Media Digest (3/28/2011) Reuters, WSJ, NYT, FT, Bloomberg

Facebook may hire the former White House press secretary Gibbs (Reuters)

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) will reopen stores it had to shutter in Japan (Reuters)

Jobs may be the lagging indicator for a recovery again (Reuters)

Angela Merkel’s party lost the election in an important German state (Reuters)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is working on a mobile payment technology (Reuters)

Research In Motion (NASDAQ RIMM) bought app developer tinyHippos (Reuters)

Time Warner’s (NYSE: TWX) Warner Bros. will test more movies on Facebook (Reuters)

Management said Roche is not for sale (Reuters)

Porsche disclosed plan to raise $7 billion (Reuters)

Democrats will offer $20 billion in cuts to avoid a shutdown of the federal government (WSJ)

The US economic improvement based on exports of agricultural and energy good may be hurt as the GDPs of many foreign nations slow (WSJ)

Mortgage companies have reduced balances on 100,000 home owners as regulators try to force banks to take similar actions (WSJ)

Nasdaq (NASAQ: NDAQ) and ICE are still at work on a deal to buy NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) but cannot agree on a price (WSJ)

A number of companies will fight proposed changes to US patent laws (WSJ)

Scottrade will offer lower cost ETFs. (WSJ)

Southwest Air will launch expanded service. (WSJ)

Glencore plans it Hong Kong IPO next month (WSJ)

Companies with large government contracts face cuts due to austerity programs (WSJ)

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) may have a deal to stream the Miramax film library (WSJ)

Fiscal problems in Europe and the earthquake in Japan may stretch the developed world to the point where it will have trouble handling new disasters (WSJ)

Mine companies have started to invest more in exploration and productions but demand may be growing too fast (WSJ)

Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) may move jobs from Illinois if it does not change its tax structure (WSJ)

ExecuNet Inc says CEOs and top executives who work for them often do not understand important company goals in the same way (WSJ)

KPMG International found that the forecasts of the manufacturing sector and the service sector are sharply divided (WSJ)

Trouble at MySpace has hurt its advertising base (WSJ)

Social news sites struggle with the issue of whether they should remove content which may fuel dissent in the Middle East (NYT)

Google’s YouTube has begun to get movie and TV stars to help create content to drive it premium viewer (FT)

US credit card companies have upped marketing to the upper class to lower exposure to poorer card holders (FT)

Ireland wants bondholders to take cuts as part of bank restructuring (Bloomberg)

With bond redemptions months away, Portugal’s president will call new elections in June (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre