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• Williams has grown increasingly confident about showing his comedic side

  Los Angeles Times
  The NBC News anchor has been on "30 Rock," Wait, Wait ... Dont Tell Me, and other comedy shows. "In airline pilot terms, I feel like I have enough stripes on my sleeve to be able to do more of it," Brian Williams tells Matea Gold. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 6:19pm EST

• Poynter's Times Publishing Co. sells Governing magazine to company big on Scientology

  St. Petersburg Times | The Hollywood Reporter
  e.Republic was chosen from among six bidders for the magazine. Several of the principals of the California media company are members of the Church of Scientology, and the St. Petersburg Times has been running stories critical of the church. "It's a business [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:15pm EST

• Publisher apologizes for screaming at college football coach for not playing his son enough

  Times West Virginian
  Times West Virginian publisher Andrew Kniceley (left) used his newspaper to apologize for yelling at a football coach because his son played only three plays in a game. "I regret any embarrassment or discomfort that I have caused FSU [Fairmont State University], my newspaper [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 4:15pm EST

• What alternative media need to do to survive

  The Kojo Nnamdi
  Listen to Thursday's WAMU discussion of the state of alternative media. The guests: Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism; former Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff; Richard Karpel of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; and Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:46pm EST

• Brill's Journalism Online pitch has changed over time

  Nieman Journalism Lab | Poynter Online
  One of the tweaks that Zachary Seward has noticed: Steve Brill used to use the term "wall" to describe subscription content, but he's now abandoned that language. "We're not putting up any kind of a paywall," he's been saying. || Earlier Brill interview [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:25pm EST

• How do you review a medical-marijuana dispensary? Pretty much the way you would a restaurant

  Westword
  That's the approach William Breathes takes. He describes the decor ("like that hippie kid's hangout in high school -- complete with a boom box and thrift-store furniture"); the service ("employees didn't seem particularly interested in ... even helping me"); and what he ordered ("I'd settled on a [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 2:46pm EST

• Onion staffers find themselves writing headlines for everything they see

  NPR.org
  "I've even talked to writers who've told me that it's an obsession," says editor Joe Randazzo. "Nearly everything that they see, think or do gets instantly reframed into this kind of headline." Re the staff's political leanings: "I would not say that we are a group of Republicans, but I [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 2:11pm EST

• Report: WP website staffers lose jobs as newsrooms merge

  Washington City Paper
  Erik Wemple reports several WashingtonPost.com editorial staffers as well as some non-editorial workers are among those who've gotten the ax as the website merges with the main Post newsroom. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 1:15pm EST

• "Good news" online biz mag gets funding from government sources, quasi-public agencies

  Tampa Bay Business Journal
  83 Degrees, which launched this week, is getting money from the Tampa Downtown Partnership, Pinellas County Economic Development, and city leaders in Tampa, Largo and Clearwater. A critic of the venture has already launched a parody site. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 1:06pm EST

• Niles: "There's no Walt Disney managing today's legacy news businesses"

  Online Journalism Review
  That's too bad, says Robert Niles, because "Walt's management style empowered the company to cultivate fresh ideas," while news business management has smothered creativity. "As a newspaper online producer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I'm quite familiar with the 'No, because...' speech, especially on projects [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 12:04pm EST

• Granta gives a boost to Chicago newsstands, bookstores

  Chicago Tribune
  Chicago-Main Newsstand in Evanston has sold 140 copies of Granta 108: Chicago. The only other time the newsstand sold any issue that topped 100 copies was when Newsweek put out a special edition after Barack Obama won the presidential election. "It's unusual for a literary magazine [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:44am EST

• John King: "I believe in steering conversations, not shaping them"

  MarketWatch
  "That makes us different -- doesn't make one right and one wrong," says John King, after being asked how his show will contrast with the one Lou Dobbs hosted. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:37am EST

• Chicago mayor blames media for Oprah's departure

  Chicago Sun-Times
  Richard Daley says gripes in the media about the city of Chicago shutting down part of Michigan Avenue for Oprah Winfrey's season kickoff may have been too much for the talk show queen. "You keep kicking people, and people will leave. Simple as that." [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:07am EST

• Atlantic, Economist covers strikingly similar, but...

  Columbia Journalism Review
  "I actually hadn't seen the Economist cover when we designed this, so I wasn't even aware that they had arrived at the same design solution," says Atlantic art director Jason Treat. Graphic design historian Steven Heller tells Greg Marx that the similarity may be embarrassing, [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 10:39am EST

• GQ for iPhone is "a smart first step towards re-imagining the magazine for digital"

  MinOnline
  Steve Smith says the digital version of December's GQ isn't exactly the "App of the Year," "but Conde Nast's launch of the GQ 'Man of the Year' issue in an iPhone version brims with intriguing ideas about how to handle deeper magazine content on mobile platforms large and small." [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:34am EST

• Fayetteville editor used military affairs lawyer's opinion to protest ban on Palin coverage

  Fayetteville Observer
  Observer executive editor Mike Arnholt told the Army on Thursday that not allowing coverage of Sarah Palin's book promotion at Fort Bragg would set an unacceptable precedent. He was backed up by lawyer Matthew Freedus, who wrote: "As a general rule, military bases are not public forums. But [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 8:50am EST

• High school stops publication of paper over honor-students-gone-wild stories

  Chicago Tribune
  Administrators at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill. spiked today's edition of The Statesman because of stories on drinking and smoking by honor students, teen pregnancy, and shoplifting. The Student Press Law Center's director says: "It is irresponsible to withhold this information so they can protect their [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 8:18am EST

• Harbinger cuts its New York Times stake again

  Reuters
  Harbinger Capital Partners now owns 14.64% of the Times Co's publicly traded shares. In September, the hedge fund reported a 16.38% stake.
  > NYT's Chicago Report debuts today | Read it
  > Will NYT go easy on HBO because of documentary? [...]
  
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 7:49am EST

• WSJ criticized for calling black judicial nominee "the White House Butler"

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  Madison attorney Jon Axelrod tells the Wall Street Journal in a letter that "it is totally inappropriate to demean [former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Butler Jr.] because of his race by comparing him to a butler, an occupation unfortunately stereotyped as predominantly African [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 7:26pm EST

• AP reaches goal of cutting annual payroll costs by 10%

  Associated Press
  It does that by laying off 90 newsroom employees -- about 2% of the workforce. || Gawker's been getting information from AP tipsters.
  > AP reporters who found Palin book share $500 prize [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 6:41pm EST

• How the decline of the news media will affect higher education

  Chronicle of Higher Education
  Sanford Ungar, Neil Henry, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Garrick Utley and others share their thoughts with the Chronicle. || Nicholas Lemann, Michael Schudson/Len Downie, and Carlin Romano also have pieces in the Chronicle's special issue on the future of journalism. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 4:44pm EST

• US Army to keep media from covering Palin's Fort Bragg appearance

  Associated Press
  The Army says it fears Sarah Palin's book promotion on Monday will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama, and that keeping the media away will prevent that. || UPDATE: After news orgs file complain, the Army says the media will have limited access. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 4:21pm EST

• Jon Stewart "has gone from optional to indispensable"

  Newsweek
  Brian Williams says of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart": "How did we live without it?" [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:52pm EST

• News orgs conflicted on how to identify Rahm Emanuel on second reference

  NPR.org
  Oddly, several news organizations refer to the president's chief of staff on a second reference as "Rahm Emanuel," writes Alicia Shepard. "NPR has just decided to make that a policy after correspondent Nina Totenberg referred to Emanuel three times by his first name only on-air. ...If it [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 3:25pm EST

• "Investigative reporters are the wildcat oil prospectors of journalism"

  ProPublica
  "We sink a lot of wells, and it's sometimes a surprise when we hit a gusher," writes Stephen Engelberg. "It's why cash-strapped news organizations are backing away from [investigative reporting]. No one can say how a story will end. And no one can really predict what it will accomplish." [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 2:31pm EST

• Layoffs begin at BW, media columnist Fine departs

  Talking Biz News | NYTimes.com
  Chris Roush reports BusinessWeek senior writer Stephen Baker, Technology & You columnist Steve Wildstrom, personal finance editor Lauren Young and engagement editor Shirley Brady are among those leaving. (Stephanie Clifford: About 100 of BW's 400 employees cut.) Media columnist Jon Fine [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 2:23pm EST

• About 30,000 Kindle users subscribe to WSJ

  paidContent.org
  Staci Kramer figures the annual revenue from Kindle subscriptions is about $4.5 million, with the Wall Street Journal getting less than half that after Amazon.com takes its cut. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 2:13pm EST

• Journal Inquirer sues Hartford Courant for plagiarism

  Manchester, Conn. Journal Inquirer
  The Journal Inquirer's story on the lawsuit says "the Courant is accused of using its competitor's work to make up for the work formerly done by the Courant's own reporting staff, which was cut in half in the last two years." The lawsuit calls the Courant's [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:40pm EST

• Listen to Jarvis, Brill and Wolff discuss Murdoch vs. Google

  On Point Radio
  Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolff, and Steven Brill were guests on this morning's "On Point with Tom Ashbrook." (Brill once again refused to name any news organizations that have signed up with Journalism Online.) Listen to it. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:23pm EST

• Claim: Corporate greed, mismanagement brought down gay newspaper chain

  Bay Windows
  The editors of New England's largest gay/lesbian newspaper say that when the gay community is "viewed as a marketing demographic rather than a movement, the result should not be surprising. The death of [Washington Blade parent] Window Media was self-inflicted." || City Paper: Washington Blade plans to [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:36am EST

• GWU journalists also had to get Kennedy quotes OK'd

  Wall Street Journal
  In an Oct. 13 e-mail to student reporters, a George Washington law school PR official wrote that "the Supreme Court's Public Information Office has asked to approve any quotes you use from the justice's speech." WRGW news director Jesse Regis tells Jess Bravin he had no choice [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:08am EST

• Ohio papers to publish first joint reporting project

  Editor & Publisher
  Their investigation into public employee pensions will run Nov. 29, reports Joe Strupp. Seven papers are involved. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 10:36am EST

• Protesters want Newsday editor fired over "Mallard Fillmore" cartoon

  Maynard Institute
  The 20 demonstrators are angry that this "Mallard Fillmore" cartoon ran just a week after the one-year anniversary of the death of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:58am EST

• NYPD organized-crime unit investigates newspaper deliverers

  Wall Street Journal
  The police department and Manhattan District Attorney's office are investigating whether the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers' Union has again forged ties with organized crime. A grand jury indicted the union in 1992 on a corruption charge. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:23am EST

• Creative Loafing's Tampa paper sells editorial content for charity

  TampaBay.com
  The items for sale include the cover image, a local band profile and photo shoot, the chance to write a music review of your choice and a chance to add your questions to an interview that the alt-weekly's political editor will conduct with a politician. Eric Deggans asks: [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:57am EST

• Mudd questions the need for a network evening newscast

  Daily Press (Newport News)
  "Most Americans probably already know pretty much what's happened by the time they get home at night, with radio and the Internet and iPods," says retired TV newsman Roger Mudd. "So at 6:30 p.m., they don't want to sit in front of television for a half [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:41am EST

• Fox News uses old footage to show "huge crowds" for Palin book tour

  SwampPolitics.com
  Fox News host Gregg Jarrett told viewers that Sarah Palin is "continuing to draw huge crowds while she's promoting her brand new book." He then showed old file footage of Palin rallies from the 2008 presidential campaign. Mark Silva hears this will result in "serious disciplinary action." [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:29am EST

• Sheriff halts press conference over spat with Fort Myers News-Press

  Fort Myers News-Press
  "I have the right to pick and choose who I want to speak to," Sheriff Mike Scott said as he walked away, "and don't you forget it." He refuses to grant face-to-face or phone interviews with the News-Press because of its coverage of various sheriff's office issues. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 8:07am EST

• Williams: Cronkite would get less attention in today's news environment

  Arizona Republic | cronkite.asu.edu
  Brian Williams, who received the 2009 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism at Arizona State University, said if the late CBS anchor had come along today, he would have gotten less attention. "I think there's too much noise. There's too much to cut [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 7:55am EST

• Report: Deal to sell Hollywood Reporter, other Nielsen titles may be done by Friday

  TheWrap.com
  Sharon Waxman reports the Hollywood Reporter and other publications are close to being sold to James Finkelstein, whose family's News Communications Inc. owns the "Who's Who" series. [...]
  
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 7:26am EST