Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

U.S. business magazines face a shakeout (Reuters)
Robert MacMillan writes: “Business news publishers rubbed their hands in glee when the financial crisis grabbed headlines last fall, saying the meltdown would deliver a windfall blown in by widespread interest in their stories. It did not turn out that way. Appetite for news does not always translate into revenue, especially at a time when blogs, wire services such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters and other outlets crowd into news analysis territory that the big magazines had long claimed.”

McClatchy quarterly profit rises on cost cuts (Reuters)
“U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy Co reported higher quarterly income on Tuesday because of cost cuts, pushing shares up as much as 67 percent, even as advertising revenue fell by nearly a third. McClatchy, publisher of The Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee, also said it reduced the amount of debt that it owes and sought to reassure investors that it will not violate the terms of its lending agreements,” reports Robert MacMillan.

Economist Group Buys Congressional Quarterly (WSJ)
Kevin Kingsbury writes: “The deal, terms of which weren’t disclosed, will create a new company called CQ-Roll Call Group. Roll Call is owned by the Economist Group, the London-based publisher of its namesake magazine. Roll Call is buying Congressional Quarterly from Times Publishing Co., whose primary operations is the St. Petersburg Times and related assets.”

James Murdoch Approved Payment to Phone Tap Victim (Bloomberg)
“James Murdoch, the son of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, agreed to a 700,000-pound ($1.1 million) payment to a victim of phone-tapping by the News of the World, the editor of the company’s newspaper said,” writes Robert Hutton.
> Ex-Murdoch paper editor says phone taps not policy (Reuters)

Conde Nast September Monthlies Lose 1,680 Ad Pages (NYO)
“Vogue tumbled to 427 pages total, down 36 percent from last September. W is down 53 percent; Allure and Gourmet are down 51 percent; and Self is down 50 percent. Vanity Fair came in just above average for the company, dropping 36 percent,” writes John Koblin.

In other news:

• Arbitron Q2 profit up; cuts FY rev view; shares fall (Reuters)
• Meredith Invests In Mobile Firm Hyperfactory (Mediaweek)
• Journal Communications posts 2nd-quarter loss (AP)
• Vogue To Get Its Own Web Site, Too, After Condé Launches GQ.com (Business Insider)

“Orwell fans, lock your doors,” was the reaction from Amazon user Caffeine Queen after she and others had received notice from Amazon last Friday that their e-book versions of “1984″ and “Animal Farm” had been removed from their Kindle device.

Amazon explained later that these electronic versions were distributed illegally and that customers were refunded.

Amazon’s decision to remotely delete the e-books not only infuriated customers, it sparked a debate on digital ownership.

Richard Waters of the Financial Times argues that this episode questions the future of ownership in an electronic age:

“New internet media platforms like this raise a dilemma. Their owners have the power to control information on the client. So if they have a legal responsibility to remove data from their systems - say, after receiving a take-down notice under the DMCA - failing to expunge it may expose them to liability.”

Melissa J. Perenson of PC World asks if you can still call it “owning”:

If, in this digital realm, we’re not truly purchasing content, but rather “borrowing” it at a set price, and according to someone else’s changing rulebook, we as consumers we deserve to know this up front, in clear and obvious language (unlike Amazon’s clear references to “buying” books, and all the assumptions of ownership that go with buying books). If the rules have changed on us, we deserve to know.

Meanwhile, user Steve Holden offers his Kindle in the forum: “If I change my mind later I’ll just take it back and return your money. This isn’t digital rights, it’s digital wrongs.”

Here are some of the day’s stories on the media industry:

Movie studios try to harness “Twitter effect” (Reuters)
“Audiences are voicing snap judgments on movies faster and to more people than ever before on Twitter, and their ability to create a box office hit or a flop is forcing major studios to revamp marketing campaigns. The stakes are especially high this summer season when big budget movies like “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opened on Wednesday, play to a core audience of young, plugged-in moviegoers,” writes Alex Dobuzinskis.

Sun-Times chief optimistic about sale of company (Chicago Tribune)
But, Michael Oneal writes: “In a court filing last week, creditors in the Sun-Times’ bankruptcy case raised concerns about the sale efforts, noting that the company has “limited time” before it “can no longer sustain the losses being incurred from operations.” They warned that unless a buyer is found soon, “time could run out, or a buyer could be located that would only pay a fire-sale price.”

Goldman makes peace with blogger in trademark case (Reuters)
“The agreement required blogger Michael Morgan to post a disclaimer on his goldmansachs666.com website, saying it has no affiliation with the financial firm. Morgan, a Florida investment adviser, uses his blog — whose name combines Goldman’s name with numbers used to evoke connotations with the devil — to criticize the bank and its large profits,” writes Martha Graybow.

Reuters Opens its Kimono (CJR)
“Wright, Reuters’s global editor of ethics, innovation, and news standards, brandished the thick stack of paper to drive home the point that “we’ve moved beyond the time when people were carrying around books with style guides.” We’re also apparently beyond the time when all journalism organizations charge people for said style books,” writes Craig Silverman

The Media Standards Trust has begun a lecture series on 'Why Journalism Matters'. It is disconcerting that it feels we have to ask the question. The argument put forward by the British group's director Martin Moore is that news organisations are so preoccupied with business survival that discussion of the broader social, political and cultural function of journalism gets forgotten. It is a pertinent review then, given the icy economic blasts hitting most Anglo-Saxon media groups, and notwithstanding the recent examples of self-evidently broader journalistic 'value' produced by London's Daily Telegraph in its politican-shaming investigations into parliamentarians' expenses.

First up in the series was Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, who cantered through the justifications for a vibrant, independent press. Watchdog, informer, explainer, campaigner, community builder and debater - those are the roles that journalism plays. The value that it brings is most evident by comparison with the unhealthiness of states where the press is not free, noted Barber, citing the struggles of the citizenry in China and Russia to hold their leaders to account.

The FT's USP as a media group, according to Barber, is as an explainer and analyser of complicated events that play out across a global stage. But analytical reporting of global stories costs serious cash, he noted, in a question-begging aside. That you get the quality of journalism you are prepared to pay for, ultimately, is his response to the challenge posed to mainstream media by Internet-enabled communicators. For free you can have the rawness of a blog. For crafted journalism that is properly sourced, reviewed for taste and style and checked for accuracy, you must find ways to charge. At your peril do you blur the edges between the crafted and the raw world of easy comment, hasty opinion and rumour billed as fact, argues the FT editor.  (There was a hat tip, however, to the bloggers that have broken news, such as Guido Fawkes who forced the resignation of an advisor to Gordon Brown by revealing his plans for a smear email campaign.)

So a sharp distinction was drawn between the value proposition of professional journalism and its unruly blogging and twittering cousin. No such clarity yet, though, on the funding model for the former when the Internet has made audiences expect to read most general interest news and a lot of specialised niche content for free.  No secret that each and every news group is daunted by this obstacle, even the FT, which has not been immune to the downturn in advertising revenue.

We were left with a couple of clues on the way forward.  Barber predicted that within a year all news organisations will be charging for online content in some way. (The FT's model is to allow readers access to a few articles for free and then charge for further use.)  Will Google ever pay for content - unlikely says Barber. But at least they might be prepared to talk about linking via searches to articles requiring subscription, which they do not do currently.

And his flippant response to the demographic challenge posed to a print-based news organisation by the emergence of a generation of youngsters who get all their information from screens? People are living longer - they will still buy newspapers.

Here are some of the day’s stories about the media industry:

Recession sends Americans to the Internet (Reuters)
S. John Tilak writes: “More than two-thirds of American adults — or 88 percent of U.S. Internet users — went online for help with recession-induced personal economic issues and to gather information on national economic problems, a study released on Wednesday said.”

BBC and Government Fall Out Over Financing Plan (NYT)
“The BBC and Britain’s Labour government, which has a history of support for the “Beeb,” have fallen out over a government plan to share some of the broadcaster’s £3.6 billion in public funding with its commercial television rivals,” writes Eric Pfanner.

USA Today introduces Newsdeck site for top headlines (Editors Weblogs)
“To give visitors another way to view the news, USA Today has introduced a site it calls Newsdeck that compiles the top headlines in an easy-to-read format. Users can scroll through stories in eight categories, including News, Money and Sports, with the ability to switch back and forth between the latest news and the most popular articles.,” writes Liz Webber.

Bing’s First Month A Bust (Business Insider)
Dan Frommer writes: “Microsoft’s U.S. search market share was 8.4% in June, up from 8.0% in May, according to comScore. It would have been a disaster if Bing didn’t grow at all with all that advertising and free promotion vianews coverage, so at least it’s up a little.”

In other news:

• If you want readers to buy news, what exactly will you sell? The case for a free/paid hybrid (CJR)
• Cost cuts bear fruit for Gannett (FT)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

Verizon Planning Its Own App Store (Business Insider)
Preethi Dumpala writes: “The main idea: Verizon wants to be the company connecting its customers with apps — not necessarily its handset partners. And it wants to avoid becoming an even dumber pipe. Depending on how it’s set up, this could clash with gadget makers’ plans.”

McGraw-Hill might ‘give away’ Business Week for nominal $1 (FT)
“McGraw-Hill might reap only a nominal $1 by selling Business Week, according to people familiar with the 80-year-old financial magazine’s record of losses. The publisher has appointed Evercore, a boutique investment bank, to sell the title after deciding it was non-core to a group that owns the Standard & Poor’s rating agency and an educational publisher, two people familiar with the decision said,” writes Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Sinclair says it might consider bankruptcy (Baltimore Sun)
“The Hunt Valley-based owner of television stations, which depends heavily on automotive advertisers for revenue, said it might be obligated to pay $488.5 million of its total outstanding debt within the next 18 months. The company said it had $1.3 billion in total debt outstanding as of March 31,” writes Lorraine Mirabella.

Minority Broadcasters Seek Federal Aid (WSJ)
Fawn Johnson writes: “A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries. ”Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species,” the letter said. “Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets.”

In other news:

• Earnings Preview: A tough 2Q expected for Gannett (AP)
• New York Times to sell NYC radio station (Reuters)
• CHART OF THE DAY: Users Spent A Billion Hours On Facebook In June (BI)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

Microsoft takes on Google as Office moves to Web (Reuters)
Jim Finkle reports: “Microsoft will offer for free to consumers Web-based versions of its Office suite of programs, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program. Microsoft will also host one Internet business version of Office at its own data centers, charging companies a yet-to- be-announced fee.”

Six in 10 companies plan to skip Windows 7 (Reuters)
“Many of the more than 1,000 companies that responded to a survey by ScriptLogic Corp say they have economized by cutting back on software updates and lack the resources to deploy Microsoft’s latest offering.”

MySpace to Take Entertainment Tack (WSJ)
“In a brief interview, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said MySpace needs to be refocused ‘as an entertainment portal.’ Mr. Murdoch described his vision for MySpace as a place where ‘people are looking for common interests,’” writes Julia Angwin.

15-Year Old Analyst Trashes TV, Newspapers, Radio, And…Twitter (Business Insider)
“A 15 year-old working in Morgan Stanley’s London office has written what may be the firm’s most popular research report in years,” writes Henry Blodget. “In it, he explains that none of his friends read newspapers and few watch TV. He also, interestingly, says none of them use Twitter, because no one reads the tweets texting costs money.”

McGraw-Hill trying to sell BusinessWeek (Reuters)
Jui Chakravorty Das and Robert MacMillan report: “McGraw-Hill Cos Inc is trying to sell BusinessWeek magazine, a source told Reuters on Monday, at a time when media advertising sales are slumping and would-be buyers for newspapers and magazines are scarce. McGraw hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to manage the sale, said the source, who was familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.”

In other news:

• At $6.5 Billion, Facebook is Now Worth More than CBS (Mashable)
  
• Magna Forecast: Ad Recession to Drag On (E&P)
  

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

TV Networks Fight Drug-Ad Measure (WSJ)
“Advertising costs are deductible to any company as a business expense. The plan being considered by Rep. Rangel’s Ways and Means committee would eliminate the deduction with respect to prescription drug advertising,” writes Martin Vaughan.

Big media seek 21st century business models (Reuters)
“Media moguls at this week’s Sun Valley conference have spent as much time discussing how to reconfigure business models disrupted by the Web as they have worrying about the weak economy,” reports Yinka Adegoke.

Zucker Says Marketplace Has Reached Bottom (B&C)
Ben Grossman writes: “NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker said Thursday that while the overall marketplace is still challenged, he thinks it may have bottomed out. ‘It’s still quite uncertain and we don’t really see the full recovery we are all hoping for,’ he said.  ’It’s still tough out there, but I think we have seen a bottom.’”

The Financial Times and New York Times make further syndication deals (Editors Weblog)
“Both the Financial Times and the New York Times have announced their international syndications will include additional countries. The FT has confirmed content sharing arrangements with publications based in Turkey, France, and South Korea,” writes Christie Silk.

NBC Reveals Displeasure as U.S.O.C. Unveils Plan (NYT)
Richard Sandomir writes: “The head of NBC Sports said Thursday that he broke off talks in April about combining the Olympic channel that it partly owns with the one being planned by the United States Olympic Committee.”

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format (Mediapost)
Gavin O’Malley writes: “The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, on Friday unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.”

In other news:

• Detroit Free Press exempt from latest round of Gannett layoffs (Crain’s)
• AOL: More Layoffs Inevitable (Business Insider)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

New York Times Asks Subscribers: Is It Wrong to Charge for Online Content? (Poynter)
Bill Mitchell writes: “The New York Times is testing a price point of $5 a month for access to nytimes.com, with a 50 percent discount for print subscribers. The Times e-mailed a survey to print subscribers Thursday afternoon inviting their reaction to that pricing plan and asking a range of questions about online pricing.”

Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims (Guardian)
“The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills,” writes Nick Davies.
> UK police won’t reopen Murdoch paper phonetap case (Reuters)

A is for abattoir; Z is for ZULU: All in the Handbook of Journalism (Reuters)
Dean Wright writes: “The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.”

As Gannett’s Newspapers Suffer, Digital Side Sees Growth, More Hiring And Acquisitions (paidContent)
“As Gannett continues to be roiled with huge debt problems, an absent CEO, and hundreds more layoffs across its community newspapers, its digital division appears to be a sea of calm. In fact [...] things are going just fine on their respective ends,” writes David Kaplan.

Analyst Admits to Being ‘Dead Wrong’ After Disney’s ‘Up’ Is Big Earner (NYT)
“Dead wrong” is how Richard Greenfield of Pali Research put his related analysis in a research note. “The recent success of Pixar’s ‘Up’ (well ahead of our forecasts) has renewed investor confidence in Disney’s creative capabilities,” he added. “Up” has so far sold $265.9 million in tickets in North America and $35.4 million overseas, where it has only begun to arrive in theaters,” writes Brooks Barnes.

TiVo, Best Buy Form Alliance To Boost DVRs Available In Stores (WSJ)
David B. Wilkerson writes: “Best Buy also will use TiVo’s platform to market directly to consumers, offering tips and other information to help customers get more out of the two-way possibilities TV now offers. The company said it will ’substantially increase the levels of marketing and merchandising of retail TiVo DVR devices, as well as other devices that may feature the TiVo user interface and platform in the future.’”

In other news:

• Murdoch says mood of media execs “very bearish” (Reuters)
• AOL reviewing assets, but will likely keep Bebo (Reuters)
• Ad Spending on Social Networks to Cool (WSJ)
• Bertelsmann forms music duo with KKR (FT)

Reuters reporters Robert MacMillan, Yinka Adegoke and Alexei Oreskovic will be sending live updates from the Sun Valley gathering. Read their updates below or follow us on Twitter.