Mediagazer: Jim Gray's LeBron James interview draws criticism for its soft questioning (Howard Kurtz/Washington Post)

Jim Gray's LeBron James interview draws criticism for its soft questioning — Jim Gray, the veteran sportscaster who has a reputation as a tough interviewer, has drawn less than rave reviews for his gentle questioning of LeBron James about the basketball star's decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Discussion: Show Tracker, The Huffington Post, CNBC, New York Times, The Wire, Soup and SBNation.com

ESPN's LeBron circus good for TV ratings, bad for sports media … Author and LeBronologist Buzz Bissinger described it as TV's equivalent of waterboarding. New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro called it an “awful night for Cleveland, worse night for sports, worst night for ESPN.”

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Deadline.com, Romenesko, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CNBC and New York Magazine

Mike / reddit:

reddit needs help — We've been kinda bummed at reddit these days. It seems like every week something comes up that slows performance to a crawl or even leads to a total site outage. And we almost never get a chance to release new features anymore. — Our four engineers — KeyserSosa …

Discussion: AppScout, Erictric, TechCrunch and eMedia Vitals

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

Stats: How ESPN's World Cup Traffic Is Shaping Up — With the World Cup final coming Sunday, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) provided us with an update on how much traffic its digital properties have generated from the tournament to date. In total, ESPN says that a staggering 110,000 people per minute …

Mia / YouTube Blog:

What's bigger than 1080p? 4K video comes to YouTube — Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced support for videos shot in 4K, meaning that now we support original video resolution from 360p all the way up to 4K. To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size …

Discussion: Mashable!, Bits, CNET News, Podcasting News, Gizmodo, Slashdot, Tubefilter News, Silicon Alley Insider, Fortune, Engadget, Erictric, Switched, L.A. Times Tech Blog, AdAge and All Things Digital

David Brooks / New York Times:

The Medium Is the Medium — Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years. — Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington …

Discussion: The New Republic

Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:

Cable companies, networks mull smaller TV bundles — Idaho (Reuters) - Cable operators and entertainment companies are talking about selling cheaper cable TV packages with fewer channels to attract and keep customers trying to save money in a weak economy. — The talks, which are still …

Globe and Mail:

Lisa LaFlamme to replace Lloyd Robertson at CTV — Lisa LaFlamme will replace Lloyd Robertson as anchor of CTV National News, the network announced on Friday. — Ms. LaFlamme, who began her broadcast career at a Kitchener-Waterloo affiliate in 1988, is currently national affairs correspondent for CTV News.

Discussion: TVNewser

MediaShift:

Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age — Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

Gillian Reagan / Capital New York:

Radio Days: Brian Lehrer on the connection between ‘user engagement’ and ‘listener support’ — One of the great things about local radio, according to Brian Lehrer, the 57-year-old, glasses-wearing host of an eponymous WNYC talk show for the past 21 years, is its smallness.

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

ESPN is planning to introduce a campaign that seeks to burnish the cable channel's brand rather than to encourage viewers to watch specific programs. — The campaign, scheduled to get under way on Monday, carries the theme “It's not crazy. It's sports.” The campaign takes …

Discussion: Tower Ticker, AdAge, Romenesko and USA Today

Mark Carter / ArkansasBusiness.com:

Four KARK Employees Fired In Video Aftermath; Nexstar VP Apologizes — Three KARK on-air employees and a photographer have been fired in the aftermath of two profanity-laden spoof videos posted to video-sharing website YouTube, ArkansasBusiness.com has learned.

Discussion: International Media, Romenesko and Gawker