Today's initiative has been variously billed as "iTunes for Magazines" (correct philosophically, but wildly overstated) and "Hulu for Magazines" (incorrect, since Hulu is free). Basically you can now go to this digital storefront and buy all your favorite Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst, Time Inc., and News Corp publications, to read on your "portable digital device" of choice. Your crappy mobile phone, or iPhone, or upcoming Apple tablet, or, hey, Time Inc. is making its very own tablet, & ad infinitum.

And, of course, this is not the only "digital storefront" thing—Hearst, a partner in this venture, is also going forward with its own personal digital storefront called Skiff , and there are similar services already operating, although, hey, there's not dominant iTunes-type player yet, so you never know.

This could be a successful venture. Then again, it could fade into irrelevance in months. Somebody will make the dominant digital storefront for content like this, just like someone will make the dominant digital reader. Magazine publishing companies, one would think, are likely to get smoked by someone like Apple in this particular sector. But they think it's worth the gamble, after watching what happened to the music industry.

But it'll take a few years. How much would you pay to read Sports Illustrated on your E-reader right now? You don't have an E-reader. And you can read Deadspin for free. So, you'd pay nothing. Changing that dynamic is what media companies need to worry about.

And here's Time Inc's announcement to employees, just because we have it:

December 8, 2009
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ann Moore
Re: New Digital Venture

Today, five leading publishers including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corporation announced the formation of a new venture to develop a digital storefront and a common reading application that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite magazine and newspaper content on any platform they choose.

We already know that the next generation of mobile devices will be loaded with color touchscreens, flexible displays, video capabilities and other features that will make them ideal for consuming rich content and an appealing environment for advertisers. These devices will allow us to combine the best of what consumers love about magazines – quality, curated journalism, engaging content and beautiful photography – with the speed, convenience and portability of the latest technology.

While Time Inc. is pursuing a number of initiatives that will help us expand our current digital businesses and develop new products and revenue streams, our participation in this venture is an important part of our efforts. You'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, for a look at some of the work Time Inc. is doing around portable devices, check out the demo Sports Illustrated developed, which will give you an idea of how our digital content might be enjoyed in the near future.

www.si.com/tablet

A.M.

Oyster's schtick when it debuted to much fanfare in June was that it would hire experienced staffers to stay in hotels and write reviews, giving it a competitive advantage against user-submitted sites like TripAdvisor.com. Sure enough, the site hired 20 reporters and at least three editors—veterans of the New York Times, Money, Fast Company, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and all sorts of other former lions of print—to fly around all the time and stay at hotels. "We pay for all the expenses, the plane ticket, taxis, meals, rooms and, of course, salaries and benefits," co-founder Elie Seidman told the New York Times in June. He added that he hoped that by the end of 2010, he'd have 150 full-time staffers.

Well, that couldn't last very long, could it? After just under two quarters of operation, the site has engaged in what we hear are massive layoffs: 75% of staff is gone, our tipster says. A spokeswoman for Oyster confirms the layoffs, but says the 75% figure is laughably high. She declined to offer the accurate numbers, or say how many staffers the site currently employs. UPDATE: Oyster's rep got back to us with figures that indicate the site laid off one-third of its payroll, though the mix of full-time and temp staffers isn't clear: "At our 2009 production peak, we had more than 30 people, full-time and temporary. As a result of both economic conditions in the market and our decisions to slow our rate of new market additions after 18 months of torrid growth, we now have more than 20 people — full time and temporary."

In a statement, Seidman said Oyster was just limiting its coverage area:

After a burst of massive growth over the past 18 months, we've covered a very large percentage of the U.S. leisure market with a product that has been incredibly well received. In order to focus on winning in the markets we've already covered, we've decided to slightly slow our rate of new market coverage.

(That 18 months figure must include a lengthy pre-launch "burst of massive growth," because it hasn't been 18 months since Oyster launched in June of this year.)

Anyway, if you're a reporter terrified of losing your job and dreaming of an online gig where you get paid to travel and stay in luxury hotels and write about it, that escape hatch just closed. Maybe it's time to think about law school.

UPDATE: Two sources confirm that 17 staffers got the axe at Oyster, including 11 reporters. It's still not clear whether that constitutes 75% or 33% of payroll or somewhere in between, but it's a huge chunk of the site's editorial staff. Four reporters remain, we're told. To make matters worse, one tipster says the company sent eight non-editorial staffers on an all-expenses trip to Jamaica last month, which was explained as a gift in lieu of bonuses. And they were buying everybody free lunches every day until late October, when they apparently realized they needed to stop spending money and start firing everybody. One former Oyster reporter writes, "This is a sinking ship, and a severe case of entrepreneurial hubris. Shame."

If you know the details on who got fired, or how many people it was, let us know.

AOL's dynamic vision of the future: Flood the web with content designed to pop up high in Google search results, with editorial ideas generated by an algorithm based on what stupid people are looking for, on the internet. In our business we call this "stealing post ideas from Google Trends." Getcher Tiger Woods Mistress Pictures here! Tell us, WSJ, how will AOL improve the life of me, an average Park Slope Parent?

AOL says its new system determined that the most popular topic on the Web last Tuesday was "crib recalls," following news of a massive recall by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada. AOL had only one story on its sites on the recall. But, if the new system had been live, editors would have geared up to supply stories on the subject from a number of angles, the company says.

So not only is AOL basing its entire dismal future on the most base sort of styrofoam traffic-whoring; it's not even whoring in a new way. Demand Media, for one, has long been doing the exact same thing, with an algorithm-plus-sweatshop editorial production line that makes Gawker Media look like Aristotle's School of Taking Your Sweet Time Thinking About Things.

Ah well. Neither useless crap on the internet nor AOL sucking is anything new.

The most popular story on WSJ.com today has been their semi-exclusive about Joe Lieberman saying he's never going to vote for a health care bill with the public option. If you heard about Lieberman making news on health care today and went to Google "lieberman public option," you'd get these results. The shaded red boxes are the News Corp. properties: WSJ.com and Foxnews.com. Those would disappear, but there would be no shortage of results showing you what Lieberman told the WSJ in the top results.

But let's say you were really motivated to find the specific Wall Street Journal story about Joe Lieberman derailing health care and you searched "lieberman public option" and "wall street journal." That would currently bring up the story in question, as well as the Fox News result and an old WSJ blog post. But it would also bring up plenty of other sites that can tell you what was in the WSJ story. Those all likely will also provide a link to the WSJ story, but if they put up the pay wall Murdoch has promised, why would you bother to click through?

Lastly, here's a search for "lieberman public option" and "wall street journal," but with results from WSJ.com and FoxNews.com filtered out—in other words, what Google would return if they weren't allowed to index News Corp. pages.

All but the top two results — irrelevant HuffPo stories — show you exactly what Lieberman said in the Wall Street Journal. And would conceivably show you a link to the WSJ. So, no big loss.

For years, newspapers and other media companies have complained about Google reaping profits by indexing media content for free. Google has responded that media companies are free to remove themselves from Google's search engines if they wish. But media companies never actually did it, because the hit to their traffic would be too big. They'd prefer to just get paid by the search engines. Which is what Rupert Murdoch may now do.

Business Insider estimates that the Wall Street Journal, News Corp's most prized media property, would lose about $15 million by pulling out of Google—meaning that Bing could theoretically secure exclusive search engine rights for that price. The money is almost too small to matter. But this could be a trigger for much bigger things. Namely, the Great Search Engine Wars for media content.

Brian Lam argues that this move would hurt consumers. Instead of being able to go to Google to find everything, consumers would have to know which specific media outlets had exclusive deals with which search engines in order to track down their content.

And that's absolutely true! This trend, if it becomes widespread—every big media company hunting for the richest deal it can get from a search engine—would make life more inconvenient for media consumers like you and me. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. The fact is that the current situation cannot stand. Have you read our #layoffs tag lately? Rupert Murdoch—and other media owners—are tired of Google making money off their content, for free. The original idea was that the traffic driven to media sites by Google would provide enough revenue, through ads, to make everyone happy. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Online ad revenue is not doing the trick.

So media companies will need new revenue streams to survive. A big one will be paid content; i.e., if you want to read the New York Times online, you will have to pay some sort of subscription fee. But search engine deals like this—in which media companies make search engines pay for exclusive rights to access their content—are another online revenue stream that could become significant. News Corp's deal isn't big money, yet. But presumably if Google and its competitors realize they will have to engage in bidding wars to lock in rights to good media content, the value of those deals would increase considerably.

The bigger picture is this: Yes, the "journalism" industry will shrink. That's part of the future. Fine. But even with the wondrous world of blogs and nonprofit journalism foundations and every other new permutation of creating content, the fact remains that if people want to enjoy a fundamental baseline of serious news media in this country, they will have to pay for it, somehow. Yes, it's more inconvenient to have search engines with exclusive content deals. It's also inconvenient to have to pay to read online news. But these and other new revenue streams will have to come into place if we don't want to keep griping forever about journalists being laid off and news quality getting shittier. Everything cannot always be free and delivered directly to us on a platter when it costs money to make, okay! So try not to fear the portentous coming of the Search Engine Bidding Wars. We're just going through the bumpy phase of things now. You'll get used to it. And the annoying kid you sent to J-school might actually be able to land a job one day, too.

[My colleagues do not necessarily agree with me!]

The only non internet person on Couric's list, in fact, is FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The other people who control the media, according to the CBS Evening News anchor, are all Web heads:

• Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
  
• Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington.
  
• The founders of the women's blogging network BlogHer: Jory Des Jardins, Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone. This is a big stretch but we're assuming Couric is trying to imagine the less sexist world she'd like to live in and lend some buzz to a feminist cause. Fair enough.
  
• Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder.
  
• Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
  
• Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Couric is obviously just trying to butter up people who might be able to help her ditch the old fuddy-duddies at CBS News and expand her promising sideline in lifecasting. Which is, frankly, brilliant. We know some other people who might be able to help you Katie, call us.

Oh, and the Jewish thing? Couric is no anti-Semite, but we couldn't help but notice that her list of people who supposedly control the media does contain a majority of people of Jewish descent: Brin, Page, Newmark, Zuckerberg, Genachowski and Camahort Page.

Of course, the pace of change in Silicon Valley has a way of leveling these old-world distinctions. Page's family was non-practicing; Zuckerberg has gone atheist and Camahort Page is "a total non-religious person."

[via Bay Newser via NBC Bay Area]

British writer and analyst Charles Leadbeater, and researcher Annika Wong, have put together a report called Cloud Culture to be published by the British Council next year. Their statistical study, provided to me by Leadbeater, is based on figures from the social media analytics company Sysomos. It shows that such a tiny proportion of Iranians are on Twitter that any stories about a new movement based on the social network are meaningless. The figure they provide, by they way, includes the thousands of foreigners who changed their Twitter location to Tehran when the 'Iranian internet revolution' story struck after the elections in June and Facebook and Twitter were afire with Iran sentiment. So the likely figure is even lower.

The report adds that only one third of Iranians have internet access at all. And because opposition supporters are young, and on the internet, and Ahmadinejad supporters tend to be older and rural, the picture on the ground is likely skewed by any analysis that relies on tweets.

Leadbeater and Wong also compile a series of hyperbolic quotes from a variety of media sources at the time of the protests:

• "Twitter has become a key information conduit as the authorities in Tehran have cracked down on reporting by traditional media." Chris Nuttall and Daniel Dombey, Financial Times.
• "After disputed election results and massive street demonstrations in Tehran, Iran, information is flooding out of the country – on Twitter." Ashley Terry, Global News.
• "This is it. The big one." Clay Shirky of NYU.
• "We've been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony... The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over." Jon Williams, BBC World News editor.

The meme was just too tempting, it seems, for anyone to dig into its veracity. The media — this site included — loves to write about Twitter, and loved doing so even more in summer when it was even newer and shiner. The storyline also fit the fact that Iran is a young country, and chimed with the heartbreaking YouTube video of the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

The solidarity that thousands, even millions of Americans showed with the people of Iran during June's elections and the subsequent protests was admirable. It was also potentially dangerous. I was at the UN protests against President Ahmadinejad earlier this fall. Several young men were wearing dust masks they had purchased from hardware stores. I asked one why. "I am wearing it because I have to go back to Iran," said a softly-spoken and shy 28-year-old student who gave his name only as Mohammed. "I return next year and this is for safety, in case they are watching," he added, pointing to his mask. "It could be the best $3 I ever spend."

If Mohammed is picked up despite his dust mask, the fact that the protests in Tehran were partly fomented by Western support based on a false story about Twitter will be of no consolation. It's probably not much comfort to these people either.

NYT editor Bill Keller told Clark Hoyt that the paper is "within weeks of a decision" on the long-discussed question of whether, and how, to charge for its online news.

So here is what their decision will be: You will have to pay for their online news. One way or another! Maybe you will pay a $5 per month subscription fee, or maybe you will pay micropayments for every story, or maybe they will roll out tiered membership packages with fancy extras designed to get hardcore fans to pay more in exchange for more access. Probably a certain level of news will be free, and a better level of news will not be free. Or maybe someone there has actually come up with an elegant solution to this mess! Though we doubt it.

But somehow we will all have to pay something, because if we don't, the New York Times is totally going to go broke, bit by bit, by giving its product away for free. Which is something that it and every other newspaper have now come to realize. A more interesting question: Will any of the NYT's star columnists flee the paper if they're shoved behind a pay wall, like Newsday's Saul Friedman just did?

They might! These same NYT columnists sat through the Times Select fiasco and watched their readership drop precipitously. Things are different now though! Because somebody like, say, Thomas Friedman, or David Pogue, or Maureen Dowd, could legitimately decide that their own BRAND would gain more by going off on their own than by sitting behind a paywall at the NYT. Thanks for the help with everything, Times, but we're off to be A Brand Called Me-s! Fewer readers could hurt their speaking fees. Can't have that.

This result would bring in some much-needed fresh blood and get rid of Thomas Fucking Friedman, so let's all pray it goes down exactly like that. We have our (employer's) credit card ready, Bill Keller.

By Mediaite's tally, 32% of the more than 500 commenters on the story said they'd pay to read the NYT online. Let's call that one-third!

Now let's make some generous assumptions. Quantcast estimates that NYtimes.com gets about 15 million monthly US readers. (We asked the company how many comments they get; they haven't gotten back to us yet). Their weekday circulation is around 650k. So the question becomes: How many of those online users who currently pay nothing would pay, say, $5 per month (a number the NYT was floating in a survey earlier this year) to read the website?

Since one-third of the commenters on a story about the paper's staffing issues said they would, does that mean one-third of the total would? We are currently laughing derisively at that assertion! These commenters are people who not only are interested enough in the inner workings of the paper to read a story about its staffing issues—already a small minority—but also interested enough to comment on the story, which takes a certain level of commitment at the NYT's website. So we have a small subset of a small subset of the paper's online readers; namely, those readers most interested in the financial fate of the NYT. Of those, one-third say they're willing to pay.

Let's very generously say a quarter of online readers fall into the first subset, and a quarter of those fall into the second subset. Therefore, the number of online readers willing to pay would be 1/4 times 1/4 times 1/3 times 15 million, or 312,500 readers. If they all paid $5 per month, the NYT would make an extra $18.75 million per year. Which is nice and all, but would not even cover the interest payments on their subprime Mexican loan.

The NYT may in fact get more online readers worldwide, but then again, our assumptions here were already overly generous. In other words, the company's salvation will not be found in the comments section.

Or so a reporter tells fellow New York Times writer Brian Stelter:

"Tired" of this whole circus? You speak for many of us this weekend, Heenes family. Many of us.

One of the internet's most important legacies is its absolute destruction of credentialism. So who better to explain it to the world than New York Times TV-watcher-and-internet-looker-and-writer-about Virginia Heffernan, the one person that every American too old to figure out how to get onto the internet turns to to tell them about said internet, in a magazine column? And tell us, Leon Neyfakh, could the book have a name and theme commensurate to the preposterousness of its ambition?

In the proposal [for the book, tentatively titled The Pleasures of the Internet: How to Live in the New Online Civilization], a copy of which was obtained by the Transom, Ms. Heffernan's book is described as "a complete aesthetics of the Internet" that will treat the Web as a complex work of representational art, complete with "a poetics, a scale, a palette, a rhythm, a sensibility, a set of rituals and spectacles, a system of metaphors and an emotional range."

Haha yes. Very good. A good book to give to, say, your grandmother who retired as a college literature professor a long, long time ago. Explaining the entire internet in a book: Actually a very internetty type of thing to do!
[NYO]

The NYT reports that ASME is "adding 12 new categories [to the Magazine Awards] covering online media." But! Rather than present these awards at the already-interminable fancy magazine awards ceremony in May, they "will be handed out at a lunch during a March online magazine conference." At lunch!

In fact, that real magazine awards used to be a modest affair like that, before they started taking that "The Oscars of the Magazine Industry" thing too seriously and inviting random wack people like Jimmy Fallon to present awards (suck it, Jimmy Fallon). Now, the Ellies get to siphon the nerdy, unglamorous online media reporters such as ourselves off into a preliminary affair, saving the real awards ceremony for the Beautiful People. It's genius, really. But what do these categories even mean?

"The Huffington Post, if it defines itself as a magazine, we would accept the entry. If it defines itself as a newspaper, then of course it should enter the Pulitzers," he said.

Haha! But what if it defines itself as the most specialest Magazinemediainternet Thingamajig in the whole wide world? Will there be a special category for that? And what are we supposed to enter? I assume there will be several categories dedicated to fameball coverage? And make sure there's something for Julia Allison!

We're not really winning any awards. But we are going and eating a free lunch, so SCORE. The internet continues to suck the magazine industry dry, one way or another.

An announcement for a coming two-day FTC workshop called "From Town Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" appeared on Wednesday in the Federal Register. The meetings, to be held in December, will seek to assess the "fundamental financial challenges to many news organizations" and how to address them using government policy. Here's what the FTC will be considering:

• "Proposals for new tax treatment for news organizations"
• "Proposals for changes in copyright law and doctrine, including the 'fair use' of news stories"
• "Proposals for an antitrust exemption applied to certain conduct of news organizations"
• "Proposals for greater public funding of public affairs news."

The idea of a bailout for newspapers has been gaining momentum lately, and the FTC workshop shows that it's not going away any time soon. It's a horribly bad idea, for reasons that have been rehearsed before: It makes an ostensibly watchdog press beholden to federal policy-makers for its continued survival; it interferes with a rapidly changing marketplace to the explicit benefit of established behemoths and disadvantage of emerging competitors; and it seeks to use the federal bureaucracy to encourage certain kinds of speech over others.

Would Gawker be eligible for a "new tax treatment"? Hell, we're a news organization—we even called an FTC spokeswoman for comment on this very blog post. What about TMZ? They break news every day. Do they need a tax break? Or does Andrew Breitbart's budding empire at BigGovernment.com, which recently broke a couple compelling stories about ACORN and the National Endowment for the Arts that certainly qualify as "public affairs news," need any public funding? How about Politico?

We presume that the answers to the above questions in any proposed FTC scheme for rescuing the newspaper industry would be no. But the distinctions and conceptual gerrymandering required to find a way to subsidize the lumbering giants at the expense of their upstart competitors—to find a reason that Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News Channel is firing on all cylinders as the Wall Street Journal faces secular decline, merits consideration while Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall doesn't—will, we suspect, render the whole project foul and reactionary. The simple fact that some news organizations are facing competitive pressure and shifting business models isn't an argument for government intervention into the content business.

The workshops come on the heels of the FTC's announcement on Monday that bloggers, Facebook posters, and Twitterers will be at risk of an $11,000 fine if they endorse a consumer product and fail to disclose compensation—including, potentially, receiving free samples for review. We certainly support full disclosure of freebies and deplore undisclosed paid shilling, but $11,000? For Facebook posts? It's a ridiculously out-of-whack expedition into online marketing. UPDATE: The FTC disputes the $11,000 figure here, and points out that fines are administered only after a hearing in federal court. But the new guidelines do clearly put bloggers who don't disclose freebies at risk of administrative action.

The FTC's argument for looking into the news business is premised in part on the special nature of reporting traditionally done by newspapers: "The reduction in news staffs raises questions over whether certain types of news are receiving less coverage as a result," reads the Federal Register announcement. "Some economists believe that public affairs reporting may indeed be particularly subject to market failure." Susan DeSanti, an FTC spokeswoman, explained to us that "it may be that there is less than socially optimal demand for investigative reporting," a circumstance that may require government redress.

The prospect of a federal commission bemoaning the demise of investigative reporting is howlingly perverse. First off: There has never been a "socially optimal" demand for investigative reporting. It's boring and expensive, and it has always been subsidized by the crossword puzzles and recipes that most people buy newspapers for. But we can think of one way the FTC can help out investigative reporters: Go back and release in full the results of the 354 Freedom of Information Act Requests that it denied last year. And pledge right now to fully cooperate with every reporter who requests information from the commission. While they're at it, maybe they could call the State Department and tell them to respond to the request for incident reports from each instance of contractors in Iraq fatally discharging their weapons that we've been waiting on for two years now. Or tell the White House to return the various calls and e-mails from us over the past nine months that they've ignored. Or tell the Federal Reserve to release the 6,000 pages of bailout-related documents that it has gone to court repeatedly to keep away from Fox News. Etc.

The federal bureaucracy exists to frustrate the efforts of investigative reporters, and the FTC's bizarre, romanticized sympathy for "public affairs" reporting strikes us as a proxy argument for their establishmentarian inclination to protect the status quo. DeSanti says the workshops are purely informational in nature, designed to "pull information together and have a discussion." The FTC routinely produces reports, with policy recommendations, assessing the state of play in given industries, and while DeSanti says "it's not at all clear" at this point that such a report will result from the proposed workshop, we suspect that they're not simply whistling Dixie.

If the Obama Administration wants to help reporters, and their employers, engage in public affairs journalism and investigative reporting, they should start by answering questions and providing information—like, say, photographs of what our servicemembers have done to Iraqi and Afghani prisoners—to anyone who asks for it, irrespective of whether they work for a newspaper or a blog.

[Via Cryptome.]

While the U.S. government can't seem to get its shit together and grow green energy, Google's living up to their motto to "don't be evil," the company and announced that they're working on a slew of technologies aimed at cutting energy costs.

The first: a new, cheaper form of solar thermal technology. Rather than relying on traditional heliostats, which track the sun's movement and aligns panels accordingly, the company is trying to develop new mirrors that will be at least half the price. Then, as if that's not enough, they're also looking into constructing gas turbines that feed off the sun, rather than natural gas, which would, in turn, reduce your energy bill, according to Bill Weihl, the company's "green energy czar."

In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range.

Of course, like any organization looking to improve the world, Google's not focused solely on science, but, as we all know, information. The newest effort on that front is a plan to compensate online newspapers for their content, which would be done through a "system of micropayments" akin to the consumption-oriented Google Checkout.

While currently in the early planning stages, micropayments will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year. The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time.

This would help get newspaper publisher's off the company's back, yes, but does nothing to help alleviate another information-related headache: the ongoing battle over Google Books.

That project has hit its fair share of road blocks, particularly negotiations around the "Book Rights Registry," which would keep track of which publishers, authors and the like should get cash for their digitized publications. A judge will rule on that next month. But, as a growing world power, Google's facing international pressure on that issue, with some foreign government's whining that the company's efforts will derail their own plans for digital libraries.

While certainly economically motivated, all of these anti-Google objections show the company's vast and growing power. It couldn't fight the Chinese government's censors, but it's sure as shit doing its best to challenge other well-established institution's ways and means.

Like a good government, Google's bringing people together and at least making an attempt to keep the peace. That doesn't always work, no, but with most of the developed world using the company in some way, shape or form, it's looking more and more likely that Google's power will soon extend far beyond one's computer screen. Let's just hope they keep their aforementioned promise, or else we're all totally fucked.

Bummer. What gives? China wants to encourage "greater 'social responsibility' and 'civility' among users," which is more or less a euphemism for squashing debate about their government. Apparently, chiefs of the news organizations—which are mostly state-run or at the very least, heavily regulated entities to begin with—leaked the news back in July, but later. scrubbed it from their sites. Why wouldn't the Chinese want word of this getting out?

Asked why the policy was pushed through unannounced, the chief editor of one site said, "The influence of public opinion on the Net is still too big."

Hey, go commenters! You have influence on things, something we understand. And want you to have! Here, you're even given the ability (or responsibility) to give and take away voice to those with or without Gold Stars (like that other, uh, republic). Interesting. So! Quick rundown of what China doesn't have on the internet anymore:

Government censors have closed thousands of sites in a continuing war on "vulgarity," closed liberal forums and blogs for spreading "harmful information," blocked access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and cut off Internet service where serious unrest has erupted, notably in the Xinjiang region of the west after deadly clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han in July. Increasingly, officials have defended the Web shutdowns on the grounds of national security.

Which basically leaves Dolphin Olympics and, I don't know, Hamster Dance. Not the worst of all possible Internets, but definitely not the best. Meanwhile, in America, you have the right to say FIRST!!11! without us ever knowing who you are, or why you're such a jackass. I'm sure someone would put into place regulatory measures like this to ensure that people like YouTube's commenters have to exist with us knowing exactly who the illiterate moron used what racial slur from where, but, alas, there are problems with this, both in theory and principle. But mostly, practice:

From a comparison of the most commented-on articles in July and August on a number of portals it was hard to determine whether the volume of posts had been affected so far. But both editors at two of the major portals affected said their sites had shown marked drop-offs.

The company and, more to the point, its insurance company are shelling out the money to settle a lawsuit from investors who claimed the company knew its programmers had hidden the sex scene in the game and decided to ship it anyway. Not a terrible idea; development is expensive, timetables are tight, and in any case the hidden scenes could only be unlocked with special software. But the company underestimated how strong America's Puritan impulses remain. Now it's spending 36 times what CBS was (unsuccessfully) fined for the crime of exposing America to Janet Jackson's nipple. It's just that inappropriate to take a break from your life of crime, for sex.

In a statement to Gawker, Gingras confirmed that three editors, one writer, one photo editor, and one producer were laid off last week. The only name we've heard thus far is culture editor Joy Press; let us know if you have any other intelligence.

UPDATE: Here's the complete list:

Jeanne Carstensen, managing editor
Kevin Berger, features editor
Katharine Mieszkowski, senior writer
Joy Press, culture editor
Caitlin Shamberg, multimedia editor
Julie Coburn, photo editor

Gingras says the firings are pegged to an upcoming redesign and streamlining of the site's publishing system that will put Salon in a "good position to not just weather the economic storm but emerge much stronger than ever." Salon was launched in 1995, and has, to our knowledge, been an online publication for its entire life, which makes Gingras' determination to finally become a web site somewhat disconcerting: All these years, apparently, it's been a false web publication.

But Salon is the cockroach of the web, and has managed to survive all sorts of trials and tribulations and leadership changes to remain a valuable player—their publication of previously unseen photos of torture at Abu Ghraib and editor Joan Walsh's motherly smackdown of Bill O'Reilly were both public services—so we're confident that they'll manage. We just wish they didn't have to fire a bunch of people in order to become a web site.

Here's Gingras' full statement, which corrected our earlier reporting that eight people had been let go:

For several months we have been working on a redesign of our product, that we will launch this fall, and also a redesign of our underlying systems. We are moving away from a very traditional magazine production model and becoming more of a true Web publication, with a more direct publishing system. Moving forward, we are investing most in the writers and creative participants who can help us continue to attract the smart, discerning readers attracted to Salon. We think this direction makes us a stronger company, and puts us in a good position to not just weather the economic storm but emerge much stronger than ever. Economic times are difficult and that necessitates change. But change is also healthy and you'll be seeing many new developments from Salon over the coming months.

The financial changes emphasize what we do best — publish sharp, fast takes on the important events in the world, as well as the in-depth stories, reviews and blogs that readers come to us for — and will also allow us room to grow. Salon has always been about great writing from great writers. That will continue.

Let me also clarify the facts on reductions in edit staff. There were only six positions cut out of 29 in editorial: 3 editors, 1 writer, a photo editor and a multimedia producer. Let me also point out that all those effected last week are talented and hard-working folks and they'll be missed, personally and professionally.

Richard

Citing high "impairment and operating charges" the company incurred through its ownership of MySpace, News Corp. shareholders lost 8 cents per share and the company lost 11% of its total revenue in their fourth quarter. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Murdoch would announce plans to end free access to all of his company's online offerings on the same day.

Reports the Financial Times:

Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online.

He warned that "the big competition will be coming from the BBC," which offers online news for free, but said: "Our policy is to win."

Murdoch's move, if he holds fast to his plans, could play a substantial role in the future of content availability on the internet. While charging for online access to the Wall Street Journal has been mildly successful due to the willingness of the paper's affluent readership to pony up, it'll be interesting to see if the same holds true for New Corp.'s other, less "classy" properties. If his move to force people to pay for access to Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, the News of the World, the New York Post, etc. is successful, expect many others to follow suit, something sure to please David Simon. However, this idea sure as shit seems to have fail written all over it.

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