Mediagazer: Google, Content Farms & Why This May Be Blekko's Moment (Greg Sterling/Search Engine Land)

12:15 PM ET, July 27, 2010

Top News:

Data, diffusion, impact: Five big questions the Wikileaks story raises about the future of journalism — Whenever big news breaks that's both (a) exciting and (b) relevant to the stuff I research, I put myself through a little mental exercise. I pretend I have an army of invisible Ph.D. students …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Guardian, Daily Kos, CJR, Law Blog, ProPublica, Open Culture, J-Source, NPR, Hot Air, CNET News, The Politico, The Nation, The Caucus, Politics Daily, Christian Science Monitor, Matt McAlister and Kirk LaPointe's …

Fred Kaplan / Slate:

No one who's been paying attention should be surprised by the WikiLeaks documents about the war in Afghanistan. — Just because some documents are classified doesn't mean that they're news or even necessarily interesting. A case in point is the cache of 92,000 secret documents …

Discussion: Gawker, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, ProPublica, Fast Company, msnbc.com, Danger Room and George Brock

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

WikiLeaks Rolled Dice to Raise Its Profile — Website Collaborated With Mainstream Media on Afghan Leaks After Previous Scoops Failed to Win Enough Attention — WikiLeaks, frustrated at the lack of splash of recent leaks on its whistle-blowing website, has rolled the dice to try to raise …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Beet.TV, more at Techmeme »

Joel Meares / CJR:

WaPo, Time, and Others Play Catch-up on WikiLeaks — What to do when you don't get the exclusive — Whereas The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel had a four week heads-up on the 91,000-document WikiLeaks dump, the rest of the media found themselves playing catch-up when the big story went live on Sunday.

Discussion: Time, Los Angeles Times and Swampland

Justin Osofsky / Facebook Developers:

Working with Media Organizations to Build Social News — Small blogs to major media organizations focus on producing great content and surfacing it to the right people. Facebook Platform offers the ability to supplement this content by making the experience more social …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Romenesko, The Wire, The Wrap, Editors Weblog, Mashable!, Online Journalism Blog and WebNewser

China Real Time Report:

GQ China Pulls July Issue … The Chinese edition of GQ quietly recalled its July issue the day after it hit the newsstands to remove an unflattering feature on rich Chinese young people, but no one can say why. — On Friday, a news article discussing the recall was quickly taken …

Discussion: International Media, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Gawker and The Wire

Foster Kamer / Runnin' Scared:

BlogBeat: The New Yorker Is Working on a Profile of Nick Denton — After a long hiatus, the column that cost this company a cool mil in advertising has returned! BlogBeat is back, and this week, we're coming out swinging. The New Yorker's working on a forthcoming profile …

Discussion: Reuters

David Roeder / Chicago Sun Times:

Examiner finds fraud evidence in Tribune sale — An examiner probing Sam Zell's buyout of the Tribune Co. in late 2007 has found evidence of “dishonesty” in the deal's latter stages, a conclusion that could throw the company's 20-month-old bankruptcy case into turmoil.

Discussion: Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, National Media and Romenesko

Damien Hoffman / Wall St. Cheat Sheet:

A True American Success Story - with David Asman at Fox Business Network — This is Part 1 of a 2 part interview ... David Asman has lived an adventurous life on his road to classic American success. From a school teacher in Chicago to the host of a world wide show on Fox Business Network, David has worked hard for his rewards.

Discussion: Inside Cable News and Talking Biz News

Lawrence Meyer / Watchdog Blog:

The Newsroom on Steroids — Let's state the obvious at the outset: The Internet is a miraculous medium that makes it possible for people to communicate with each other from almost anywhere in the world, and it makes it possible for news organizations to report the latest news virtually …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

'FT's paywall helps us understand users' — The Financial Times has enjoyed another profitable six months, with total content revenues from print and online up 14% year on year. — Online sales showed record growth, meaning that FT.com subscription revenue in the first six months of this year was 48% ahead of the first half of 2009.

Discussion: Editor's Blog and Editors Weblog

Jonah Goldberg / Los Angeles Times:

The new journalism — Less gatekeeping, thanks to the Internet and Fox News, may be scary to liberals, but it's progress over the Cronkite era. — “The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as a national immune system, zapping scandal mongers and quashing wild rumors …

New York Times:

Disney Seeks $40 Million in Advance on Miramax — LOS ANGELES — An investment group that includes the construction executive Ronald N. Tutor must make a nonrefundable $40 million payment toward the purchase of Miramax Films from the Walt Disney Company by Wednesday to move forward with a deal, according to people briefed on the sale.

Discussion: Company Town, Hollywood Reporter and DailyFinance

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Reality Show Payrolls Rise With Stardom — Snooki had kissed The Situation, Ronnie had hugged Sammi goodbye and the cameras had stopped rolling. Last summer, “Jersey Shore” wasn't yet a runaway hit; it was just another reality show in the works for MTV. Nonetheless, the show's executive producer …

Tim King / Prospect Magazine:

The battle for Le Monde — Le Monde is France's “journal de reference,” where you go not for news but for an opinion on the news: profound reflections in weighty prose. But, like the printed press everywhere, it's losing readers fast, from 406,000 nine years ago to 288,000 last year.

Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:

The Partisan Tools At Journo-List And Trig — Remember all those liberals and lefties huffily denouncing this blog's attempts to make sense of Sarah Palin's bizarre stories about the pregnancy and birth of her alleged fifth child? I was nuts, crazy, vile, disgusting, etc etc to indulge in what Dave Weigel …

Discussion: Mediaite

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Misleading Stories About Race Raise Questions — In the last couple of days, Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Web site operator, has been called a liar, a provocateur, a propagandist — and even a race-baiter. But he says he knows who the true race-baiters are: some Democratic activists.

Discussion: MIJE.org, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard, The Latest Word, The Huffington Post, TVNewser, The Plum Line, Daily Kos, TPMDC, Detroit Free Press, The Hillman Foundation blogs, Runnin' Scared, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Media Research Center and Washington Post

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

Boston Screamer: News nabs Convey to pummel Post — Kevin Convey's office at the Boston Herald isn't far from downtown Boston, but its windows look southeast, across a freeway, toward Southie, the longstanding Irish and white ethnic Boston enclave that, in the past two decades, has rapidly gentrified.

Julie Bosman / Media Decoder:

Evanovich Takes Her Bounty to Random House — The blockbuster novelist Janet Evanovich has taken her scrappy bounty-hunter heroine Stephanie Plum to Random House, leaving her longtime publisher, St. Martin's Press, after more than two months of contract negotiations fell through.

Discussion: New York Observer and DailyFinance

Daniel Lyons / Newsweek:

Read On — Why the iPad hasn't killed the Kindle. — Amazon's Kindle e-reader is a terrific device, but a lot of people, myself included, figured that once Apple's iPad came out, the poor little Kindle would be toast. The first thing I did at the iPad introduction event was snap …

Discussion: msnbc.com

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Google, Content Farms & Why This May Be Blekko's Moment — At the beginning of Google's “Searchology” event in early 2007 original Google employee Craig Silverstein opined, “If Google had started a year or two earlier, it wouldn't have worked.” That's because prior to that time (1998) …

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Blip.tv Develops Pre-roll That Offers Free Downloads on Other Devices — Start-up's Video Ads Help Wieden Get Game Demos in Front of Xbox Users — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — What if your pre-roll video ads were more than just repurposed-for-the-web-TV spots, the kind agencies have in spades?

Discussion: AdExchanger.com

Rance Crain / AdAge:

The Real Scoop on Ad Age in the ‘Mad Men’ Era — Our Cameo in AMC Drama Skims Over Real-Life Drama of the '60s-Era Newsroom — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Legendary and irascible adman George Lois contends that “Mad Men,” which began its new season Sunday, “misrepresents the advertising industry …