As it has done on its website, the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) is experimenting with a mix of free and paid content through its standalone news apps. The newspaper’s new “Election 2012” political news iPhone app is free to download, but most of its content is only available to…

This summer, Politico signed a deal with Random House to publish four instant e-books about the 2012 presidential campaign. Now Politico has opened an online bookstore, powered by Random House, selling politics and policy titles from a variety of publishers.

As election season approaches, Random House’s Crown Publishing is teaming up with political website RealClearPolitics to publish a four-book series on the campaign. Three of the books will be published only as e-books; a fourth will be published in both print and digital formats and will be released on Election…

YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) is launching a new politics site today that it hopes will offer a “holistic” view of the candidates on the campaign trial, and also, via its metrics, provide a snapshot of their popularity among voters. But at the first glance, YouTube Politics seems to be falling well…

Usually my e-mail from Starbucks (NSDQ: SBUX) is about the new reserve coffee or some other promo about the company’s products. But the message from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz addressed to “Starbucks Friend and Fellow Citizen”:  that just hit my inbox has a very different subject, one that raises the…

National Journal, the politics and public policy publisher headquartered in Washington, D.C. and owned by the Atlantic Media Group, is looking to offer “new services” like original research and pre-written memos to its readers as part of its switch to a membership-based model. Readers who had previously subscribed to just…

Patch, which has continued to grow rapidly in the wake of AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post earlier this year, is launching 33 hyperlocal sites in three states with early presidential primaries—New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. The new sites mean Patch will soon have sites in 21 states, up…

Late Monday afternoon, Arianna Huffington tweeted a picture from AOL (NYSE: AOL) headquarters with the note “Valentine’s Day transition meeting with ice cream sundaes afterward.” She’s already sent one from the AOL gym. The actual $315 million merger of the Huffington Post with AOL is weeks away but the transition…

Tim Armstrong, already the largest individual shareholder in AOL (NYSE: AOL) as well as chairman and CEO, nearly doubled his stake in the company following the deal to acquire the Huffington Post. Armstrong believes in having skin in the game—and, as it turns out, so does Arianna Huffington. She told…

The Washington Post will be hawking its election day coverage by buying a “promoted trend” on Twitter, marking the first time that a news company has advertised its coverage there. Users who click on #Election among the list of Trends on the Twitter homepage will see a Tweet written by…

Just in case it wasn’t abundantly obvious to any of the 200,000-plus in attendance how serious he was about his message, Jon Stewart closed his Rally to Restore Sanity (RRS) with a “moment of sincerity.”

The period after Labor Day marks the official start of the political season, so Fox News believes it’s the right time to introduce its first paid app that will provide premium politics-related news and opinion for Apple’s iPhone. The app, which isn’t carrying any ads at its launch, is now…

When Robert Allbritton put the money and power of Allbritton Communications behind a new DC political news site in 2007, no one knew what to expect. Sure, he had talent in Washington Post vets John Harris and Jim VandeHei and a way to combine web and print that might actually…

Since the Supreme Court struck down limits on corporate spending on political candidates ads, media companies have been salivating over the expected deluge related to this fall’s midterm elections. Online advertising should be an even bigger factor in the this time out than it was two years ago, and AOL…

The Huffington Post is making its second acquisition in less than a month, buying up poll aggregator Pollster.com from polling firm YouGov Polimetrix. The deal comes three weeks after HuffPo purchased Adaptive Semantics. In the aftermath of that deal—its first acquisition ever—HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau told us that the company…

Nate Silver’s popular political blog, FiveThirtyEight, is moving over to the NYT just in time for election season. Silver says in a blog post that, under a three-year deal, the newspaper is licensing all of his blog’s content, which will now be hosted on the NYT site. Visitors to the…

It doesn’t get much more surreal than this. I’m headed north from Miami on the second deck of the Tri-Rail train using an AT&T (NYSE: T) 3G cell modem that has yet to blip (and that’s not the surreal part), trying to watch the health care bill signing—and it’s being…

Confirmed: The companies have confirmed the acquisition in a release. Bloggers Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit will join the new company, and the site will remain separate, complimenting TownHall.com which Salem already owns. Christian media company Salem Communications apparently has added Hot Air, the prominent conservative blog owned by journalist Michelle…

Several broadcast companies that reported earnings in the past few weeks have pointed out that TV station revenues were down due to the lack of political ad spending in 2009. Since 2010 is a banner year for major Congressional races, local media researcher Borrell Associates expects that TV broadcasters will…