The Game, moderated by Jonathan Dube, VP of ABCNews.com, here.

– @pc2010: NYT Metered Model Is Designed To Preserve Reach And Grow Ad Revs
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– Gutters: Are the panel members — whose companies are sometimes referred to as “content farms” — driving the value of content to the “gutter?” Colo: No; “We’re adding value by allowing quality freelancers.” Moe: No; “Models are varying widely. A hybrid of full-time employment and freelance work.” Irvine: No; “We are absolutely uninterested in producing cheap content. We invest heavily in ‘guide’ selection and training.” Campbell: No; “We’re the last ones to want to destroy anyone’s content model.” Keane: No; “We are not a news site. We are not journalists. But we’re democratic and open.”

– AOL’s Seed: A contradiction in AOL’s strategy? On the one hand, it’s hiring big-name journalists but it’s also facilitating freelancers with Seed. Moe responds: “Seed is a platform and tool for us to scale the journalism we want to bring to market. We see it as an enabling platform to produce the highest quality journalism we can.”

– Salaries: AOL’s payments are “all over the map;” About.com’s ‘guides’ typically start off by making between $6 and $1,200 a month on average make between $675 and $1,200 per month during their first two years; Associated Content says it pays its contributors between $1 and $2.50 per 1,000 page views, in addition to other payments; Discovery’s HowStuffWorks says it “can’t afford” to pay low wages.

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