Mediagazer: Short attention span theater: narrative and models of interaction (Peggy Nelson/Nieman Storyboard)

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

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Deadline.com, Romenesko, CNN and CNBC

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, eMedia Vitals, Erictric and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Felix Salmon:

Why is Nick Denton suddenly so bullish? — At the very end of his profile of Henry Blodget, Andrew Goldman drops in a jaw-dropping quote from Gawker founder Nick Denton: … This is by far the most bullish thing I've ever heard come from Denton and it makes me wonder whether, finally …

Discussion: Business Week

Andrew Alexander / Washington Post:

Making the online customer king at The Post — In a past era, there was little need to share marketing information with The Post's newsroom. Profits were high. Circulation was robust. Editors decided what they thought readers needed, not necessarily what they wanted.

NPR's On the Media:

The End of Libel? — It used to be that part of the cost of doing good journalism (or making the occasional mistake) was a libel suit. So imagine reporter John Koblin's surprise when he discovered that in the last few years domestic libel suits against the big media companies have quietly stopped.

Peggy Nelson / Nieman Storyboard:

Short attention span theater: narrative and models of interaction — [This post is the second in a series from new media artist Peggy Nelson considering the impact of technology on narrative. Nelson's work includes a barcode narrative, a PowerPoint essay, Twitter novels and a host of exciting new ways of looking at the idea of story.

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 …

Discussion: The Daily Beast

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, Slashdot, Gizmodo, Engadget, Tubefilter News, Silicon Alley Insider, Switched, Fortune, Erictric, 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

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, USA Today and MediaPost