Mediagazer: How 4 people & their social network turned an unwitting witness to bin Laden's death into a citizen journalist (Steve Myers/Poynter)

4:00 PM ET, May 3, 2011

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

How 4 people & their social network turned an unwitting witness to bin Laden's death into a citizen journalist — You've probably heard by now that an IT consultant in Pakistan used Twitter to share what he heard as Black Hawk helicopters swooped down on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

Discussion: Runnin' Scared, Technically Incorrect, ReadWriteWeb, Media Money … and memeburn

New York Times:

Turning to Social Networks for News — When the White House abruptly announced an address to the nation by President Obama on Sunday night, CNN anchors spent the better part of an hour previewing the address without actually saying what it was about. — “I have my own gut instincts on what it might be …

Discussion: The Business Insider, New York Observer, BRYCE DOT VC, SportsGrid, @joshuatopolsky, Brian Solis, I4U News, Epicenter, Poynter, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, CNNMoney.com, Media Decoder and Online NewsHour

Patrick Gavin / The Politico:
KEITH URBAHN'S TWEET HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

Discussion: The Blaze

Megan McArdle / The Atlantic Online:
Anatomy of a Fake Quotation

Discussion: MediaMemo, The Atlantic Online, Salon, The Daily What, Cronaca, @lizgannes, Mashable!, @shervin, @gaberivera, NewsGrange and MediaMemo, more at Techmeme »

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post: WATCH: Brian Williams Tells How He Learned Of Bin Laden's Death

Patrick Gavin / The Politico: BOLD BIN LADEN HEADLINES IN NEW YORK

David W. Dunlap / Lens:
Firefighters Gather for News of Bin Laden

Discussion: CNN

Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Online, an Urge to Be a Part of the Bin Laden News

Discussion: Editors Weblog, Media Decoder, Mediaite, FishbowlLA and WebProNews

Andrea Morabito / Broadcasting & Cable:
At CNN, Scrambling to Prepare for an Unknown Story

Discussion: Poynter, Slate Magazine, Truthdig, splicetoday.com, Adweek, New York Observer, MediaPost and New York Times

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S. — For the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped. — The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers …

Discussion: I4U News, Electronista, National Review, Company Town, @brianstelter, TVWeek.com, WatchingTV Online, Nielsen Wire, Digital Trends, Gawker and PRNewser, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Maybe It's Not Cord-Cutting, But Cord-Nevers: TV Ownership Drops — Americans watch more TV than ever. Except for the Americans who don't have TVs at all any more: Nielsen says the percentage of American homes with TV sets has declined to 96.7 percent, from 98.9 percent last year.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and NewsGrange

CBS News:

Scott Pelley named anchor of “CBS Evening News” — Award-winning “60 Minutes” correspondent to fill anchor chair vacated by Katie Couric — Scott Pelley, one the most experienced reporters in broadcast journalism, has been named anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,” …

Discussion: Media Decoder, TVNewser, mediabistro.com, Mixed Media, Tuned In, The Huffington Post and Gawker

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

PBS plays Google's word game, transcribing thousands of hours of video into crawler-friendly text — Blogs and newspaper sites enjoy a built-in advantage when it comes to search-engine optimization. They deal in words. But a whole universe of audio and video content is practically invisible to Google.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, ProPublica, The Daily Beast and Online NewsHour

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

Viacom Takes A Final Shot At YouTube — What is likely to be final set of briefs in the Viacom-YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) appeal has been filed, and the argument is becoming more focused. The case comes down to what kind of copyright-policing system we want. Should it be one where copyright owners need …

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Center for Public Integrity launches iWatch News — Romenesko Misc. — iWatch News focuses on money and politics; government waste, fraud and abuse; the environment; financial reform; health care; international investigations, national security; and state government accountability.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Losing Andrew Sullivan Didn't Hurt The Atlantic's Traffic — Andrew Sullivan. Image via Wikipedia — For The Atlantic, the defection of Andrew Sullivan to The Daily Beast could easily have been a disaster. After all, Sullivan's blog, the Daily Dish, averaged more than 1 million unique …

Discussion: The Wire, New York Magazine and FishbowlNY

GlobeNewswire:

Wall Street Journal Remains Number One Newspaper in U.S. — The Wall Street Journal remains the number one newspaper in the U.S., according to the latest figures released today from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC). The Journal again leads all daily newspapers in total average circulation …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Times, Media Nation, Editors Weblog and FishbowlNY

Dan Frosch / New York Times:

Enforcing Copyrights Online, for a Profit — DENVER — When Brian Hill, a 20-year-old blogger from North Carolina, posted on his Web site last December a photograph of an airport security officer conducting a pat-down, a legal battle was the last thing he imagined.

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

XYDO Prioritizes & Organizes News Shared on Twitter & Facebook — Social news site XYDO, launching publicly Tuesday, aims to prioritize and organize online news based on each user's social graph and interests. — “What we're trying to do with XYDO is build a social network around news,” explains co-founder Cameron Brain.

Discussion: Business Wire, @antderosa, @dannysullivan, @xydoapp, @fredericl, @dannysullivan, @alexia, ReadWriteWeb, PRNewser and louisgray.com

WWD.COM:

Memo Pad: Covering Bin Laden... People Magazine's Royal Gain... COVERING BIN LADEN: Osama bin Laden is getting the giant red X treatment on the next cover of Time magazine. The former Al Qaeda leader is only the fourth person in the magazine's history to appear on the cover in this manner …

Discussion: @megan

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

YouTube Partnering with Dublin-based Storyful to Organize Breaking News — SAN BRUNO, CA — YouTube is partnering with Dublin-based Storyful to curate breaking news on YouTube's CitizenTube channel, says Olivia Ma, manager of news at YouTube in this interview with Beet.TV

Andrea Pitzer / Nieman Storyboard:

Eliza Griswold on religion, violence and reporting — We spoke last week with Eliza Griswold, winner of the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.” In addition to winning the Lukas Prize …