Mediagazer is to Media as Techmeme is to Tech

Today we're launching our first new news vertical in almost four years: Mediagazer, which will focus on the content production and distribution business, organizing topics as wide as journalism, blogging, video production, e-books, and digital distribution technologies.

Why it's been four years is an interesting tale. Our experience with Techmeme memeorandum, WeSmirch, and Ballbug taught us what was most valuable to readers, and why. That lead us to focus on one site, Techmeme, first by giving extra attention to the configurations controlling its automation, and second, introducing manual editing and evolving the process in which man and machine work in concert.

Mediagazer incoporates all these lessons. We've taken great care in its construction, have outfitted the site with the latest iteration of our automation engine, and have launched it from the outset with a dedicated human editor.

That editor will be Megan McCarthy. While Megan's career in media has focused more on the technology space (both at Gawker and at Techmeme), she's long developed an interest in media industry buzz and should feel very much at home at Mediagazer. Techmeme will continue to be edited by Rich DeMuro, Lidija Davis, Mahendra Palsule, and myself going forward.

For more on this see Megan's post on the site blog. Finally, we should emphasize our delight in featuring from day one five great sponsors targeting media companies: WordPress, Tynt, Zemanta, Smash Summit, and Seesmic. When you check out Mediagazer, please take a look at the companies helping to support it.