The Washington Post is now selling native advertising for its print edition that should begin running in the third or fourth quarter. "The ad units on offer include one the Post calls an 'agenda setter,' wrapped around a portion of the front page and featuring both display advertising and copy resembling editorial content,"writes Michael Sebastian. "Another execution sits among true editorial content on the fold inside the paper."

Two cable networks that launched last week posted less-than-stellar ratings. Fox Sports 1 averaged 161,000 viewers in prime time, according to Nielsen estimates -- slightly more than Speed, the channel it replaced, had averaged in the same time frame. "The top draws for the net were NASCAR racing events on Wednesday (540,000) and Saturday (428,000)," writes Rick Kissell in Variety.Al Jazeera America's first numbers were also low for a cable news network -- not a big surprise, since it had "lost a few million homes from AT&T before launch (it is …

The New York Times website went black again yesterday, for the second time this month -- only the latest episode was caused by an outside attack by the Syrian Electronic Army, the Times announced (first outage was reportedly an internal maintenance problem). The Army has previously attacked the sites of The Washington Post, the Financial Times and The Onion.

ESPN and Turner Sports are trying to end their NASCAR broadcast rights agreement a year early, which "could allow Fox Sports and NBC Sports Group to become the sport’s broadcasters next year," writes Tripp Mickle & John Ourand. Talking with NASCAR about these steps "is precedent-setting in an industry where live sports rights are held sacred," the two reporters write. "For at least the past decade, no rights holder has exited a major media agreement with a property early."

The Federal Communications Commission is now actively engaged in trying to bring an end to the Time Warner Cable-CBS carriage battle, which has led to a CBS station blackout for TWC subscribers in New York, Dallas and Los Angeles. An FCC spokesperson would not elaborate on exactly what steps the commission was taking. Still, "according to a source, one of the parties must file a complaint -- neither had at press time -- before the commission can weigh in on whether either side is violating FCC rules mandating good faith negotiations, which is the regulatory muscle the FCC can flex …

The old-fashioned, copy-intensive Jarvis Appliance ad that recently ran on The Baltimore Sun's home page generated negative buzz, featuring "an aesthetic seemingly borrowed from PennySaver" that at least one commenter called "terrible," writes Tim Peterson. "But the ad suggests one good thing for the paper," continues Peterson: "It shows that The Sun is getting very local advertisers to presumably pay top dollar for key inventory,"  Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Spanfeller Media Group, tells Peterson.

There's more to the magazine industry than those pubs tracked by the Alliance for Audited Media, writes D.B. Hubbard in Talking New Media. "Branded magazines, association and academic periodicals have always made up a significant portion of the industry, but it was probably safe to ignore them if you wanted to take the temperature of the magazine industry," Hubbard writes. Today, it's the digital newsstand that is being ignored, and shouldn't be, Hubbard opines.Meanwhile, "with naysayers focusing on the demise of print these days, what better time to take the art of the magazine to new …

The clock is ticking for Cablevision to sell: the cable operator "should take advantage of a surge in cable matchmaking" and "its highest valuation in two years," and do so now, according to various analysts cited by Alex Sherman. But the company itself did not comment on the possibility of a sale.

Rush Limbaugh has a signed a new three-year contract with Cumulus, despite reports that he was on the way out. "The only change... is that he will be leaving New York’s WABC in January for WOR," writes Andrew Kirell.

There's trouble brewing in the highest ranks of The New York Times, as new CEO Mark Thompson seems to be clashing with executive editor Jill Abramson, and Thompson seeks to build a closer relationship between the business and editorial side -- anathema to the newsroom, where "The mere presence of a corporate suit among the journalists was like a belch in a cathedral nave," writes Joe Hagen in a New York magazine piece.The Atlantic Wire's Alexander Nazaryan expands Hagen's reporting by also factoring in other coverage of behind-the-scenes gossip, including a piece that suggests Abramson is not …