Mediagazer: Fate of Elaine's Out of Graydon Carter's Hands (Nate Freeman/New York Observer)

4:45 PM ET, May 24, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Why The New York Times replaced its Twitter ‘cyborg’ with people this week — The New York Times is turning off the automatic feed for its main Twitter account this week in an experiment to determine if a human-run, interactive approach will be more effective.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, SAI, FishbowlNY and Editors Weblog, more at Techmeme »

Adam Hochberg / Poynter:

Joplin Globe's Facebook page locates, reunites missing people in tornado aftermath — After a massive tornado roared through Joplin, Mo., Sunday night, much of the city was left isolated without electricity, telephone service, or Internet connections. Survivors have found it difficult …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, MediaShift, Joplin Globe and The Rural Blog

Jeff Lehr / Joplin Globe:
Globe reporter joins neighborhood of survivors

Discussion: New York Post, Poynter and Poynter

New York Times: In TV Crew's Hunt for Twisters, More Than They Bargained For

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

YouTube Extends Plans for Ads Before Videos — In the early days of online video, commercials that appeared before viewers could watch clips, known as preroll, got “thumbs down” from most computer users. That attitude seems to have softened more recently, a change of heart that Web giants have noticed.

Discussion: AllThingsD, TVWeek.com, Search Engine Land, MarketingVox News & Trends, Softpedia News, paidContent and The Next Web

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Times Reporter Served With Subpoena in Leak Case — WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors, with the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., are trying to force a reporter at The New York Times to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked information to him about a C.I.A. effort …

Discussion: Gawker, The Atlantic Wire, FishbowlNY, The Wire and Battleland

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Cheezburger CEO Planning WordPress-Style News 2.0 Software — Once you've built an empire of funny cat pictures and other user-generated comedy ephemera, what do you do next? Ben Huh, CEO of the sprawling Cheezburger network of comedy websites, has begun discussing a side-project he's working on called The Moby Dick Project.

Discussion: GeekWire and eMedia Vitals

Ben Huh / benhuh!:
Why Are We Still Consuming News Like It's 1899?

Discussion: Betabeat

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Dick Ebsersol's exit from NBC sends signal to rest of company — The abrupt departure of Dick Ebersol as chairman of NBC Sports Group last Thursday sent shockwaves through the network and the media industry. — It also sent a not-so-subtle message to other top NBCUniversal executives: Get with the program or hit the road.

Discussion: Free Press, Mediaite and TVWeek.com

Dbyers / Adweek:

Bloomberg View to Launch on Wednesday — Bloomberg View, the new opinion section of Bloomberg News, will launch on Wednesday, a company source told Adweek. — “Columns will start appearing overnight on Tuesday night” at Bloomberg.com/view, the source said, adding that the launch was part of a redesign …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, FishbowlNY and The Wire

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Reuters strikes deal to syndicate third-party investigative journalism — To diversify its content offerings, news service Thomson Reuters has established relationships with a variety of third-party websites, such as The Wrap and Hollywood.tv (entertainment/celebrities), Examiner.com (amateur local news) and SB Nation (sports).

Discussion: Poynter

Josh Constine / Inside Facebook:

USA Network's Chatter Aggregates Conversations About TV Shows From Facebook and More — Cable television's USA Network recently launched an app called Chatter that allows a specific TV show's viewers to converse with fellow fans and engage with a streams of official content aggregated from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

Discussion: Lost Remote

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Wired, GQ announce iPad subscriptions — Romenesko Misc. — Starting with the June issue, the magazines will offer monthly ($1.99) and yearly ($19.99) iPad subscriptions and will continue to offer single issues, all via In-App Purchase on the App Store. Current print subscribers …

Discussion: paidContent, Wired and GigaOM

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

AOL Seeks Heidi Klum's Advice in Million-Dollar Content Deal — Ad Age Talks to the Supermodel About Her How-to-Video Partnership That Lets People 'Speak to the Horse's Mouth' — AOL began publishing its content partnership with fashion model Heidi Klum today, AOL's latest celebrity acquisition …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Curbed National

ProPublica:

Inside the Campaign to Release Al-Jazeera English Journalist Dorothy Parvaz — A version of this story was co-published with the Los Angeles Times. — The phone call came in the middle of the night last month, when my brother Todd and I were visiting our father in a suburb of Portland …

Discussion: Boston Globe, Thanks:propublica

Michael Paterniti / GQ:

Inside Al Jazeera — Nothing prepared us for what we saw happening across the Arab world this year. One network knew damn well how to report a revolution. Michael Paterniti takes us behind the cameras at Al Jazeera — On a cold March evening in Manhattan, Ayman Mohyeldin rode …

Discussion: Free Press, TVNewser and The Wire

Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:

Brightcove Moves Mobile App Creation Into the Cloud — Brightcove has made a name for itself as one of the largest platforms for video distribution online. But now it is stepping beyond just the managing and distribution of online video with a new SaaS-based product for easily creating …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, VentureBeat and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Fortune:

Facebook: Journalists' friend or foe? — A new Facebook effort aims to help journalists use social media. But other motives may be at work. — Vadim Lavrusik — FORTUNE — Vadim Lavrusik, the cherub-cheeked 25-year old who heads up Facebook's new journalist program initiative …

Discussion: The Conversation