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Tom Snyder of Tomorrow Show Dies at 71 (AP via Yahoo! News)
Talk show host Tom Snyder, whose smoke-filled interviews were a staple of late night television, has died after a struggle with leukemia. He was 71. Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday. TVNewser: Neal Kendall, EP of Tavis Smiley on PBS, who once worked with Snyder, writes, "The Tomorrow Show on NBC was perhaps the most eclectic and unique late-night program in the history of the medium. Tom was a great friend to so many of us who came to know and love him."

A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope (NYT)
The hottest startup in Silicon Valley — minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors — is Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Only a chosen few can try out its Web site, but its technology has the potential to be powerfully disruptive, enabling file-sharing among individuals that would be difficult for media companies to trace.

Mags Migrate From Building Content to Buying It (AdAge)
It took a little while, but most magazine and newspaper publishers eventually accepted the need to establish web versions of their cherished print properties; it was pixelate or risk perishing. But now those same publishers are demonstrating a growing belief that while those companion sites are necessary, they are not sufficient.

Jack Raymond, 88, War Reporter and Fighter for the Environment, Dies (NYT)
Jack Raymond, who learned newspaper reporting as a teenager pounding the Bronx streets, honed his skills on World War II battlefields, in Outer Mongolia and at the White House, and went on to help start an international organization for the environment, died on July 20 in Manhattan. He was 88.

The Ludlum Conundrum: A Dead Novelist Provides New Thrills (NYT)
Robert Ludlum died six years ago, but that has done nothing to slow the release of books published under the name of the actor-turned-novelist. Twelve Ludlum books have been released since his death, with a 13th due out in September. The business is deployed now as a kind of film studio, presenting books completed by others or new ones written using his name.

Marketers Home In on Video Game Ads (LAT)
Only a few years ago, a video game company had to pay goods makers if it wanted to include their products in the virtual world for a dose of realism. But today, advertisers are handing over millions of dollars to get their brands in front of the 140 million people who play video games in the U.S.

To Save Themselves, Gannett's Newspapers Put Readers to Work (Wired)
Citizens are desperate to broadcast their message to their communities; they just aren't going to employ the conventions of journalism to do so. While much of the citizen-produced writing is about church picnics and school sports, readers are also contributing to serious journalistic investigations, breathing new life into a genre that is increasingly considered an endangered species at metro papers.

Sexuality on TV Heats Up, Kinda (Variety)
Brian Lowry: For the most part, mainstream movies and broadcast television have pushed more freely ahead in violence and language than in sexuality, a fact that is underscored by the explosion of crime-oriented primetime dramas and the lucrative cinematic genre dubbed "torture porn." Showtime and HBO, however, are advancing into this void.

Liberals Pressure Fox News Advertisers (AP via Yahoo! News)
Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network. MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.

Salon's Walsh Shrugs Off HuffPo Threat (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: Salon teetered on the edge of ruin at times in the past decade. But Joan Walsh, who took over as editor-in-chief in February 2005, said, "I always knew we'd be here." Now, the advent of Arianna Huffington's brassy, left-wing HuffingtonPost.com threatens to overshadow Salon.

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