Mediagazer: Journalists Kept in Hotel as Battle Rages Outside (Jeremy W. Peters/New York Times)

8:45 AM ET, August 23, 2011

Top News:

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Journalists Kept in Hotel as Battle Rages Outside — With an 18,000-square-foot spa, helicopter service upon request and a self-described “culture of service perfection,” the Rixos is Tripoli's premier hotel. — But over the weekend, the 120-room oasis in the center of the war-torn Libyan capital became …

Discussion: New York Magazine and Adweek

Katherine Travers / Editors Weblog:

Are live blogs as useful as we think they are? — It seems the political situation in Libya has reached a turning point. As Libyan rebels flood the capital, surrounding Gaddafi's compound and claiming to have captured his son Saif al-Islam, the world is watching, awaiting the outcome of this dramatic social upheaval.

Discussion: Press Gazette, BBC and Guardian

Andrew Hough / Telegraph:
Libya: Sky News reporter Alex Crawford praised for dramatic Tripoli reporting

Discussion: Poynter, The Huffington Post, ONA Issues, Press Gazette, The Huffington Post, BBC, Erik Wemple, Guardian, Washington Post and Future Journalism Project

Alex Alvarez / Mediaite:
Covering Libya: Who Was There, Who Wasn't, And Who Aired Caught On Tape

Discussion: Salon, Adweek, ProPublica and TVNewser

Brooks Boliek / The Politico:

FCC finally kills off fairness doctrine — The FCC gave the coup de grace to the fairness doctrine Monday as the commission axed more than 80 media industry rules. — Earlier this summer FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski agreed to erase the post WWII-era rule, but the action Monday puts …

Discussion: Washington Post, Future of Journalism, Mother Jones and Mediaite

Jasmin Melvin / Reuters:

Outdated US media rules to be taken off the books — The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is stripping 83 rules from its books as part of its reform agenda and commitment to a request from President Barack Obama earlier in the year to improve or remove any rules that were out of date, the agency said on Monday.

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, Washington Wire, NationalJournal.com, TVB, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline.com and New York Magazine

Robert Peston / BBC:

Coulson got hundreds of thousands of pounds from News Int — Mr Coulson resigned from News International in January 2007 — Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World who has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in phone hacking and bribing the police …

Discussion: Guardian, The First Post, New York Magazine, The Wire, themediablog.typepad.com, Deadline.com, Adweek and The Wrap

Heather Kelly / VentureBeat:

The Daily Dot wants to be a small town paper for the entire Internet — The biggest hurdle to enjoying The Daily Dot, a fun new online news site that launches today, is that its premise is based on a bad metaphor: The Internet is a community and The Daily Dot is its local paper.

Discussion: Adweek, ShortFormBlog, NetNewsCheck Latest, Forbes, Nova Spivack and SiliconFilter, Thanks:dmfreeman

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The NYT's new education site with WNYC will be collaborative, experimental...and meter-free — This morning, The New York Times and WNYC announced a new collaboration: SchoolBook, a site for news, data, and conversation about New York City schools. Slated to launch September 7 …

Discussion: WNYC News Blog, The New York Times Company and rbr.com

Jonathan Stempel / Yahoo! News:

Spitzer sued for libel over his Slate column — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was hit with two libel lawsuits seeking $90 million by former Marsh & McLennan Cos executives over a column posted on Slate.com about an insurance bid-rigging scandal.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, The Wire and The New York Observer

Rob Lewis / Techvibes.com:

Vancouver's Zite to be acquired by CNN for $20-25 Million? — Last week's GROW Conference in Vancouver was a huge success. All week the city was abuzz as Canada's smartest entrepreneurs descended on the city along with venture capitalists from across Canada and south of the border.

Discussion: VentureBeat, SocialTimes.com and App Advice

MediaShift:

Teaching Journalism in an Age When News Comes to You — Does it matter where a story comes from, as long as it makes the news? Apparently it doesn't matter at all, to many of the latest crop of journalism students who believe their smart phones hold the keys to truth.

Felix Salmon / CJR:

Hewlett-Packard and the M&A Scoop — The death of the M&A scoop is going to happen slowly, but frankly it should happen as quickly as possible — and the past 24 hours in the history of Hewlett-Packard is an excellent indicator of why. — Yesterday, just after noon, Bloomberg found itself …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Huge generation gap evident in attitudes about website comments — An Ad Age/Ipsos Observer online survey of 1,003 households shows a large generation gap in how people view website commenting. Young adults (18 to 24) are three and a half times more likely than those 55 and older to comment “often” on Web articles.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Beth Davidz / Poynter:

8-step guide for setting up Newsbeat to see real-time analytics — You're sick of Omniture, and Google Analytics just doesn't cut it. Waiting hours for analytics can be killer in a 24-hour news cycle where minutes, nevertheless seconds, count. As soon as you post an article you want to know how it's doing.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

The Daily Beast:

Murdoch Scandal's Shadow Man — Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye who hacked phones for News of the World, has kept a low profile, but a lawsuit is pushing him into the spotlight—and demanding he name names. Brian Cathcart on why that's bad news for the Murdochs.

Gayle MacDonald / Globe and Mail:

Tony Burman, Al Jazeera and the future of news — Tony Burman was in his 11th-floor office at Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C. - a stone's throw from the White House - when a news item appeared on his computer screen that made the veteran Canadian news man stop dead in his tracks.