Over 70 percent of Wired is freelance written, and, once you’ve scored a byline, you’re well on your way to landing more assignments. Senior editor Sarah Fallon urges writers to think of Wired‘s coverage as a continuum: “Science leads to technologies. Technologies spawn businesses and whole industries. Businesses flourish and end up influencing and changing culture,” she said.

Based in San Francisco, Wired has a laid-back but focused West Coast feel and a sensibility that welcomes everyone from the worldly generalist to the Vine junkie. There’s plenty of room for freelancers, too, so long as you’re pitching fresh meat. “We want to cover stories that you wouldn’t find in any other magazine,” Fallon explained. “If you’re going to pitch something mainstream, make sure you have a unique angle.”

For more info, read How To Pitch: Wired.
The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.Land $1.50 a Word (and Up) at Wired

Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Yahoo! Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected (AllThingsD)
The Yahoo! board has approved a massive $1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Tumblr. It’s not clear when the official vote was taken, but sources close to the board said the acquisition was a foregone conclusion and was unanimously approved by the directors of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. The deal will likely be announced Monday morning, said numerous sources. Business Insider Marissa Mayer has made her first big move as CEO of Yahoo!. She’s buying a social networking site with a younger audience and a ton of page views. Now it’s time to monetize the thing. Tumblr has just $13 million in revenue right now. It should be able to increase that revenue following the model of Twitter and Facebook. BuzzFeed When Yahoo! was founded, Tumblr’s most important demographic wasn’t even born. This — not profit or monthly active user numbers or corporate image-making — is what explains why Yahoo! wants Tumblr. GigaOM The painful fact is that Yahoo! doesn’t just look desperate — in many ways it is desperate. Mayer has made some changes since she took over the ailing former Web portal, including the acquisition of Summly and a number of other mobile-focused startups and services, but the company still needs to make some aggressive moves if it is going to jump-start any growth at all. AllThingsD If you write about Tumblr as a business, you are required to note that Tumblr has a lot of porn. So why isn’t that an issue for Yahoo!?

Read more

The 4 Queens Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas has been in operation since 1966. The queen of AP courtroom reporting, Linda Deutsch, has been with the wire service since 1967. This week, the twain of these two institutions delightfully met.

Per Norm Clarke’s latest column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the LA-based Deutsch was having dinner Wednesday night at hotel restaurant Hugo’s Cellar, forgetting that she was due at that time for a BBC Radio phone interview about O.J. Simpson‘s latest courtroom theatrics. The restaurant was too noisy and there was no time to get back to her own hotel room. So instead, Deutsch gamely did the following:

Hugo’s manager Richard Assalone, who has worked at some of the best restaurants in town, came up with a corker of a solution: He borrowed a chair from a dinner table and gave Deutsch the coolest seat in town — inside Hugo’s 55-degree wine cellar.

Read more

If you’re planning on staying home tonight (and have DIRECTV), one of the very best ways to kick off your weekend is available via the satellite cabler’s Audience Network channel 239. At 10 p.m. PT, the live concert series Guitar Center Sessions returns.

Unusually, this weekend’s episode featuring The Smashing Pumpkins and next Friday’s performance by Frank Turner were taped at SXSW in Austin. But after that, all the way through to the program’s 50th episode on July 26 featuring Dhani Harrison’s THENEWNO2, it’s back to the chain’s flagship location in Hollywood:

“Today, more than ever before, any artist, established or up and coming, is working within a new convoluted paradigm full of challenges,” says show host and backstage interviewer Nic Harcourt via recent press release. “The new episodes of Guitar Center Sessions feature a truly diverse group of artists, all sharing the ups and downs of their careers in the interviews and delivering blistering performances on stage.”

Read more

Although KABC 790 AM host Peter Tilden will be at the center of it, he’s wrangled some major TV-side reinforcements.

Acting as grand marshal for this Sunday’s motorcycle ride raising money for the MS Hope Foundation is Sons of Anarchy star Ron Perlman. And once the group makes its way from Gladstone’s in Malibu to The Canyon club in Agoura Hills, they will be entertained by John Corbett (NCIS) with his band and Grammy-winning Hawaiian steel guitarist Ken Emerson.

Tickets for the 10 a.m. ride and noon Canyon celebration are $25 if purchased beforehand and $35 the day of. There are two earlier 8 a.m. starting points – Glendale Harley on San Fernando Road in Glendale and California Harley Dealership on the PCH in Harbor City.

Read more

No, we’re not talking about Justin Chang and Peter Debruge. That would be huge and… somewhat nonsensical.

Still, for Hollywood trade watchers, the defection from Variety to The Hollywood Reporter of international freelance reviewers Jonathan Holland (based in Madrid) and Boyd van Hoiej (Paris, Luxembourg) would seem to suggest that there’s concern on their part about the future of their beat. A rep for THR tells us that van Hoiej is already at Cannes, and that both will immediately start contributing to the efforts crowned of course by another Variety alum, Todd McCarthy.

Holland, who focuses mainly on Spanish and Latin American films, has also written for The Guardian and Conde Nast’s Traveller. He separately penned the 1994 novel The Escape Artist.

Read more

Way down the list of Tiger Woods’ concerns this weekend in Las Vegas, right next to say waiting a little too long for the valet to bring around his shiny new car, is the idea that a local celebrity journalist is grousing about the lack of interview access. Nevertheless, ahead of the golfer’s series of big weekend charity events in Sin City, that is Robin Leach’s beef:

No questions, thus no answers to any subject. Nothing about his current game. Nothing about old loves and new ones. Nothing about anything. A tough assignment for us who are used to big stars sitting down for one-on-one conversations.

Photographers will get the slightly better run of things during this weekend’s 15th annual Tiger Jam, allowed access at the Mandalay Bay Events Center and later Saturday night for the Kid Rock-Uncle Kracker concert. Tonight, as part of a whole series of poker tournaments culminating May 24, Woods has a $10,000 buy-in event.

Read more

One can only imagine the great radio tales Paul Drew regaled fellow residents with at Victor Royale Assisted Living, an airy facility in the south end of Glendale just a few blocks away from Forest Lawn. Per an obit in Billboard by Gail Mitchell, this early architect of the top-40 format knew many of the great ones:

Drew worked with and/or mentored a diverse array of radio personalities, programmers, consultants and industry writers. That list includes consultants Jerry Clifton and Guy Zapoleon, writers Gerry Cagle (Network 40), Walt “Baby” Love (Radio & Records) and Jerry Del Colliano (Inside Radio), as well as air personalities Rick Dees, Dr. Don Rose, Jay Thomas and Charlie Van Dyke.

Read more

Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Yahoo! in Talks to Acquire Tumblr: Deal Could Reach As High As $1 Billion (Adweek)
Is Marissa Mayer about to make a game-changing acquisition? It appears so. Yahoo! is in serious talks with Tumblr to acquire the social blogging site, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well-suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd — not currently a Yahoo! sweet spot. AllThingsD Earlier this week, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JPMorgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo! needed to be “cool again.” The Verge Since taking control of Yahoo!, Mayer has pursued a string of acquisitions, including Summly, Astrid, Jybe and others. In addition to the failed Dailymotion acquisition, the company has also been rumored to be looking at Hulu, although Mayer has previously said that the company is shopping for smaller targets valued in the $100 million range.

Read more

It wasn’t that long ago that we were writing about Stephanie Elam’s move from CNN New York to NBC Southern California. Less than a year later, the Howard University grad and former CNN business reporter has straight-reversed that career direction, heading back to the closer confines of CNN’s LA office.

Those who follow Elam’s Twitter feed have known about this latest career move for upwards of a week. This afternoon, CNN has made it official:

During her tenure at KNBC, Elam’s reporting centered around emergency awareness, empowering Southern Californians with information to be earthquake ready, water safety and informed about money matters. She covered the release of John Smith, a man jailed 18 years for a crime he did not commit; the 2012 Golden Globes red carpet; and she anchored KNBC ‘s breaking news coverage of the Seal Beach murders.

“Stephanie is an excellent communicator and tenacious reporter, and we are pleased to have her back as a part of the CNN family,” said Terence Burke, vp of newsgathering for CNN U.S.

Read more