Mediagazer: Among Celebrities, Mystery's Not Fashionable (Ben Brantley/New York Times)

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: Mediaite

Adrian Chen / Gawker:

The Art of Trolling: Inside a 4chan Smear Campaign — Last night, the users of 4Chan.org's notorious /b/ message board decided declared war on the lead singer of an obscure electro-pop band. More than 12 hours later, they're still waging it. This is how the Internet's worst trolls works.

Discussion: dygiscape and Runnin' Scared

Peter Preston / Guardian:

The Mail's online miracle: or how to get paid without a paywall — The debate is always black and white: put up a paywall or lose money. But the Daily Mail's website is getting so big it needn't do either — Inside Mail HQ at Northcliffe House in London, print and online editions are run separately.

Discussion: FleetStreetBlues

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: Talk Show News

Matt Zimmerman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

San Mateo D.A. Withdraws Controversial Gizmodo iPhone Warrant — Today, San Mateo Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan granted an application by the San Mateo County D.A.'s office to withdraw the controversial warrant it obtained to search the house of Gizmodo.com journalist Jason Chen.

Discussion: GroundReport.com, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, TUAW, Fast Company, MacRumors, SlashGear, Poynter Online and The Loop

Ben Brantley / New York Times:

Among Celebrities, Mystery's Not Fashionable — WHERE have all the sphinxes gone? There's not a person on this planet today who could make my heart stop as it did when I saw Greta Garbo on Madison Avenue. It was the last day of 1985, on an afternoon steeped in that merciless brightness …

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 and Jon Slattery

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Zero tolerance for latency — The big battle of the coming years will be a battle for time. For media related software or for web design, the fight will be for customers' or readers' attention, the challenge will be to prevent them from fleeing elsewhere and to give them more in less time.

Andrew Alexander / Washington Post:

Why the silence from The Post on Black Panther Party story? — Thursday's Post reported about a growing controversy over the Justice Department's decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. The story succinctly summarized the issues …

Discussion: Mediaite, Chickaboomer, Media Matters for America, The Politico and The Week

Richard Lawson / Gawker:

Rupert Murdoch to Staff: Don't Slack Off Just Because It's Summer — Crikey! Ragin' media bandicoot Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp., would like his slaves/employees to know that, despite it being languid, lazy summer, he doesn't want anyone taking a relaxed attitude toward work.

Discussion: Runnin' Scared

n+1:

More on books, technology, Luddism — Image: Phiz. “Engraving of a rioting mob of Luddites.” 1813. From the LIFE archive at Google. — In response or in addition to the two essays this week on the future of reading and writing, we've asked the authors, as well as editor Mark Greif, to answer us two questions.

Discussion: New York Observer

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Yes, Even Big Professional Journalism Operations Make Mistakes — For the most part, the way this blog works is that we write stories based on what's being reported on elsewhere, and add some analysis or opinion or response to the story. Then, we let the discussion happen.