Mediagazer: How Quora Recruited “Super 8” Director J.J. Abrams (Liz Gannes/AllThingsD)

3:25 PM ET, June 14, 2011

Top News:

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

How Quora Recruited “Super 8” Director J.J. Abrams — The filmmaker J.J. Abrams appeared for a seven-minute stint on the Q&A site Quora on Friday afternoon, the day his new science fiction movie “Super 8” was released. He answered a total of four questions on general topics like breaking …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and Quora

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Wall Street Journal's Greater New York Wins Advertisers but Draw for Readers Remains Unclear — Local Ad Revenue Doubles but Print Circulation Declines — Over a year after Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal introduced Greater New York to better compete for New York Times advertisers and readers …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Poynter

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

What does the journalism of the future look like? — We've spent so long consuming the news in fairly predictable formats — the short story, the long feature, the four-part series designed to win awards, the TV documentary, and so on — that the new forms of journalism we're seeing can be confusing.

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, eMedia Vitals and PSFK

Aaron Sorkin / Interview Magazine:

David CARR — THERE'S A SYSTEM AND RIGOR TO WHAT WE DO, AND YOU CAN LAUGH AT IT AS ARCHAIC AND SILLY IN THE 24-7 NEWS CYCLE, BUT I DO THINK IT HAS SIGNIFICANT VALUE TO HAVE A PRETTY BIG ORGANIZATION THAT IS A LOT OF TIMES SAYING, ‘HEY WAIT A MINUTE.’ —DAVID CARR Director Andrew Rossi's …

Discussion: The Wire and The Atlantic Wire

Sarah Ellison / Vanity Fair:
A New Kingdom: Gay Talese Sounds Off on The New York Times—Past, Present, and Future

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Atlantic Wire and Yahoo! News

Donya Blaze / FishbowlNY:
Andrew Rossi Goes Inside The New York Times

Discussion: Adweek, 10,000 Words and mediabistro.com

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Rockville Central drops website for Facebook, offers eight lessons on Facebook news publishing — A little over 100 days ago, a community news blog in Rockville, Md., took a big leap. Founder and Publisher Brad Rourke and Editor Cindy Cotte Griffiths moved the entire operation of Rockville Central to a Facebook page.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Comcast Bringing Skype To Some Of Your TVs, “Soon” — Interesting. Comcast plans to let some of its customers use Skype on their TV sets. — The two companies say Comcast subscribers equipped with special gear will be able to use the Web video messaging service on their HD sets “soon.”

Discussion: VentureBeat, The Wrap, GigaOM, Techland, PC Magazine, Broadcasting & Cable, ZDNet, CNET News and Company Town, more at Techmeme »

Ethan / ...My heart's in Accra:

Understanding #amina — On Monday, June 6th, a post appeared on the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” announcing that Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, the “girl” in question, had been kidnapped, possibly by Syrian authorities. Bloggers, including my friend and colleague Jillian York …

Discussion: MediaFile, Guardian, Hit & Run, BBC, BBC, Washington Post, Gawker, BBC College of Journalism Blog, Press Gazette, GME, A Gay Girl in Damascus, The Wire, Washington Post, The Lede and Global Voices

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

Now That Hearst Has Partnered With Buddy Media, You're Going to Have to Learn What a ‘Sapplet’ Is — “The days of, ‘Do we publish on Facebook? Do we tweet?’ are over,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow told Betabeat. “Either you do it, or you're crushed. Do it or go out of business.”

Discussion: Folio and Curbed National

rbr.com:

McGraw-Hill hangs for sale sign on TV group — Television has long been a tiny part of The McGraw-Hill Companies and Wall Street analysts have asked CEO Terry McGraw several times on quarterly conference calls why the company doesn't sell it off as an obviously non-core business.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, MinOnline and MediaPost

Dan Rowinski / ReadWriteWeb:

Jason Calacanis: “Blogging Is Dead” & Why “Stupid People Shouldn't Write” — “Blogging is largely dead.” — “There are a lot of stupid people out there ... and stupid people shouldn't write.” — “There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people.”

Discussion: WebProNews

Bill Carter / Media Decoder:

A New Anchor, but the Same Ratings, on CBS — CBS introduced Scott Pelley as the new anchor of its evening news with no fanfare last week, and the result was no new fans,. — The numbers for Mr. Pelley's first week showed no growth from the audience that Katie Couric had been averaging …

Discussion: Company Town, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Hollywood Reporter, On Media's Blog and Inside TV

Joe Mandese / MediaPost:

Turner Discloses Tens Of Thousands Of Online Viewers Being Added To Its TV Ratings — Turner Broadcasting's cable TV networks are reaping tens of thousands of incremental viewers in their Nielsen ratings that are being ignored by the rest of the TV industry, a top research executive revealed Monday during …

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner

Fast Company:

The Onion's Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News Is Absurd — From Jon Stewart's The Daily Show to The Onion to Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, fake news has become as much a part of the national dialogue as the real news it parodies. During the 2008 presidential campaign …

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

New York Times Takes a Preemptive Strike Against The Patent Trolls at Lodsys — From the fake Lodsys Twitter page. — Woo boy, the normally dry and wonky world of patent law is getting interesting. The New York Times has filed suit against Lodsys, a patent firm (some might say troll) that has been targeting Apple developers.

Discussion: FOSS Patents and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

How CNN And YouTube Forged A Presidential-Debate Partnership — CNN runs one of the world's most advanced newsrooms: Holograms stream over the airwaves, touchscreens dot the walls, and reporters and producers practically have iPads attached to their hips. Tonight, that forward-thinking …

Discussion: CJR