Newsweek.com gets off the MSN tit

Newsweek.com and Newsweek print is the latest weekly to undergo a makeover. The magazine rolled back the curtains on its new stand alone website packed with the usual but it's very refreshing to see the site outside the MSN.com domain. With this new stand alone site Newsweek.com will no doubt see a huge drop in traffic due to the fact that it was MSN that sent all the traffic there way. But we're sure they will be able to build their own... Newsweek.com

Thank Cho Seung-Hui for your traffic spike

-NEIL YOSHIDA We were wondering how long it would have taken for someone to point out how others are benefiting from the Virginia Tech murders. Mediaweek's Mike Shields takes us through how traffic has picked up at major online news portals as the story unfolds. Why do we feel that somewhere at each of the major websites mentioned in Shields' article some sick individual is saying or has said, "If only we could get a story like this every month". But its not geometry, major events brings more traffic and/or newscast viewership. Category leader Yahoo News saw its audience swell 13 percent to more than 8 million uniques on Monday versus the previous week. Meanwhile, MSNBC.com and CNN.com experienced monster gains, as their unique audiences surged by 47 percent and 45 percent respectively. Each site continued to see its total user base grow on Tuesday as more details of the story emerged, with Yahoo and MSNBC’s unique audiences hitting 8.5 and 8.4 million uniques that day. Web Traffic Surges As Virginia Tech Story Unravels [Mediaweek]

Less cable more net: Exactly what does Dick Parsons have in store for Time Warner?

-LENN HINDSMANN Dick Parsons' contract may be up next year, but based on reports this morning, the Time Warner ruler may be planning to go out with a bang. The WSJ reported that the company may be leaning towards selling off a piece of its cable business so it can dive deeper into the web game. So is the media giant trading traditional TV for web TV? Rumors are also circulating that the company may be eyeing another major internet operation like MSN or recent start up Joost.com. Oh, the irony! The theory behind the strategy, apparently, is that cable will become increasingly commoditized and less relevant in a world with the Internet and Internet TV, etc. It was, of course, exactly this sort of thinking that led to the "transformative" AOL-Time Warner merger in the first place. Without concurring that cable will become less relevant (somebody has to plumb the pipes), this would lend credence to the idea that the AOL-Time Warner merger wasn't a colossal, bubble-headed Time Warner Considers Selling Cable, Investing in Internet [Seeking Alpha]