One of the side benefits of coming to Austin for South By Southwest Interactive: spending some time at the Texas Tribune, the non-profit news site launched last November to cover statewide politics, public policy and government. The enterprise started with venture capitalist John Thornton, who recruited Texas Monthly‘s Evan Smith as CEO and Editor in Chief. Smith and I spoke about the transition from magazine to web journalism, how Facebook and Twitter can—and should—be used for news, and ways to work with other non-profit journalism efforts across the U.S. A dozen of those news organizations will meet here in Austin next month under the auspices of the Knight Foundation to discuss just that. I’ll pull some excerpts but for now, here’s the video:

Recognizing the shaky economic climate and Motorola’s still tenuous market position, the company’s two CEOs Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha voluntarily have agreed to a 25 percent pay-cut for the second year in a row, according to a proxy statement filed with the SEC today. The pair will have a base salary of to $900,000, which is 25 percent lower than the $1.2 million salary agreed to in 2008.

Still, that pay cut probably doesn’t make up for the headline-grabbing bonuses that Jha received when he was first hired, or the bonuses he will receive regardless of whether the company’s break-up plans are successful. In 2008, Jha received compensation of more than $100 million. Additionally, he will receive a $38 million if the mobile device division is not spun-off, and if it is successful, he will receive between 1.8 percent and 3 percent based on the market capitalization of the new business.

Mark Cuban and Avner Ronen met in person for the first time just before their Pay TV vs. Internet debate here at South by Southwest Interactive—about 20 minutes before their session was interrupted by a fire alarm. But they argue like a married couple that’s been together for 20 years, complete with sharp barbs. That’s because the debate isn’t new: they started that drill online a year ago and neither has budged as best I can tell—if anything, their attitudes are more entrenched. HD Net founder Cuban believes in subscription TV and sees Ronen, the CEO of Boxee, as representing free-only; Ronen believes TV over the internet is the present—and the future but a la carte. He’s not anti-pay per se—Boxee is working on a pay offering—but anti-establishment TV. Cuban doesn’t see an internet TV business model that works yet.

“If you’re counting on the internet replacing cable, you’re crazy,” says Cuban; Ronen posits it as generational—if you’‘re 50 with HD, you’re comfortable the way things are; if you’re 23 and getting your first apartment, you see things differently. Cuban doesn’t see the same possibility of making money from TV online; he’d rather get small amounts—when he can—from multichannel distributors.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) COO Tim Cook was handed a $5 million bonus just for taking over Steve Jobs’ responsibilities during the six-months the CEO was on medical leave that ended in June, according to an 8-k filing. In addition to $5 million in cash, Cook was also awarded 75,000 restricted stock units. The WSJ estimated that the combination of cash and stock units add up to $22 million in total compensation.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) was selling pre-orders for the iPad at a rate of about 25,000 an hour this morning, according to a Forbes Fortune piece. The methodology is very unscientific; it’s based on differences between the order numbers assigned to early buyers.

But if it is accurate, here’s how it compares to some initial figures thrown around during the debut of the iPhone and iPhone 3G S: Pre-orders were not allowed for the first iPhone, but about 200,000 phones were sold in stores on the first day the phone was available. As for the iPhone 3G S there were reportedly “hundreds of thousands” of pre-orders.

»  Why Marc Andreessen’s idea that mainstream media companies should abandon their traditional businesses in favor of new media is just plain nutty. [Reflections of a Newsosaur]

»  Former FCC chairman Redd Hundt fully explains why, in 1994, he chose to favor broadband over broadcast. [TVNewsCheck]

»  Cloud gaming service OnLive will offer rentals on a game-by-game basis. [GamesIndustry.biz]

»  Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) tries to stop a company from trademarking the name “DOPi”—because it’s “iPod” spelled backwards—but a trademarks tribunal quashes the claim. [Digital Life]

»  A new nonprofit focuses on giving kids Kindles in developing countries. [TechFlash]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has improved the way it measures the global device market, including coming up with a better way to calculate the number of unlicensed and counterfeit products being sold in the market. Given that, Nokia went back and recalculated the industry’s overall performance last year and how it did comparatively.

Using the new methodologies, Nokia said 1.26 billion phones shipped in 2009, up from its original estimate of 1.14 billion. Because the market grew, and Nokia’s sales stayed constant, the handset maker’s share sank to 34 percent from a previous estimate of 38 percent. Nokia has also revised its expectations for 2010. It expects volumes to grow by a healthy 10 percent, which should be a welcome sign compared to a relatively flat 2009, but said it expects its market share to stay flat.

China has now reiterated its position in its standoff with Google (NSDQ: GOOG)—and it looks like all that remains is for Google to finally make its move. China says it won’t let Google operate an unfiltered search engine in the country. The latest statement from a government minister (via CNET): “If you insist on taking this action that violates Chinese laws, I repeat: you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and you yourself will have to bear the consequences.”

While the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT) struggled under the weight of economic pressures and debt last year, top execs personally did pretty well, even as the company reduced its newsroom by 100 staffers. As the company’s recent Q4 results showed, cost-cutting led to greater profitability and that appears to show in the compensation of chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and president/CEO Janet Robinson, according to the NYTCo’s latest SEC filing.

Sonos, which sells a digital music system that can be used to play music throughout a home, has raised $25 million in a third round of funding from Index Ventures. The funding was first reported by TechCrunch earlier this week and confirmed by Sonos CEO John MacFarlane in an interview with AllThingsD. Index Ventures Partner (and former Cisco exec) Mike Volpi is joining Sonos’ board.

ABC News Digital execs are currently putting together a formal paywall strategy with expectations of having some concrete ideas for ways to charge consumers by the summer, said Paul Slavin, the unit’s SVP, in an interview with paidContent. This isn’t the first time ABC News has traveled the paid content route. Back in 2003, it created a premium program tied to the 2004 presidential election. Also at that time, ABCNews, along with CNN, put video behind a subscription wall, both as a standalone and as part of short-lived services RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) SuperPass and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Platinum. But a lack of traction among viewers forestalled those efforts and they were quickly abandoned. In the interim, rising online ad dollars in the second half of the decade made talk of paywalls and subscriptions at the network seem more academic than anything else.