Mediagazer: How self-publishing came of age (Alison Flood/Guardian)

2:45 AM ET, June 25, 2011

Top News:

How Newsrooms Can Win Back Their Reputations — The journalism industry ships lemons every day. Our newsrooms have a massive quality control problem. According to the best counts we have, more than half of stories contain mistakes — and only 3 percent of those errors are ever fixed.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard and Kirk LaPointe's …

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“Adding context to content”: Swift River gets Knight funding to tackle the problem of real-time verification — One of the biggest challenges news organizations face is the real-time aspect of newsgathering: the massive problem that is making sense of the torrent of information that floods in when breaking-news events take place.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Patrick B. Pexton / Washington Post:

Why did The Post deport Jose Antonio Vargas's story? — Journalists are not public officeholders, nor do they manage public funds. But they do hold, precariously, a public trust. And at the foundation of that trust is the pledge to tell the truth, or at least to get as close to it as they can.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, NPR's On the Media, Mediaite and Poynter

Claudia Cruz / Mountain View Patch:
For Student Journalists, No Burden Guarding Vargas' Secret

Discussion: FishbowlNY, San Francisco Peninsula … and Big Journalism

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Fair use isn't much good if you can't afford it — All around us, the web is enabling an explosion of “remix culture,” in which bits and pieces of text, images and video are cut and spliced to create new forms of art. Whatever you think of the specific outcomes of this process …

Discussion: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Betabeat, PlagiarismToday, Techdirt, SAY Media, Free Press and Kickstarter Blog, Thanks:mathewi

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Comcast has to sit on its hands while Hulu drama plays out — Imagine owning a big chunk of a company and having no say in its operations or future. — That's the position Comcast Corp. finds itself in with regard to Hulu, the online video site that consists primarily of content from its owners who …

Discussion: MediaPost

Yahoo! News:

Rolling Stone draws fire for attribution SNAFUs in Michele Bachmann profile — It's been a few months since we've had ourselves a good-old plagiarism incident to get riled up about. But thanks to Rolling Stone, our sleepy summer Friday just got a bit more scandalous!

Discussion: The Blotter, Poynter, Mixed Media, The Atlantic Wire, Runnin' Scared, National Review, @penenberg and FishbowlNY

Gene Weingarten / Washington Post:

How ‘branding’ is ruining journalism — Dear Leslie: — I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I've “built my personal brand over the years.” I'm answering with this column.

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, Poynter, freefromeditors, Future of Journalism and J-Source

Alison Flood / Guardian:

How self-publishing came of age — What used to be seen as a last resort is fast becoming the most successful trend in writing. Alison Flood talks to the authors doing it themselves — GP Taylor is one of self-publishing's success stories. The former vicar sold his motorbike to fund …

The Atlantic Wire:

Gay Talese: What I Read — How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? What sources can't they live without? We regularly reach out to prominent figures in media, entertainment, politics, the arts and the literary world, to hear their answers to these questions.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Yahoo! News

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

News Challenge winner OpenBlock Rural plans to partner with smaller papers on using public data — Small rural papers can have a level of reader engagement that would be the envy of their larger peers. If you're the newspaper of a town with 12,000 or so people — like, say …

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

AOL's Huffington Post Expands Local News Ahead of Campaign — AOL Inc. (AOL), after buying the Huffington Post website this year to revive sales growth, is accelerating its expansion of local coverage to lure readers interested in campaign news ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Discussion: The Corsair, FishbowlNY, The Wire and Future of Journalism

Andrea Pitzer / Nieman Storyboard:

“Why's This So Good?” - a collaboration on the magic of long-form stories — We're excited to announce a new feature that we'll be rolling out next week on Nieman Storyboard. “Why's This So Good?” will explore what makes classic narrative nonfiction stories worth reading.