Mediagazer: Billboards That Can See You — Japan Pioneers Use of Cameras … (Wall Street Journal)

5:10 PM ET, September 3, 2010

Top News:

Mary Walton / American Journalism Review:

Investigative Shortfall — Many news outlets are doing far less accountability reporting than in the past, bad news indeed for the public. New nonprofit investigative ventures have emerged, but they can't pick up the slack by themselves. On her last day at Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel …

Discussion: The Solomon Scandals, Romenesko and National Media

Team Vox:

Vox is closing September 30, 2010 — Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010. — This doesn't mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you've shared on Vox …

Discussion: Venture Chronicles, Epicenter, The Blog Herald and Pulse2

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch: Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered

Newsweek:

All the Propaganda That's Fit to Print — Why Xinhua, China's state news agency, could be the future of journalism. — It had all the trappings of a globally significant confab: big-deal appearances (by Google, BBC), a weighty theme ("the digital age"), and speechifying by international pooh-bahs.

Discussion: Romenesko and New York Magazine

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Digg's Decline, Illustrated — Why does Digg have a new design and a new CEO? Here's one answer, via a handy chart. — This one comes from Christopher Mascari, a Gawker Media marketing guy, and it illustrates the blog network's traffic from social media sites.

Discussion: GigaOM, Fast Company, Silicon Alley Insider, HipMojo.com and The Wire, more at Techmeme »

Liz Gannes / GigaOM:

Ev Williams: Twitter Will Actually Help Information Overload — At its core, Twitter is a “recipient-driven medium,” said CEO Evan Williams in a public conversation tonight in San Francisco, Calif. What does that mean? Williams, an unusually theoretical CEO, is happy to explain.

Discussion: Twitter Blog, broadstuff and Brian Solis, more at Techmeme »

Jon Lafayette / Multichannel News:

Disney, Time Warner Cable Finalize Programming Deal — Operator Will Launch ESPN.com, Disney Jr. — The Disney/ABC Television Group and its Walt Disney Co. sibling ESPN finalized their retransmission consent and cable carriage deal with Time Warner Cable without any of the popular channels fading to black on the cable system.

Discussion: Multichannel, Wall Street Journal, paidContent, Hollywood Reporter, Business Wire, Company Town, Broadcasting & Cable and MediaPost

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:
New ESPN TV Everywhere Service Begins With Time Warner Cable Deal

Discussion: MediaPost, Multichannel and blogs.tampabay.com

Tumblr Staff:

Fixing Content Attribution (Once and For All) — Back when we launched two of Tumblr's most unique features, reblogging and the Tumblr Bookmarklet, we devised automatic “via” links in post captions as a simple solution for attribution. Three years later, this solution has gotten us pretty far.

Discussion: Soup

Wall Street Journal:

Billboards That Can See You — Japan Pioneers Use of Cameras, Sensors That Let Signs Identify Their Audience — TOKYO—Inside the bustling Shinagawa train station here, a futuristic-looking vending machine has replaced rows of drink bottles and cans with a 47-inch touch-screen monitor.

Discussion: Gawker and State of the Fourth Estate

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Connected-TV Race: Yahoo Lands A European Telly Maker — The connected-TV space is getting HOT. Manufacturer platforms like Samsung Internet@TV and Sony Internet TV are set to mix with Google TV and Yahoo Connected TV, while the UK's Freeview TVs await connectivity upgrades through Dbook 7 and Canvas …

Discussion: MarketWatch, MediaPost, TechEye and Fast Company

Jeff Bercovici / DailyFinance:

Explaining the Cozy Relationship Between Apple and News Corp. — This week's big product news fromApple (AAPL) was made possible in part by News Corp. (NWS), which agreed to make its TV shows available for rent at the ultra-low price of 99 cents per episode via the Apple TV device.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter

Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter: Why You (Still) Can't Cut the TV Cord: It's Not Technical, It's Just Business

Wall Street Journal:

A New Digital Battlefield — Amazon, Apple Rivalry Moves Beyond Music and E-Books Into TV Shows — TV shows are emerging as a new front in the war over digital media between Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., amid their ongoing battles over electronic books and online music.

Discussion: Company Town and Digits

Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:

Exclusive deals make 3D TV audience even smaller — Panasonic offered an interactive demonstration of its 3D technology at the 2010 U.S. Open tennis tournament. — (Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET) — NEW YORK—Just having the latest and greatest 3D-enabled TV won't guarantee …

Discussion: NewTeeVee

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

The Atlantic Joins the iTunes Newsstand — It's $4.99 a pop at Apple's (AAPL) digital store, and publisher Atlantic Media Company got Dow to pony up for the right to be the “launch sponsor” for the app. App developer RareWire did the technical heavy lifting.

Discussion: Publishing Executive News, The Wire and Voices on All Things Digital, more at Techmeme »

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:

Q & A: Longshot co-founder Alexis Madrigal — “An event that is also a magazine...a magazine made out of Internet.” — This past May, a group of California writers and designers hunkered down one weekend in the Mother Jones office for a radical experiment in publishing: an independent magazine fully produced in just two days.

Cary Spivak / American Journalism Review:

Short on Ethics? — Two Web sites that investigate business fraud are funded by short selling—placing market bets that the stock of companies they write about will go down. It's an approach that makes journalism ethicists very uncomfortable. — Cary Spivak (cspivak01@gmail.com) …

Discussion: Romenesko

Shawn Moynihan / EditorandPublisher.com:

Q&A: Journalism Online's Gordon Crovitz — NEW YORK — Journalism Online has arrived on the paid-content scene with the purpose of providing publishers a wider variety of options in charging for online access. With its Press+ service, publishers can determine which of its Web offerings …

Discussion: Romenesko