At a moment where it seems like everyone is lamenting the death of print, Disney is taking the opposite tack — it plans to build a children’s subscription magazine business in the U.S.

Such hopeful news! As it turns out, Disney’s magazine business is just thriving in Europe, and so on Tuesday, it plans to announce the introduction of not merely one but several new subscription magazines, the New York Times reports.

The problem is, of course, that unlike European kids, American kids apparently hate reading because they are too busy playing the latest video games, so even glossy magazines and comic books have been floundering (let alone actual books). Nickolodean killed its own kid magazine in 2009 to concentrate on its websites instead.

But Disney remains hopeful, as well as focused on the bottom line in this gamble — Aparna Pande, Disney’s general manager for American magazines, told the Times: “Kids want them, and moms will pay for them.”

Upcoming Disney glossies to look out for include Phineas and Ferb, a print companion to the animated television series of the same name, a monthly Cars magazine starting in the fall, and planned magazines built around Marvel movies like “Thor” and “Captain America.”

Now it’s just up to the kids to read them.

The latest issue of New York features a cover story on one of the city’s hottest topics: The bike lane debate. [Editor's note: I'm a cyclist, and the best way to sum up this debate is that a few idiots from each side have turned this thing into a shit show] The article thankfully takes time to present all sides of the argument, but there are still some fantastic quotes, like this one:

The anarchy that has been allowed to prevail is astonishing. According to butterfly theory, according to chaos theory, I am sure that the level of emotional and psychological damage wrought by the bicycle far exceeds the damage done by cars. It is homegrown terrorism. The cumulative effect is equivalent to what happened on 9/11.

And that’s an ex-bike shop owner! But hey, the guy has theories backing him – so he must not be overreacting.

Aside from crazy quotes, the article is so good that it prompted a response from our Deputy Mayor, Howard Wolfson. Check out the memo and the pro bike lane stats from Wolfson after the jump.

Read more

Following this morning’s announcement that the four New York Times journalists captured in Libya for six days were being released, Times’ executive editor Bill Keller came out with an internal memo with further details of their story:

Because of the volatile situation in Libya, we’ve kept our enthusiasm and comments in check until they were out of the country, but now feels like a moment for celebration. And before long we’ll all know the details of their experience.

Keller identified David McCraw, the Times‘ assistant general counsel, and Chris Chivers, a writer for the Times‘ At War blog, as being instrumental in the release of the four journalists.

Keller also added that “this is a reminder that real, boots-on-the-ground journalism is hard and sometimes dangerous work,” an unsurprising sentiment from him considering his recent piece for the New York Times Magazine on the declining state of journalism in the face of new media.

The Turkish embassy provided Yahoo with the above picture of the four journalists taken this morning in the Turkish embassy in Libya, where the group appears to be in remarkably good spirits considering their recent ordeal. (From the left: Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks, Turkish ambassador Levent Sahinkaya, Lynsey Addario, Anthony Shadid).

Read the full memo after the jump. Read more

Do people who eat at places like Le Cirque clip coupons? Hearst is hoping so, because it just invested three million in VillageVines, a start-up that gives subscribers discounts at expensive restaurants when they make reservations through the site.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this might be a smart move by Hearst, because restaurants get to decide which reservations are available to VillageVines members, making it a very vendor-friendly service.

Unfortunately, something tells us with snooty restaurants having all the power, the reservations are probably only enticing to those who like eating dinner at 3:30 PM or getting wild on a Tuesday night. Vendor-friendly? Sure. Consumer-friendly? Not really.

Huffington Post had an unlikely ally today — Dan Abrams, founder of digital media company Abrams Media, wrote a post on Mediaite defending Huffington Post from the hoardes of unpaid bloggers who are supposedly poised to go on strike against the giant aggregator.

Last week, the Newspaper Guild and its 26,000-member union called for all unpaid Huffington Post bloggers to withhold their work in support of a “strike” launched earlier this year by the art publication Visual Arts Source, whose writers had previously contributed free content to the Post.

Abrams’ problem with this move is the timing:

But why the public cry for a strike now? What happened last week? [...] Maybe, in the words of the Newspaper Guild, because the outcry comes “in the wake of its $315 million merger with AOL.” Ah. So it’s the fact that Huffington Post now has a distinct and clear numerical value?

Abrams doesn’t give let aggregation go entirely free of charge — he writes that “it’s also true that aggregation has had a disastrous effect on newspapers and I believe journalism as a whole.” But unlike the New York Times‘ Bill Keller (who really, really hates aggregation, and holds Huffington Post mostly responsible for its pervasiveness), Abrams says that “with or without Huffington Post, newspapers would be suffering the precise fate they are today.”

The problem is not Huffington Post in particular, says Abrams, but the broader problem of the Internet. So, he advises us all, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

It seems like new media is sticking up for its own.

The new paywall couldn’t come too soon.

Despite all the cost cutting they’ve been doing at the New York Times (CEO Janet Robinson reduced costs by $171 million in 2010), the stock is still down 21 percent for 2010, Business Insider reports.

Janet Robinson took a pay cut herself: in 2009 she earned $4.86 million, but her 2010 salary was only $4.48 million, down 8 percent. Not exactly a tragic loss. We doubt she’s complaining.

Salary cut notwithstanding, it appears that the Times‘ board acknowledged the cost-cutting work Robinson has been doing — it granted her a slightly larger bonus than 2009, up to $2.32 million compared with $2.25 million from the year before. Robinson’s overall salary cut was actually the result of her restricted stock and stock options shrinking, according to Business Insider.

With the much-dreaded (we mean anticipated!) paywall going up for the Times in 2011, it’s a big year to watch and see if its stock will start to pick up (along with the fortunes of its top executives).

Foster Kamer, most recently with Esquire, has been named Senior Editor at The New York Observer. Kamer is a nice grab by Elizabieth Spiers, who clearly wants to breathe life into the paper with more biting work. Kamer says he is already thinking of potential targets:

I’m giddy at the prospect of finally working with Elizabeth Spiers and the rest of the Observer team as they continue filling an important gap in New York’s media climate: an unrelenting curiosity for how power in this city works, who the characters are that hold it, and most importantly, a distinctly fearless voice with which to document it. I look forward to my forthcoming AdWeek hit-piece.

We’re looking forward to it as well.

UPDATE:
Kamer explains why he left Esquire, and says that he’s going to be covering Wall Street at the Observer.

GQ has named Lance Lin as its new Fashion Editor, effective April 4th. Lin will report directly to Jim Moore, the magazine’s Creative Director.

Lin most recently worked as Public Relations Director for Polo Ralph Lauren. At GQ he’ll focus on American sportswear.

WNET, the parent company of public broadcasters WNET/Channel 13 and WLIW/Channel 21, is going to cover local news on the Web starting around Memorial Day.

The New York Times reports the venture, called MetroFocus, was envisioned as a 30-minute television show and a mobile application as well. The Times says television specials or regular monthly or weekly programs airing on both stations, could happen as soon as the fall. A daily version is likely thereafter.

Neal Shapiro, WNET president and chief executive, told The New York Times that the rollout to television would depend on fundraising, and also what is learned from the website.

The weekend is over, and because your bracket is definitely in shambles (if it isn’t, we hate you), FishbowlNY would like to shift your attention to a smart take on the New York Times paywall, written by David Carr. In a post filed yesterday, he basically says that if people want quality journalism, it had to happen. He explains that while it goes against the idea of an open Internet, reporting and journalism cost money, thus the paywall:

People, real actual people, went and reported that information [about Japan], some of it at personal peril and certainly at gigantic institutional expense. So The Times is turning toward its customers to bear some of the cost. The Times is hardly alone: AFP, Reuters, The Associated Press, Dow Jones, the BBC and NPR are all part of a muscular journalistic ecosystem. But it seems an odd time to argue against a business initiative that aims at keeping boots on the ground during a time of global upheaval.

Sure Carr is biased, but he’s completely right. The paywall is needed, and should’ve been there all along. If we’re all willing to flush money down the toilet trying to guess which basketball team wins the tourney, we should all be willing to pay for the best reporting in the world.

We’d also like to add that next year is Pitt’s year! We’re sure of it this time!