Mediagazer: Strange Tweets Haunt Syfy Series (Tom Loftus/Digits)

1:05 PM ET, August 10, 2011

Top News:

Patience on AOL Wears Thin — With Turnaround Prospects Looking Far Off, Stock Sinks 26%, Pressuring CEO — AOL Inc. lost a quarter of its market value on Tuesday after reporting a loss and cutting its earnings outlook, sparking concerns about its ability to turn itself around.

Discussion: WebProNews

Rick Robinson / Street Fight:

Patch Pitch: 855-Town Gorilla Doles Out Daily Deals — Patch certainly reports the news, but it also seems that often Patch is the news. This is one of those weeks. And not simply because one of their interns recently helped save a pedestrian, and Patch covered it.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and New York Times

Nicholas Carlson / The Business Insider: AOL CEO Says The Ad Side Of The Company Doesn't Have Enough “Operational Scale”

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Demand Media Will Sell Web Ads for Village Voice, Awl After $14M IndieClick Buy — Renews and Expands Deal Letting Google Sell Content Company's Inventory — The once much-derided content company Demand Media will soon start selling advertising for Village Voice Media and the mini blog syndicate …

Discussion: Adweek and The New York Observer, Thanks:julieanicholson

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Wall Street's Demand for Demand Media Falls Off

Discussion: Business Wire, NetNewsCheck Latest, TechCrunch, Future of Journalism and paidContent

David Kaplan / paidContent:
Demand Media Buys IndieClick, RSS Graffiti; Expands Google Ad Deal

Discussion: AllThingsD and AdExchanger.com

Bloomberg:

News Corp.'s James Murdoch to Explain Story Holes — James Murdoch's testimony last month to U.K. lawmakers about phone hacking by News Corp. (NWS) journalists produced responses that he'd been mistaken, misled or just lied. This week he's supposed to explain which of those it was, if any.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

BBC:
New arrest in phone-hacking inquiry

Discussion: Financial Times

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:
News Corp.'s Independent Directors Have Strong Ties to Murdoch

Discussion: mediabistro.com, AllThingsD, Company Town, NetNewsCheck Latest, CJR, Poynter, Guardian and Reuters

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The “situational stylebook”: AP creates a reference guide for the upcoming Sept. 11 anniversary — This September will mark the ten-year anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. It's an occasion that will be commemorated, both on the day itself and, in many cases, in the weeks leading up to it …

Discussion: The Wrap, eMedia Vitals and Future of Journalism

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Abundance of News, but Mixed Sales, for News Magazines — The first six months of 2011 brought the kind of news explosion that can be a boon for major news organizations: the Arab Spring, nuclear catastrophe in Japan, a royal wedding and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Joe Brown / Gizmodo:

Gizmodo Officially Not Being Charged in iPhone 4 Case — The District Attorney of San Mateo County is moving forward in the case of the iPhone 4 prototype we posted about last year. Fortunately, nobody from our team is being charged. — Here's our parent company, Gawker Media's official statement on the matter:

Discussion: SAI, more at Techmeme »

Melanie Sill / Online Journalism Review:

Duke University's new Reporter's Lab for investigative tools — By Melanie Sill: When Sarah Cohen looks back at the exhaustive work she and other Washington Post journalists poured into a Pulitzer-winning investigation on child deaths, she sees not just accomplishment but opportunity …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

Alt-'s Not Dead! But Are Downtown Alt-Weeklies Headed for Retirement? — LAST MONTH THE top two editors of The New York Press quit. Nothing new there. Two previous editors had done the same. Except when they quit, they'd done so in dramatic fashion, over journalistic principle or pique.

Discussion: SAI

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Randall Lane returns to Forbes as editor — Romenesko Misc. — Randall Lane, 43, worked at Forbes in a variety of positions from 1991 to 1997. As editor, he'll be responsible for editorial content development and “will also be charged with developing fresh ideas and recruiting new voices and writing talent,” says a release.

Discussion: Folio, MinOnline, Adweek and On Media's Blog

Jay Yarow / SAI:

Watch Out Mossberg, Pogue, Josh Topolsky Is Getting A Weekly Tech Column At The Washington Post — Joshua Topolsky, the former Engadget editor, and current editor in chief of tech site, The Verge, is about to get another title: columnist for the Washington Post.

Discussion: Washington Post, Thanks:beet_tv

Subtraction.com:

What Comes After Reading on iPad — I'm bullish on the iPad. Some people have assumed the opposite, based in part on my frequent criticism of the way publishers have risen to the challenges and opportunities that it presents. — But I really do believe that the iPad is a truly transformative device …

Paul Bradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:

How a musician and a Sikh TV channel dominated coverage of the Birmingham riots — One image from last night guaranteed not to have made it onto the front page - via Birmingham Riots 2011 — It's one thing to cover rioting on the doorstep of the national press - it's quite another …

Discussion: Guardian and Global Voices

Zeke Turner / WWD:

Maura Egan to Exit Huffington Post — After almost five months, Huffington Post deputy entertainment editor Maura Egan is leaving the Web site. “I'd like to leave it at that,” she wrote in an email this morning, adding that she hopes to spend the rest of August at the beach in will look into “various possibilities” after that.

Tom Loftus / Digits:

Strange Tweets Haunt Syfy Series — Twitter is branching out somewhere new - television drama. — The microblogging service is set to play a key role in “Haven,” a Syfy Channel series that explores the eerie goings-on in a small town in Maine. In a story arc starting this Friday …

Discussion: TVbytheNumbers and Geekosystem

MediaShift Idea Lab:

The Argo Philosophy: Capitalize, Synthesize, Harmonize — Part of the mission behind NPR's Project Argo is to construct a software platform that can maximize the output of a one- or two-person team of reporters. Project Argo is a collaboration between NPR and member stations to strengthen public media's role in local journalism.

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Networks Step Up Coverage in Famine Zones — Television networks in the United States have stepped up their staffing in Somalia and Kenya in recent days amid what the United Nations calls a worsening humanitarian crisis there. — On Monday, the top anchors for CBS and CNN …