Mediagazer: A Note to Readers: The Background (New York Times)

2:05 PM ET, April 25, 2011

Top News:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

BACKSTORY: How News Outlets Raced To Publish WikiLeaks Gitmo Docs — NEW YORK — On Sunday night, more than a half dozen major news organizations in the United States and Europe began publishing shocking new revelations from a long-rumored WikiLeaks trove of documents about prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

New York Times:
A Note to Readers: The Background

Discussion: Aljazeera, Guardian, Guardian, New York Times, The Atlantic Wire, The Lede, CNET News, The Nation, Hillicon Valley, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Mediaite, Boing Boing, @chanders and The Nation

Ian Cobain / Guardian: Guantánamo Bay files: Al-Jazeera cameraman held for six years

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

Filtering the Social Web to Present News Items — SAN FRANCISCO — News events as varied as the commercial jet landing in the Hudson River and the uprisings in Egypt have demonstrated that people armed with cellphones — not professional reporters — are often the first source of breaking news …

Discussion: Lost Remote, Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter, Noted and ReadWriteWeb

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The Future of Media: Storify and the Curatorial Instinct — The explosion of real-time information through social networks and information services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube has produced a never-ending firehose of content — and has also created an opportunity for tools such as Storify …

Thanks:mathewi

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Hard economic lessons for news — I'm working on a talk that I hope will become the canonical link to my essential message about the business rules and realities of news. I continue to be astonished at the economic naiveté I hear in discussions of the business of news.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Future of Journalism and Poynter

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Couric Is Expected to Say She's Leaving CBS — This week, Ms. Couric is planning to acknowledge one of the worst-kept secrets in television: that she is leaving the “CBS Evening News” after five years. Then, as soon as she returns from London, where she will be anchoring the network's coverage …

Discussion: TVNewser, Future of Journalism, Mediaite, Yahoo! News, On Media's Blog, The Wrap, The Wire, The Daily Caller, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Newsweek, New York Magazine and PopEater

John Swansburg / New York Magazine:

The Comic Stylings of Brian Williams — How's an anchor to cope when network newscasts keep losing ground? Having a second career helps. — Over dinner at The Four Seasons, Brian Williams takes off his regimental tie and discusses his burgeoning side career in comedy.

Discussion: Poynter and TVNewser

Adweek:

The Hot List — The magazine industry emerged this year from the most perilous downturn in its history with a set of unmistakable powerhouse titles celebrated here in Adweek's 31st annual Hot List. Those that made the cut, from Food Network Magazine at No. 1 to Vanity Fair at No. 10 …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Poynter, Adweek, Talking Biz News, Adweek, Adweek, @iwantmedia and Curbed National

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo Buys TV Programming Index IntoNow for About $17 Million, Plus Retention Packages — In a move to strengthen its television listings, Yahoo said it had acquired IntoNow, a TV indexing company. — The deal is designed to bolster the Silicon Valley start-up's data set in a key vertical.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Multichannel, IntoNow, CNET News, The Next Web and SAI, more at Techmeme »

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Mary Berner Exits Reader's Digest Association — Four-Year Run Saw Company Modernize, Reorganize, Struggle With Debt and Chapter 11 — Reader's Digest President-CEO Mary Berner has left the company after four years in the post, a run that saw the company file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection …

Discussion: Adweek, The Fix and Media News International

Max Read / Gawker:

The Onion Fools The New York Times — You may have been surprised to see President Obama's smiling face on the cover of Tiger Beat in last week's The New York Times article about the “original teen-girl tabloid.” Your surprise was not unwarranted, as the Times admitted today: More »

Discussion: Yahoo! News, FishbowlNY, Hit & Run and On Media's Blog

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Tales of Reading in Reintroducing a Color Device — “TILL rhymes stop rhyming, and pots stop boiling,” a voice-over says, “by hook or by crook, by book or by nook.” — Make that Nook Color, the e-reading tablet that Barnes & Noble is hoping to reintroduce to consumers in an advertising campaign that begins on Monday.

Discussion: TechCrunch and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Zeller quits NYT to become HuffPo energy/environment reporter — Romenesko Misc. — Tom Zeller says “it's been a source of great pride for me to walk through the doors of The New York Times every day ... but I also think it's critically important that we continue developing and nurturing …

Discussion: Yahoo! News

The Atlantic Wire:

Joe Weisenthal: What I Read — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is drawn from a conversation …

Discussion: Felix

Wall Street Journal:

Demand Builds for TV Ad Time — Forecasters See Solid ‘Upfront’ Market for Commercial Sales, Although NFL Dispute Hangs Over Talks — As rising gasoline prices and stubbornly high unemployment hold back the U.S. economy, one marketplace still appears to be as hot as ever: TV advertising.