Here’s an entry from our very own Reuters New York equities team summer intern Chavon Sutton. (Thanks, Chavon!)

Did Vibe magazine, the print ambassador of hip-hop culture, voice and style, pass up a chance to survive last year?

Vibe, the baby of acclaimed producer Quincy Jones (the composer who produced the late Michael Jackson’s mega-hit albums, “Thriller” and “Off the Wall,”), said earlier this week that it was shutting down immediately.

A partnership with an online gossip website serving African-American readers, might have given it room to keep producing, according to the site’s founder and editor.

Fred Mwangaguhunga, who runs Mediatakeout.com, told us that in the year before Vibe’s collapse, it offered the magazine a revenue-share deal, but Vibe refused.

“We came to Vibe and offered it a deal where they’d sell our ads and in return, they’d get a stake in the ads they sold,” Mwangagunhunga said.

The partnership could have given Vibe “$1 million a month, but they didn’t want it,” he said.
$1 million a month? Hard to say. (For what it’s worth, Mwangaguhunga says Mediatakeout.com gets 3 to 5 million unique viewers and 150 million page impressions per month.)

We tried to reach Vibe, or whatever is left of it, but a computerized voicemail message at the magazine’s office said: “Message quota exceeded. Goodbye.”

Did Vibe take a wise pass in the hopes of striking a better online deal? Or do its actions suggest that it is another example of entrenched print types avoiding imminent change?

It could be a pointless question. Jones told EbonyJet.com that he plans to buy back the magazine, which had a circulation of over 800,000, according to The New York Times.

Incidentally, Ebony apparently isn’t interested in working with Mediatakeout either.

“We made the same proposal to Ebony [magazine] which is facing pressure now,” he said.  “I’m not sure why they’re saying no.”

(Photo: Reuters)

Facebook is super easy to use in many respects. Send out that snarky message and the whole world knows what’s on your mind. But even though the site’s managers have tried to give users privacy options, figuring out how to limit who can read your murkiest thoughts has been less than straightforward.

The “compounding effect of more and more settings has made controlling privacy on Facebook too complicated,” Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly said on the Facebook blog.

As a result the social network site is now testing new ways for members to improve their privacy controls more easily.  This should mean that when you post those embarrassing photos or irreverent comments, you’ll be able to easily control who sees them without having to worry about oversharing with your boss or professional acquaintances.

But when you’ve got something big to say — like “There’s a plane on the Hudson” — Facebook will also give you the option to broadcast to everybody.

“You will have the choice of being as open or as limited in the sharing of this information as you want,” Facebook promised.

However, the tests, launched yesterday and expected to continue for a few weeks, will only include a small fraction of Facebook members before the company is ready to offer final versions.

According to the New York Times, Facebook is still determining if status updates that users chose to make public would appear in results from search engines like Google but it told the newspaper that it was testing a search engine that would be able to scan through this material.

Keep an Eye On:

• Google drops News Comment Feature (New York Times)
• DirecTV reaches out to Sling Media founder Krikorian as CEO candidate (PaidContent.org)
• Murdoch denies plot to acquire New York Times (thestreet.com)
• Microsoft adds Twitter search to Bing (Businessinsider)

(Reuters Photo: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg in July 2008)

So how’s the market for sports and concert tickets holding up, given the economic turmoil that has dominated the public imagination since last year? Better than you’d think, according to Mike Janes, the founder and CEO of FanSnap, a live-event ticket search engine that launched in March.

“People’s appetite for the shared experience of a game or show hasn’t changed. Their bank accounts may have changed, but not the desire,” Janes said.

The difficult economy has had the effect of bringing many ticket prices down, he said, meaning there are plenty of bargains out there. While there will always be insatiable demand for big-name performers or games (Springsteen; Yankees vs. Red Sox) keeping those ticket prices high, Janes said tix for your average major league baseball game can be had for below face value in some cases, as folks looking to resell tickets flood the market with supply. It’s a bit too early to see about NFL games, he said.

FanSnap, whose main investor is VC and private equity firm General Catalyst Partners, runs in a similar way Kayak does flight searches. Since there is so much variability in ticket prices (unlike in airline tickets) FanSnap’s search engine turns up seats within mere feet of each other — displayed on a nifty interactive map — but with very different asking prices.  (Janes said the site aims to “make it really hard to overpay for tickets.”)

FanSnap has deals in place with dozens of vendors and re-sellers, including big names like StubHub and RazorGator, and is working to bring others into the fold.

News about the media industry:

Netflix looks to future but still going strong with DVD rentals (USA Today)
“Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings doesn’t think his 58 distribution centers are in immediate danger of becoming obsolete, but he knows that day will come. He believes DVD rentals have four to nine years to keep growing, despite inroads in Internet delivery of movies to set-top TV boxes and other video-on-demand options,” writes Jefferson Graham.

Is the bell tolling for Clear Channel? (San Antonio Express-News)
David Hendricks writes: “Analysts believe Clear Channel, now with about $22 billion in total debts, will have trouble making scheduled payments later this year. The company, already down to about 800 stations from its peak of about 1,200 stations, either will have to start selling stations itself or go into bankruptcy, where lenders will put stations up for sale.”

Foes No More, Ad Agencies Unite With Internet Firms (NYT)
Eric Pfanner writes: “With consumers spending more and more time online, analysts say Internet companies and ad agencies have no choice but to work together to develop ways to make money from digital media.”

In other news:

• U.S. gov’t to release $4 bln soon for broadband (Reuters)
• Politico’s Washington Coup (Vanity Fair)
• Average Twitter user has 126 followers, and only 20% of users go via website (Guardian)
• First Came Gizmodo, Then Engadget. Now, GDGT (NYT)

On Tuesday, a panel hosted by Reuters and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers discussed the state of the media industry and the challenges it faces from consumers demanding information in new and different ways.

How could the industry transform its newsrooms to thrive in this culture?

Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times said the key discipline was to constantly ask what the reader actually wants and not what is technologically possible. “This is going to be different for everyone,” Freeland told the crowd, which included Thomson Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger.

For the full discussion, watch the video below.

The panel included
Chrystia Freeland, US managing editor, Financial Times

Larry Ingrassia, business editor, The New York Times

Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs & new media professor, Columbia Journalism School

Laurel Touby, founder & CEO, Mediabistro.com

Moderated by
Betty Wong, global managing editor, Reuters

(Adds comment from Twitter co-founder)

 With Google long-seen as the undisputed leader in Web search, it was interesting to see research showing Microsoft winning some market share with its new Bing search engine, in research from Internet data firm StatCounter.

But, the fact that Google’s tiny market share decline in U.S. Web searches to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent is news at all goes to show how tough a job Microsoft has ahead of it.

And since Bing just launched June 3 ,it will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s search share boost to 8.23 percent of he U.S. market, from 7.81 percent before Bing, is just a kick-off spike.

In the meantime, an arguably higher-profile Web service is attracting sharp criticism as bloggers scratched their heads over Twitter’s warning to an application developer against using the word Tweet, the moniker for its miniblog entries.

Techcrunch posted what it said was an email that suggested as much from a Twitter team member to an outside developer that created an interface similar to Twitter’s:

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI..

Techcrunch asked if TweetDeck, TweetMeme, Tweetie, BackTweets, Tweetboard etc should worry?

And in businessinsider.com, Henry Blodget warned Twitter against taking up arms against the very applications that helped make Twitter famous. “Let it go, folks, let it go. When you reach for a “Kleenex” or hunt for a “Xerox machine,” you’re helping those brands stay front and center,” Blodget said.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed the spirit of the memo in an email response to Reuters but it wasn’t immediately  clear to us if the “original branding” push would be foisted on just new app developers or if it would push for brand changes in existing apps too. He said:

The ecosystem growing around Twitter is something we very much believe in nourishing and supporting. As part of this support, we encourage developers of new applications and services built using Twitter APIs to invent original branding for their project rather than use our marks, logos, or look and feel. This approach leaves room for applications to evolve as they grow and it avoids potential confusion down the line.

Keep an eye on:

• Fired columnist Roger Friedman sues News Corp (LA Times)
• Vibe Magazine shutting (DailyFinance)
• Michael Jackson shatters chart records (Billboard)
• Party celebrates China Web filter delay (Reuters)
• Facebook in investor spotlight, but values vary (Reuters)

(Reuters photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer)

Convincing marketers to try a new type of Internet ad format isn’t easy, especially during a time when ad budgets are getting cut.

But Meebo has come up with a novel way to entice advertisers to take the plunge: the company will guarantee that Web surfers spend at least 30 seconds interacting with ads that run in its new advertising units.

The new ads are integrated within the Meebo real time communications service, which provides instant messaging and link-sharing capabilities on more than 40 Web sites including myYearbook, CafeMom and Current TV.

Meebo said up to 85 Web sites have signed up to go live with the service.

At first glance, Meebo’s new ads don’t look like that big of a deal - the ad is essentially a small icon within the Meebo toolbar that’s parked at the bottom of a partner site’s Web page. But a click on the icon expands into an “overlay” of up to 900×400 pixels, which can feature rich media, such as video and games.

Meebo Chief Operating Officer Martin Green says that user engagement with the new ads is much better than with traditional online display ads, because viewers would need to click on the tab to call up the ad.

“We have done this in testing and in the last couple of months we get on average over a minute of time spent, which is a massive amount of time with advertisers’ content,” said Green. “Part of the reason is you only get people who are interested in checking it out.”

Meebo has won over at least two brand heavyweights. AT&T and Toyota are both signed on to run Meebo ads.

What happens if an advertiser gets less than 30 seconds “air time”? Meebo’s Green says the company will make up the time by running a proportional amount of ads to cover the discrepancy.

News about the media industry:

Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big (NYT)
“Google has begun this public-relations offensive because it is in the midst of a treacherous rite of passage for powerful technology companies — regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with AT&T, I.B.M., Intel and Microsoft,” writes Miguel Helft.
> Graphic about Google share of all ads and online ads (Lost Remote)

Media and cable now the riskiest sector (Reuters)
“Default risk for the media and cable sector has risen from its already high levels a year ago, CreditSights said. Rising leverage, along with a protracted decline in advertising revenues that was accelerated by the U.S. recession, are behind the higher risk,” writes Dena Aubin.

Sun-Times seeks more time to reorganize (Crain’s)
“Lawyers for Sun-Times Media are asking for three more months to come up with an exit strategy, a request they considered “neither surprising nor remarkable.” The publisher currently has until July 29 to submit a reorganization plan,” writes Lorene Yue.

Vibe magazine shutting down (Daily Finance)
Jeff Bercovici writes: “Vibe enjoyed significant success in the late ’90s and early part of this decade as hip hop and R&B became the nation’s predominant forms of pop music. But in recent years the title has fallen on hard times under its new owner, the Wicks Group, which bought it in 2006.”

MSNBC Beat CNN on Weeknights in Second Quarter, Fox Still on Top (NYT)
Bill Carter writes: “The trend of cable news viewers moving away from CNN continued in the second quarter of 2009 with MSNBC beating CNN in weeknights for the first time ever for a full quarter of a year.”

In other news:

• Gannett Said to Prep Massive Layoffs (Gannett Blog)
• Times’ retirement plan hit by $154M loss (Boston Business Journal)
• Cable Hits a Big Winner With DVRs (WSJ)

Steep declines in business technology investment during the first quarter have prompted Forrester Research to issue a more pessimistic outlook for 2009 IT spending.

The research house now expects a 10.6 percent decline in global tech purchases by businesses and governments (as measured in U.S. dollars), compared with the 3 percent drop it forecast at the beginning of the year. In the U.S., Forrester now expects a 5.1 decline, versus its previous forecast for a 3.1 percent drop.

Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels said in a statement the first quarter saw a “scary” drop in purchases in the U.S. tech sector. However, he noted “the big drops are not precursors to further declines; rather, we think they are evidence of a temporary pause in U.S. tech purchases, which we expect to start recovering in Q4 as businesses realize that they overreacted in the first quarter.”

Forrester still expects growth in U.S. IT investment to return in the fourth quarter, and predicts tech markets in Europe and Asia will start to recover in the first half of 2010.

On a global basis, the group foreacast computer equipment purchases to fall 13.5 percent in 2009, communications equipment to drop by 12.4 percent, software to sink 8.2 percent, and IT consulting and outsourcing services to fall 8.6 percent.

With a disputed election in Iran and a coup in Honduras, Jon Stewart wants to know: Where is the CIA?

He finds his answer in a Reuters Video segment by Fred Katayama, who reported earlier this month that the spy agency is recruiting Wall Street’s finest.

You can view our original segment here: