FRIDAY'S LINKS: Behind the Fox News Kidnapping, Who Killed the Newspaper?, the YouTubeification Of America

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, an Economist cover story asks a pointed question that newspaper executives have long been been whispering, a Time article suspects that the Fox News crew's kidnapping really has to do with internal Palestinian politics, and an article about the growing influence of video-sharing service YouTube.

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London Press War Breaks Out as Freesheet Hits Streets Early
Guardian: London's free newspaper war will kick off earlier than expected with thousands of copies of Associated Newspapers' London Lite hitting the streets of the capital at lunchtime today. Steve Auckland, the head of Associated's free newspaper division, said the company wanted to test production and distribution systems ahead of the official launch on Wednesday. "There will be a few thousand copies out there," Mr Auckland said. "We don't see this as a full-blown launch. The full-blown launch will be on Wednesday when we print the full run."

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AP Forgets Men, and Context
Paul McLeary in CJR Daily: We understand that wire reporters are expected to deliver quick turnaround times, but when the hunger for fresh copy outweighs adherence to the basic tenets of good journalism -- such as providing context and honest data -- we have to wonder about the logic of "publish or perish." Case in point is a story that came across the AP wire Tuesday afternoon, headlined "Study: Some women insecure about money." Leaving aside the obvious questions (Is this news? Aren't some men insecure about money, too?), this article doesn't exactly paint a complete picture.


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MySpace in Talks to Create Magazine
Advertising Age: MySpace, which News Corp. bought last year for more than half a billion dollars, is looking at potential business models, the most likely of which would see a MySpace Magazine published by the crew at Nylon magazine, the hip music and fashion title edited by Marvin Scott Jarrett. Nylon and MySpace have worked together before; the two partnered in May to bring the magazine's 7th annual "Music Issue" online with interactive features. While poor execution or underwhelming response would undermine the site's reputation, the financial risk to MySpace would be low-to-nil if Nylon published the new magazine under a licensing arrangement.

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What's Really Driving the Fox News Kidnapping?
Time: The demand put forth Wednesday by a previously unknown Palestinian militant group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades who claimed to be behind the August 14 capture of two Fox News crewmen in Gaza appeared to be just part of yet another anti-Western kidnapping. In a videotape showing the two journalists -- Steve Centanni, 60, a U.S. citizen, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a New Zealand cameraman -- their captors demanded that in return for their release the U.S. should free an unspecified number of Muslim prisoners from its jails. But Palestinian security sources tell TIME that the conditions presented Wednesday are little more than a stall tactic, and that the seizure of the two men has much more to do with internal Palestinian and Islamic militant politics than with striking a blow against Israel and the U.S.

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Who Killed the Newspaper?
Economist: Even the most confident of newspaper bosses now agree that they will survive in the long term only if they can reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices. Most have been slow to grasp the changes affecting their industry -- ?remarkably, unaccountably complacent,? as Rupert Murdoch put it in a speech last year -- but now they are making a big push to catch up. Internet advertising is growing rapidly for many and is beginning to offset some of the decline in print.

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The Accidental Ad Agency
Jon Fine in BusinessWeek: Flavorpill is additional proof that you can build a Web media company from an e-mail. Yes, just like online classifieds juggernaut craigslist, whose genesis was an e-mailed list of parties in San Francisco. And DailyCandy, which now directs style-savvy young women in 10 cities to all manner of boutiques and services, and, which, earlier this year, projected 60%-plus profit margins on revenues of $18.8 million in 2006.

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The YouTubeification Of America
Hilary Profita in CBS Public Eye: Even if you aren?t one of those who charts every indication of a potential change in the media landscape (that would be us, people) after this weekend?s New York Times, you probably know by now the meaning of ?The YouTube Election?. Yes, the publicized idiotic remark from a lawmaker has long been a part of the fine tradition of American politics, but for those like Sen. George Allen, his transgression hit YouTube and took off ? far and fast. Word spreading at the speed of YouTube is indeed not lost on advertisers, either.