Mediagazer: Study: Most Brands Still Irrelevant on Twitter (Michael Learmonth/AdAge)

12:00 AM ET, July 28, 2010

Top News:

John Cook / Yahoo! News:

Leaked files indicate U.S. pays Afghan media to run friendly stories — Buried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories.

Discussion: Foreign Policy, FishbowlNY, Journalism and the World, Romenesko and Slate

C.W. Anderson / Nieman Journalism Lab:
When do 92,000 documents trump an off-the-record dinner?

Discussion: Washington Post, Big Questions Online, The Atlantic Online, New York Times, Mother Jones, ProPublica, NPR, Open Culture, Politics Daily, CJR, Editors Weblog and Hot Air

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
WikiLeaks Rolled Dice to Raise Its Profile

Discussion: Digits, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Daily Kos, techPresident, Computerworld, Reuters, New York Times, CNET News, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor, J-Source, The Huffington Post, The Caucus and Beet.TV

Joel Meares / CJR:
WaPo, Time, and Others Play Catch-up on WikiLeaks

Discussion: The Biz Blog, On Media's Blog, Strupp, Time, New York Observer, Los Angeles Times, Swampland and THE WEEK

Michael Calderone / Yahoo! News:

Ex-Washington Post blogger David Weigel joins Slate — Journalist David Weigel, who resigned from the Washington Post last month after a leaked-email controversy, is joining Slate as a political reporter. — “I'm thrilled to be joining Slate, thrilled to be working with writers I've read …

Discussion: Mediaite, Runnin' Scared, On Media's Blog, New York Observer, New York Magazine, FishbowlDC, National Review, Gawker and Politics Daily

Deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Steve McPherson Resigns! — 3RD UPDATE 6:20 PM: We just received this statement from Steve McPherson about his future plans: “I'll be announcing my future plans shortly which will include a new entrepreneurial venture in the spirits business. While I will continue …

Discussion: Variety, Media Decoder, The Daily Beast, Moraes on TV, Movieline, New York Magazine and The Biz Blog

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

MTV Releasing Facebook Game and iPhone App to Promote “Jersey Shore” — The second season of MTV's reality hit, Jersey Shore, will debut this coming Thursday. To build anticipation around the first episode fist-pump style, MTV is releasing a Facebook game and iPhone app that will feature …

Discussion: BRANDING UNBOUND

Brian Stelter / New York Times: Reality Show Payrolls Rise With Stardom

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Facebook launches a “Facebook + Media” page — Last night, Facebook unveiled a project that it's had in the works for a while: a media page devoted to journalists, developers, and other “media partners.” Facebook + Media is dedicated, it says, to “helping news, TV, video, sports …

Discussion: Hacks and Hackers …

Justin Osofsky / Facebook Developers:
Working with Media Organizations to Build Social News

Discussion: The Next Web, Online Journalism Blog, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard, All Facebook, Fast Company, Romenesko, The Wire, Mashable!, The Wrap and Editors Weblog

Daniel Frankel / The Wrap:

The Twitter Effect Isn't What Hollywood Thought — The Twitter Effect. — The term entered the lexicon last summer after Universal's Sacha Baron Cohen comedy “Bruno” tumbled more than 36 percent in its first 24 hours in theaters. — One year later, the social media trend …

Discussion: The Big Picture and MediaPost

Patricia Sellers / Fortune:

Steve Jobs' mark on ABC's Lost — How the Apple CEO may have changed the course of the hit ABC show with one comment back in 2005. — by Patricia Sellers, editor-at-large — from left to right Carlton Cuse, Barry Jossen, Damon Lindelof, and Anne Sweeney

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction:

Longlist announced for Man Booker Prize 2010 — Man Booker Dozen announced — The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world. — A total of 138 books …

Discussion: GalleyCat, Jacket Copy, New York Magazine, New York Observer and The Second Pass

Dominic Ponsford / Editor's Blog:

The paywall debate: At the Financial Times there is no debate, it works — Wherever you stand on the great paywall debate, you can't argue with the fact that one UK national newspaper publisher has proved that a paywall can work. — Figures released by the Financial Times yesterday revealed …

Discussion: Press Gazette

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:
'FT's paywall helps us understand users'

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Dawn C. Chmielewski / Los Angeles Times:

Hulu's sharp decline in viewership underscores inconsistency in measuring size of online audience — Contradictory data from competing measurement firms make it hard for advertisers to determine which websites should get their business. — Keith Richman, chief executive of Break.com …

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Discovery Promotes Digital Media Head Campbell — Discovery Communications (NSDQ: DISCA) is giving corporate development exec Bruce Campbell some additional responsibilities as chief development officer and general counsel. At the same time, Campbell will be handing over his duties …

Discussion: Variety, Discovery Communications …, Guardian and MediaPost

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Redstone gifted rocker with his own stock — THR EXCLUSIVE: Mogul gave shares to Barbarellas singer — NEW YORK — Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone gave the lead singer of a girls' band some of his own company stock as a personal gift, according to a copy of the regulatory filing obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Discussion: Company Town and MediaPost

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Study: Most Brands Still Irrelevant on Twitter — Marketers Are Certainly Tweeting, but Users Are Barely Listening — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Attention brands: Twitter users aren't talking to you or about you. In fact, they barely know you exist. — That's one of the conclusions …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Crikey

Mark Fitzgerald / EditorandPublisher.com:

New ABC Publisher's Statement Will Count ‘Branded Editions’ and Nonpaid ‘Verified’ Circulations — CHICAGO — The Audit Bureau of Circulations' board approved sweeping changes in the way newspapers report circulation. — Among the changes: Newspapers that publish so-called “branded editions” …

Discussion: Romenesko, Newsonomics, ReadWriteWeb and paidContent

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Newspapers Hit New Low as an Information Source — The number of Americans who say that newspapers are an important source of information continues to decline, according to a survey by the The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Discussion: Bits, ReadWriteWeb, State of the Fourth Estate and News for Digital Journalists, more at Techmeme »

Karen Everhart / Current.org:

Uproar over Fresh Air in Mississippi — After Mississippi Public Broadcasting abruptly dropped Fresh Air from its radio schedule July 8, its explanation of “recurring inappropriate content” in the talk show didn't sit well with fans of the program. — Judith Lewis, executive director …

Discussion: Romenesko

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Piers Morgan on Jay Leno Tonight, Will He Talk Larry King? — Tonight “America's Got Talent” judge Piers Morgan will be a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” While Morgan is presumably there to discuss the semi-finals of the NBC talent show, Leno has promised to ask about that other show Morgan …

Discussion: On Media's Blog

Richard / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Recording Industry Giant Tries to Undermine ‘Safe Harbor’ Rules for Online Video Sites — San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of nonprofit groups have asked a federal appeals court to protect the “safe harbor” rules for online video service providers …

Discussion: NewTeeVee

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Value-added journalism — I asked Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, whether his paper should have started Wikileaks. I wondered whether the Guardian was looking at WIkileaks the way it looked at HuffPo when it started (that is, ‘darn, we should have thought of that, so we will’ ... and it started CommentIsFree).

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Why Fair Use is Not Just Acceptable, It's Essential for the Future — The Library of Congress added a number of ambitious new exceptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's prohibition of breaking copyright technologies today, most notably concerning iPhone jailbreaking and unlocking.

Discussion: Ars Technica, TeleRead, DailyFinance and Gizmodo