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Bancrofts Close to Accepting Murdoch Bid (NYT)
News Corp. appeared tantalizingly close to succeeding in its bid to acquire Dow Jones last night, but not close enough to conclusively claim victory. Family members and trusts representing more than 30 percent of the shareholder vote — enough to put the deal over the top — indicated to their lawyers that they would support the bid, but some of them had not yet delivered signed commitments. LAT: Doubts about a successful acquisition mounted yesterday, especially after people involved in the process put the level of support from various Bancroft family trusts at about 28 percent of total voting power. NYP: Shares of Dow Jones tumbled sharply yesterday as the Bancrofts missed their own deadline for deciding whether to support the offer.

Former NBC News Producer Eric Wishnie Dies, Apparently After Fall (NY Sun)
The Emmy award-winning former NBC Nightly News producer died after falling from the roof of his home early yesterday morning at Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street in Manhattan, police officials said. He worked at NBC for 19 years, serving stints as a senior producer for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and later with Brian Williams. He was married to (but recently separated from) NBC reporter Dawn Fratangelo. NYDN: "Eric Wishnie died way too young," Brian Williams told viewers last night, calling him an "enormously talented producer and kind and good-hearted soul." TV Week: Wishnie's awards included an Emmy Award and an Overseas Press Club Award for his coverage of the crisis in Kosovo in 1999. He also won an Emmy for his coverage of the 1993 floods in the Midwest. NYP: Close friends and family said Wishnie appeared to have spiraled into a deep depression over the past six months. Newsday: Police said they haven't ruled out the possibility Wishnie fell by accident. TVNewser: We received several emails, from people inside NBC and from its competitors, expressing their sadness at hearing the news. One emailer called Wishnie "a beloved producer on Nightly News."

Variety Editor Jumps to Hollywood Reporter (Hollywood Reporter)
Industry veteran Elizabeth Guider has been named editor of The Hollywood Reporter. Guider was at Variety for the past 18 years; she most recently served as editor at large and, before that, as executive editor for news. She has held management responsibilities for the Los Angeles-based daily, the weekly, and the New York edition. NYP: Sources say yesterday's raid could signal a renewal of the intense rivalry between the two longtime foes — which influence peddlers in Hollywood love to play off against one another.

FT Looking for a Media Partner (IHT via NYT)
Pearson, the owner of The Financial Times, said that it was talking to a number of potential partners about new ways to display the newspaper's journalism. "We're talking to all sorts of people about different distribution channels," said Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson. Potential partners include CNBC, the financial news cable channel owned by NBC Universal. Guardian: Pearson's profits rise sharply.

NY Times, NBC to Collaborate on Election Coverage (AP)
Newspaper publisher New York Times Co. said Monday it will collaborate with NBC News/msnbc.com on 2008 presidential election coverage. The agreement will allow The New York Times to use NBC's political videos on its NYTimes.com Web site, while Msnbc.com will be able to use national political content from NYTimes.com on its site.

Tom Snyder Turned Television Into a Tete-a-Tete (WaPo)
Tom Shales: Tom Snyder's death Sunday from leukemia, at the age of 71, was not "the end of an era," as is often said of legendary figures in any field, but another poignant part of a long goodbye, of a transition painful to those who remember the great broadcasters of television with deep affection — Dave Garroway, Howard Cosell, Jack Paar, and some, like Regis Philbin, who are still alive and working. USAT: Tom Snyder's smoky voice — thanks in part to his omnipresent cigarette — was as legendary as his robust, infectious laugh, writes Peter Johnson.

Condé Expanding into India (FT)
Condé Nast is ready to follow the September launch of the Indian edition of Vogue with other upmarket titles as the global fashion and luxury retail industry looks to cash in on the country's growing affluence. The publisher is seeking or has obtained regulatory approval for magazines such as Glamour, GQ, Condé Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair and niche publications such as Wired.

NY Post Sues Filmmaker for Web Site 'Infringement' (NY Sun)
The New York Post Co. is suing a German filmmaker for stealing the newspaper's trademark Web site and logos, allegedly to "get back" at the paper for publishing an article critical of his movie. The filmmaker, Uwe Boll, is accused of creating two Web sites that are direct copies of the New York Post's Web site, ny-postal.tk and postal-themovie.com/mag, to promote his movie, Postal.

Looking at 'Fall Preview' Mag Ad Pages (MIN)
September 2007 is a month for the fashion-advertising ages with records smashed at Vogue/W/Elle (398 ad pages) and Harper's Bazaar (360). Among the less fashion-intensive women's monthlies, September — other than a monthly record for Shape — was relatively "normal."

Q&A: Zucker on Silverman, Murdoch, Movies (Hollywood Reporter)
It has been nearly six months since Jeff Zucker was promoted to president and CEO of General Electric's NBC Universal. In that time, he has presided over a company that has been reshaped inside and out by tremendous change. Here Zucker discusses his tenure to date, including the hiring of Ben Silverman, his first exposure to the movie business and the potential threat posed by Rupert Murdoch in financial news.

Citizen Journalism Site NowPublic Gets Multi-Million-Dollar Boost (AFP)
NowPublic announced Monday that the fast-growing citizen journalism Web site has scored $10.6 million in financing to fuel its drive to become the world's largest news agency. The Vancouver-based start-up says it is growing at a rate of 35 percent monthly and has nearly 120,000 contributing "reporters" in more than 140 countries.

Huffington Post Matures into Online Force (PR Week)
The old model of media dominance, in which even Web sites that took frequent shots at the mainstream media would still pine for opportunities to get coverage there, is not particularly relevant for a powerful Internet quasi-newsroom like HuffPo. "It's all about linking," the site's founding editor Roy Sekoff says bluntly. "Now, [mainstream news organizations] are sending us stuff, 'Hey, link to this!' because they realize it's all driving traffic."

It Isn't Easy Knowing What Journalism You Can Trust (E&P)
Steve Outing: For consumers of news and searchers of information, these are heady times. Yet there's a huge downside to this abundance: How, as consumers, do we know if we can trust what we read? How do we know if it's balanced, or serving someone's narrow agenda? ... Okay, you might figure that out after reading a source for a while, but it's not easy at a glance to know.

USA Today Trying to Cut in on US News College Comparisons? (Inside Higher Ed)
National Survey of Student Engagement has just asked all of the colleges that participated at least once in the last three years (a total of about 1,000 four-year institutions) for permission to release five benchmark scores from the group's report for their institutions to USA Today, which may place the data online.

Developing Standards for Pro-Am Journalism (PressThink)
Jay Rosen: This FAQ shows how pro-am journalism is developing in NewAssignment.Net's second major project. At this stage we're still establishing blogging standards for open platform campaign journalism. The instructions steer away from a rigid divide between news and opinion, replacing it with posts that make an original contribution vs. those that don't because not enough went into them.