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The management of the Philadelphia Media Network — which publishes The Inquirer, The Daily News and Philly.com – has pitted itself against its newsroom leadership over coverage of a potential sale, Amy Chozick and David Carr write. Reporters and editors say they believe coverage has been steered to favor an investor group that includes the area’s most powerful Democrats – among them former Mayor Ed Rendell – and fear what might happen once they control the papers. The management, while conceding that an article and blog post related to the sale had been killed, said those were mistakes that would not be repeated.

The writer Buzz Bissinger, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, has an Op-Ed piece on the issue: “If the sale goes through, Philadelphia will become the first major city in the country to actually cease to have a real daily newspaper.”

The scrapbook/social-networking site Pinterest is getting some mainstream media attention: The Wall Street Journal focuses on the question of how the company, which has 16 employees based in Palo Alto, Calif., will convert its fast-growing user base into a profitable business. (There are businesses like the online crafts marketplace Etsy.com that credit Pinterest with sending a lot of buyers their way – but how it gets a share is still being worked out.)

David Pogue reviews Pinterest and gives it high marks (starting with having a name that makes sense – “you pin things based on your interest), but for design and ease of use, too. Most significantly, it is a outward-looking activity, rather than a self-absorbed one like Facebook or Twitter can be.

Mitt Romney’s faltering effort to lock up the Republican presidential nomination has been hurt by his “distant, complicated relationship with many of the conservative media’s leading voices,” Jeremy Peters writes. Even as he has gone out of his way, at times, to meet with these conservative pundits, they report that he has failed to connect and take their advice to heart. Ann Coulter, for example, an early backer of Mr. Romney, says she has never had a conversation with him or his campaign.

A good excuse as any to include the recent all-purpose cable pundit sentence posted by Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker: “At the end of the day, the game changer is a narrative that resonates going forward.”

Two media outlets were among the organizations awarded grants by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Felicia Lee writes on the ArtsBeat blog. The Center for Investigative Reporting, which has a staff of 40 and is based in Berkeley, Calif., received $1 million. The Moth, a New York-based group dedicated to storytelling that has an influential radio show, received $750,000 to produce its show weekly.

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Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Philadelphia's Hazy Newspaper Future, and Pinterest Gains Attention