Whoever cooked up NYTimes.com’s TimesSelect service may be mourning the loss of their pet project, but it’s proving nothing but a laugh-riot for the folks who come up with the Times’s house advertisements.

TimesSelect, which died on Wednesday, was the subscription-based service that charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for access to selected columnists and other articles, even as the rest of the Web site was available for free.

So far, we’ve spotted these ads on the Times site:

It’s free speech that’s free for everyone. The Op-Ed columns are now free.

And then there’s this bit of free love:

Now, everyone’s entitled to our opinion.

See? Not everyone’s depressed by the state of the newspaper business.

Never again let it be said that blogging and the mainstream media are natural enemies. When The Wall Street Journal announced its new executive Washington editor and DC bureau chief, managing editor Marcus Brauchli spared few words when he said that the Internet is part of their mission.

Here’s an excerpt of his announcement of Jerry Seib’s promotion to assistant managing editor and executive Washington editor, as well as John Bussey’s succession to bureau chief:

As much as anyone here, they have defined our standards of reporting, writing and reasoning. And they are paragons of our multimedia world: both of them have written columns in print and online; they have blogged; and they do television.

Does this mean it’s finally OK for me to write “I have blogged” on my resume?

 (Photo: Reuters)

It sounds like someone spiked the bottled water at the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment conference in Marina del Rey on Tuesday because the executives were punning right and left.

Fox Interactive Media President Peter Levinsohn got a quick one in on his presentation on the MySpace social network:

MySpaceTV, which we launched in June, was met with an enormous reception. A lot of open arms from both our users and our media partners.

That one wins cute points, but Levinsohn couldn’t keep up with the wordplay machine that is EW Scripps Co Chief Operating Officer Rich Boehne. Check out this beauty on Scripps’s Home & Garden Television:

Leading the charge always is HGTV, our first cable television network which we launched and built from scratch nearly 13 years ago.

And these ones here on the Food Network:

To give you a little bit of perspective there if you’ve watched, starting about three years ago we infused our daytime schedules with strong In the Kitchen talent..

And our winner for best (worst) pun of the day:

It’s important to note we have no indication that the overall appetite for food programming is waning. We expect weekday and weekend ratings to improve parallel with our investment in programming.

Financial conferences boring? You don’t know the drill.

Reuters landed its first exclusive interview with News Corp. kingpin Rupert Murdoch since agreeing to buy Dow Jones. He stopped by headquarters on Wednesday to survey his soon-to-be new domain and visited top Wall Street Journal editors and even made an appearance in the newsroom.

I dropped in to ask him a few questions. Here’s the transcript of our conversation as we walked together.

MacMillan: Hello, Mr. Murdoch, I’m Robert MacMillan. I work for Reuters.

Murdoch: Oh, really!

MacMillan: I just wanted to ask –

Murdoch: No.

Security guard #1: (grabs MacMillan’s arm and pulls him away from Murdoch)

MacMillan: Can you tell me what you talked to the editors about? (To security guard) Please don’t touch me.

Murdoch: No.

MacMillan: And can you tell me also –

Murdoch: No.

MacMillan: You were seen with Anderson Cooper at Sun Valley. I wonder if you’re interested in having him at the Fox Business Channel.

Murdoch: (silence)

MacMillan: Are you planning to increase the number of employees at The Wall Street Journal?

Murdoch: I’m not talking to Reuters.

Security guard #2: Stay away! Stay away!

(Murdoch exits building. Second security guard blocks door to prevent MacMillan from following.)

Next on MediaFile: Murdoch on relationships

(Murdoch photo: Reuters)

Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff is taking a second shot at striking dot-com gold — in the news business (cue gasps, laughter, slack-jawed silence).

He elaborates in an article on Vanity Fair about getting back into the dot-com game, which for him seems to have turned into a disaster as a business model, but a success when you consider he got a book deal from the experience.

In the article, which at times amounts to a journalist’s self-psychoanalysis as well as an apology to his friends and family who thought he knew the meaning of “once bitten, twice shy,” Wolff gives us his impression of the state of the news business, as well as some possibilities for adjusting it to the 21st century.

You can’t put this too starkly: the news as a pastime, as a form of media, is vaudeville. The news businessour crowd of overexcited people narrating events as they happenis going out of business. … [T]he generational change, the transformation, the schism, may be that this identification with the news, this dependence on a narrator, has become out of it, square, dumb, hopeless.

Wolff articulates what a way that the Internet can aid in forging a new model of news consumption to suit modern tastes.

What the Internet does best, where it achieves its greatest value, is when it sorts, searches, organizes, actually when it reads for you.

Which is not that different from what Time magazine did when it launched in 1923, or what the network news accomplished in its succinct half-hour.

Oh, and, somehow, even on the Internet, the news should be not just informational but exciting.

Entertaining.

Relaxing.

Funny, because Wolff’s latest online venture, Newser.com, does essentially that — sorting, searching and organizing the top news for your consumption. Here’s the “what is it” from the Web site:

An online news service that scans Internet news sources and, using human and machine driven aggregation, delivers the best information in concise, efficient summaries, together with photos, video and audio and links to original stories.

Newser does the reading for you. Newser selects the day’s most important and most talked about stories from the 100 top news sources. In succinct, lively summaries, Newsers editors distill articles and opinion pieces, telling you what you need to know, what you want to know, and where to go for the best coverage. You can’t follow 100 news sources, but we can follow them for you.

Is Newser.com sort of like The Week magazine on steroids or just a fancy RSS reader? You decide. Tell us what you think.

NBC Universal: Sparrow hawk or strutting peacock?

The media conglomerate said on Friday it won’t let Apple sell its television shows on iTunes. Apple said NBC wanted to more than double the wholesale rate for each show, an edict that would have forced iTunes to raise the price of each episode download to $4.99 from $1.99.

Apple refused. CEO Steve Jobs has been able to keep content providers under his thumb for some time now, because they know the iPod is the only game in town for digital media players.

So what does that mean to the folks at home? Apple thinks a flat rate for music and video is best because it will bring in customers and make everybody a nice pile of money. Some of the folks who provide the content, like NBC, think it’s ridiculous not to have a say in the pricing of their shows. After all, some cost more to produce than others, right?

This could have some interesting implications, especially when you consider that Apple will show the world its new iPod next week. The iPod is a seemingly unstoppable success, but it appears that NBC is betting that it’s nothing more than a hard drive and some pretty plastic if it’s not stuffed full of “30 Rock” and “Heroes” episodes.

Either way, maybe “strutting peacock” trumps “sparrowhawk” when you consider that it’s only the beginning of September and the Apple-NBC contract has until the end of the year to play out. That’s plenty of billable hours for brown-bag lawyers’ lunches in Manhattan.

On the other hand, NBC Universal did just announce their “Hulu” joint venture with News Corp. Hulu is an online video service that will put a bunch of programming that both networks own on the Internet — for free. Now there’s a price that beats $1.99 any day of the week.

All right, media conspiracy theory people, will NBC pull the old William Tell trick on Apple? Or is it just preening and strutting?

Other media and tech news from this week, complete with avian references:

- Speaking of sparrow hawks, NBC Universal plans to double the size of its cable business outside the United States by buying Sparrowhawk Media, owner of the Hallmark channel. The price, our source told us, is about $350 million. (Reuters)

- Google is making the Associated Press, Britain’s Press Association, Canadian Press and Agence France-Presse happy with its decision to host stories from the four news outlets. Key to the deal: they are licensing the feeds to Google. Talk about monetizing assets! (Reuters)

- The newspaper business is a cash cow, but in the end, it still stinks, according to Goldman Sachs and Fitch. The Newspaper Association of America’s numbers paint a similar picture, even if the group wouldn’t characterize it quite that way. (MediaFile)

- CNN broke up with Reuters, saying it would prefer to spend its money on its own news operations. “Everything is changing,” the CNN spokesman told us. Don’t we know it! (Reuters)

- He’s our Legend, not yours. Bob Marley’s family says it will sue Universal Music and Verizon Wireless, claiming they used the reggae king’s name and image without permission. No lawsuit, no cry. (Reuters)

- Nokia, the world’s largest cell phone maker, unveils an online music store, gaming service and four new multimedia handsets. They will all feature the complete works of Sibelius. We wish. (Reuters)

- EMI votes Eric Nicoli off the island. (Reuters)

Apparently a good book in the WC just doesn’t cut it anymore. Here’s the proof, according to Reuters reporter Ritsuko Ando:

Japanese toilet maker Toto Ltd, in hopes of winning more U.S. converts, launched an advertising campaign this summer to familiarize consumers with its products. … Toto is a pioneer of the washlet. The name belongs to its product line Washlet, but is used in Japan as a generic term for all high-tech toilets with bidet functions. Most washlets come with warm toilet seats, a bidet spray that extends from under the seat to jet warm water, and a dryer, as well as a remote control to adjust toilet seat and water temperatures.

Toto had us at “warm toilet seats,” but Ando reports that there is a bit of an uphill battle to convert Americans into buyers because of a hesitation to discuss scatological necessities. Still, Toto’s U.S. spokeswoman Lenora Campos says there’s a point of no return factor: “When people become washlet users, they become washlet evangelists,” she said. “Once you make that leap, you don’t want to go back.”

Campos also should win a quote-of-the-year award for this gem: “Toilet paper just distributes the problem… Whenever we clean anything else, we wash with water, right?”

Sold!

CNN is ending its 27-year agreement to use Reuters news, video and pictures, the companies said on Thursday.

Any relationship that lasts almost three decades is tough to unwind. Here’s how they plan to do it.

(Excerpts from the memo to CNN employees from Editorial Director Richard Griffiths)

So, what does that mean for those of us producing newscasts or posting web content?

It means that, effective 6am ET, Thursday, we must take down all Reuters content from CNN.com. As of 6am, it means that we can no longer use material from Reuters video/audio feeds on any of the CNN TV or radio networks.

What about Reuters file video in our archive or Reuters material in existing packages?

We can no longer use file video from Reuters, even if it is stored in our archive. Existing packages with Reuters material must be re-edited before they can air. (There are a very few exceptions where fair use might be claimed, but only with prior clearance from one of the CNN content lawyers.) New packages cannot use any Reuters material.

Does that mean we’ll have to screen all our obits and potentially re-edit them before air?

Yes.

Will the library purge all the Reuters video material from the archive?

No. Reuters material is woven into thousands of packages, airchecks, and PA reels. It would be almost impossible to remove all that content. This means that we must be especially vigilant about checking the source of all video from the archive before use so Reuters material does not get onto the air.

Sometimes Reuters gets scoops. Does this mean we can’t report Reuters breaking news?

No, we can still report Reuters scoops, just as we report scoops by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other reputable news organizations: We will attribute carefully and simultaneously work to confirm and report the story ourselves.

Because we will no longer have direct access to the Reuters wire in iNews, we will only be able to see the Reuters reporting on Reuters.com. Therefore, we should attribute to Reuters.com when we decide a Reuters story is important enough to report.

How will CNN get all those stories that Reuters moves every day?

CNN will be making a major investment to expand our newsgathering operation. The investment will significantly strengthen CNN and help us generate even more original content for all our platforms. And as you know, these days, original content truly is king. But it will take a little time to get all our systems in place and up-and-running; your smart-thinking, hard work and attention to detail over the next few weeks will be critical to our success as we move forward.

Here’s what the Guardian reported:

[CNN] will retain its other long-term agreements with the news agencies APTN and AP while its affiliate deal with ITN and around 1,000 other broadcasters around the world also remains unchanged.

And Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider:

Okay, but given that CNN will reportedly continue to use Associated Press content, we can probably amend Nigel’s explanation to read: “Reuters refused to budge when we told them to cut prices, so we told them to stuff it. Will they come back? Who knows? Who cares? For now, we’ll make do with the cheaper AP. Those wire services all cover the same crap anyway.”

(Photo: Reuters / CNN’s Larry King)

News flash! Newspapers are in trouble!

Just in case you didn’t know that, credit agency rating company Fitch released a nice, long refresher course on one of the United States’s favorite dying-yet-profitable business.

Titled “U.S. Newspaper Outlook Update - Still Negative,” Fitch sought and caught the hook that reporters use to freshen up the story: Things aren’t just bad, they’re worse than we thought!

Excerpts:

• Gannett Co, Inc. (Not Rated): Ad pages down 17% at the USA Today and pro forma real estate classifieds at community newspapers down 20%.
• Tribune Company (rated ‘B+’, Rating Watch Negative by Fitch): Classifieds down 18% driven by real estate down 24% and employment classifieds down 19%.
• The McClatchy Company (’BB+’, Stable Outlook): Real estate down 26%, Automotive down 20% and National down 19%.
• Dow Jones (’BBB+’, Rating Watch Negative): Ad volume down 20% driven by a 75% decline in technology related ads. Classifieds down 14%.

And then there’s this:

Stock prices have been down for several years, but with the turbulent credit markets, Fitch believes that companies that did not already pursue highly leveraged acquisitions or leveraged recapitalizations are less likely to pursue those types of transactions in this funding environment.

Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert released a similar assessment on Monday in a research note: “Our message is consistent and (sadly) unchanged: Business is lousy, with no signs of near-term improvement.”

This just goes to disprove the old saying that no news is good news.

It looks like newspapers are beginning to discover that it’s true what they say about property being a good long-term investment. Now that U.S. dailies are feeling the melancholy of their autumn years, they’re discovering that selling the house makes them feel young again.

From The Wall Street Journal:

With profits and revenue falling, newspaper companies are increasingly looking to real estate to shore up their finances. Though newspapers are still largely profitable, they are seen by many on Wall Street as a dying medium. In some cases, the Inquirer and the Boston Herald among them, financial pressures are forcing newspapers to sell their property as a quick way to come up with cash. In others, especially papers acquired by private-equity firms, the new owners are simply trying to squeeze as much money out of the operation as possible, says newspaper analyst John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc.

The Journal story in Wednesday’s paper says that the Philadelphia Inquirer building is up for sale, and that the Boston Herald, Minneapolis Star Tribune and The New York Times all are trying to throw some real estate overboard. The big undecided party now is Tribune Co., with the Journal reporting on speculation that Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell could get rid of Tribune Tower and the Los Angeles Times’s headquarters.

What other papers are sitting on properties that could earn them a few shekels in an auction? Let us know.

PS - Hours after the Journal story ran, Jim Romenesko’s journalism blog posted a memo from Star Tribune Publisher Par Ridder saying that the Minnesota Vikings football team won’t buy four blocks of property that they had intended to from the paper.

Ridder: While we had reached agreement on a deal in principle, the collapse of the I-35W Bridge and the turbulent credit markets have caused the Vikings to reevaluate their plans. … We will be working with Avista [which bought the Star Tribune from McClatchy Co.] and our real estate advisors over the next few weeks to determine our next steps.