Mediagazer: Times paywall: the numbers are out (should we charge for this?) (Dan Sabbagh/Beehive City)

7:35 AM ET, July 19, 2010

Top News:

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger — ARLINGTON, Va. — In most newsrooms, the joke would have been obvious. — It was April Fools' Day last year, and Politico's top two editors sent an e-mail message to their staff advising of a new 5 a.m. start time for all reporters.

Discussion: New York Magazine

Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:

Can We Talk? — On July 7, CNN fired its senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she published a Twitter message saying, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah,” one of the most prominent Lebanese Shiite spiritual leaders who was involved in the founding of the Hezbollah militia.

Discussion: Ph.D. Octopus, Journalism and the World and Mediaite

Dan Sabbagh / Beehive City:

Times paywall: the numbers are out (should we charge for this?) — How's The Times/Sunday Times paywall thing doing? — Well, Beehive City said we didn't believe that the endless graphs about the levels of web traffic to The Times homepage told you anything.

Discussion: Guardian, Press Gazette, paidContent:UK, Guy Fawkes' blog, Editors Weblog, Jon Slattery and FleetStreetBlues, more at Techmeme »

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Why Web host shut down 73,000 blogs a mystery — Note: For more recent news on this issue, read “Mystery shrouds closures of blog, forum platforms.” — Blogetery.com, a little-known WordPress platform used by more than 70,000 blogs, was shut down by its Web hosting company more than a week ago …

Discussion: MediaMemo, ReadWriteWeb and Pulse2, more at Techmeme »

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Conan O'Brien's Love/Hate Relationship with the Internet — Back in January Conan O'Brien was supposed to come to San Francisco for a SF Sketchfest Tribute and Q&A about his career. And then, he lost his dream job as he said, “s**t really hit the fan” and he had to cancel.

Discussion: Robert Accettura's Fun …

David Carr / New York Times:

Post-Mortem: No Hair Shirt for Steve Jobs — By now, most people know what happens when your fingers come in contact with the lower left-hand corner of the iPhone 4 — are you there? — but it took the touch of an old-line, nontech tester of technology to get Apple to admit as much.

Discussion: Gizmodo, WHAT'S NEXT, The Loop and Fortune, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Online, a Journalist Adds a Business Role — Kelly Wallace's move from television to the Internet embodies the lingering differences between the forms. — Ms. Wallace spent a decade in front of the camera as a reporter and anchor at CBS and CNN. Then she got the online itch …

James Hibberd / Hollywood Reporter:

E! co-founder launches celebrity website — Online network the Look also includes fashion programming — The co-founder of E! is launching a celebrity-focused online network complete with several programs in the hope of establishing a new brand in the entertainment programming space.

NPR:

Numbers Stations: Mystery Over The Airwaves … In the shadowy corners of the shortwave radio spectrum, you can often find mysterious mechanical voices counting off endless strings of numbers — in English, Czech, Russian and German ... even Morse code. But who's listening?

Jonathan Handel / Hollywood Reporter:

Transportation strike could paralyze Hollywood — Teamsters dispute with studios may lead to Aug. shutdown — In two weeks, Hollywood might be stranded by the side of the road. — A labor drama playing out behind closed doors could lead to an Aug. 1 strike by thousands of transportation workers …

Discussion: New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

justin & lex @ g20:

Christie Blatchford, You're Obsolete. — FROM LEX: — I've been really dying to respond to Christie Blatchford's ridiculous article in the Globe and Mail for the last two weeks, but every time I sit down to write about it, I just get cranky. Especially because the July 3rd issue …

Michael Triplett / Mediaite:

Peggy Noonan Fears the Whippersnappers in Cyberspace — Every week, Peggy Noonan taps away at her Selectric typewriter, I assume, and offers new insight into what scares the old folks at the Wall Street Journal's opinion page. This week, it's young people in journalism and the lack …

Discussion: The Corner on National …