Mediagazer: Reporters Without Borders publishes ‘predators of press freedom’ list (Rachel McAthy/Journalism.co.uk)

11:00 PM ET, May 3, 2011

Top News:

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: Media Decoder, New York Observer, The Wire, ProPublica, Broadcasting & Cable, Mediaite and The Daily Beast

Chris Lehmann / Yahoo! News:

Bin Laden news finds pundits forsaking usual comfort zones — It's hardly a revelation to note that the cable and talk-radio commentariat is divided on many leading issues of the day. But in the wake of the military raid claiming the life of Osama bin Laden, the range of pundit opinion …

Discussion: Gothamist, Mediaite and The Huffington Post

Megan McArdle / The Atlantic Online:

Anatomy of a Fake Quotation — Yesterday, I saw a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. fly across my twitter feed: “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” - Martin Luther King, Jr". I was about to retweet it, but I hesitated.

Discussion: The Daily What, The Atlantic Online, MediaMemo, Salon, newsfeed.time.com, kottke.org, @lizgannes, Mashable!, @shervin, @gaberivera, NewsGrange, www.wnyc.org, Cronaca, The Blaze and MediaMemo

New York Times:
Turning to Social Networks for News

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

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

Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog and The Blaze

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

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

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Maybe It's Not Cord-Cutting, But Cord-Nevers: TV Ownership Drops

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, LA Observed, Mixed Media, Tuned In, The Huffington Post, mediabistro.com and Gawker

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Reality TV: OpenCourt has begun its livestream of the judicial system — OpenCourt is about as real as reality TV can get when it doesn't involve Kardashians, real housewives, or people trapped on an island. That's because OpenCourt, which launched yesterday, offers a view inside the legal system …

Discussion: WBUR, ReadWriteWeb, Patriot Ledger and OpenCourt

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: New York Magazine, Runnin' Scared, ReadWriteWeb, Technically Incorrect, Media Money … and memeburn

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Reporters Without Borders publishes ‘predators of press freedom’ list — Reporters Without Borders has released a list of 38 “predators of press freedom”, including political leaders, criminal organisations and militias from across the world. — The annual report by the press freedom group …

Discussion: Reporters Without Borders and Aljazeera

Gautham Nagesh / Hillicon Valley:

NBC launches round-the-clock local news channels in California, Dallas — NBC Universal announced Monday it is launching nonstop local news and information channels in Dallas, Miami and California to fulfill part of the of the local programming condition imposed by the Federal Communications Commission as part of the Comcast merger.

Discussion: MediaPost

Arem Duplessis / The 6th Floor:

The Making of a Cover — Our cover story on Sunday was about the American soldiers accused of murdering Afghan civilians. Some reports have depicted them as a rogue unit, but our story goes deeper into the psyche of the American soldier and questions whether the killings are symptoms of a much larger issue.

Jeremy Greenfield / FINS.com:

The Risk Taker in Hearst's David Carey — David Carey had led a charmed life in magazine publishing — until the 2007 launch of Conde Nast Portfolio. Two years and a reported $100 million later, the business publication went down in what Carey calls a “radioactive” environment for business publications.

Megan O'Neill / SocialTimes.com:

85% Of Media Websites Now Use Online Video To Cover News — Is web video becoming the main format for online news? According to a new survey by D S Simon it just may be. According to the survey, 85 percent of online media websites are now using online video content to cover the news, jumping a third from last year.

Discussion: The Page

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Social Media Policies: Let's Talk About What You Should Do — Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook have been around for several years now, but some media organizations are still just getting around to figuring out how to handle them — and in many cases, as we've written before …

Discussion: MediaShift, Thanks:mathewi

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, Runnin' Scared, FishbowlNY and New York Magazine