Mediagazer: Why Hyperlocal News Is Better Than Ever (Tom Grubisich/Street Fight)

9:30 AM ET, August 25, 2011

Top News:

Mark Lisheron / American Journalism Review:

A Fearless Media Critic — Slate's Jack Shafer has distinguished himself with his uncompromising approach to his craft. Fri. August 26, 2011 — Senior Contributing Writer Mark Lisheron (mark@texaswatchdog.org) is Austin bureau chief for Texas Watchdog, a government accountability news Web site.

Discussion: Erik Wemple, Poynter, Media Nation, Adweek and LA Observed

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

Slate Lays Off Jack Shafer, Several Others — Slate, the online news magazine owned by the Washington Post Company, has laid off a number of employees, including editor-at-large Jack Shafer, Adweek has learned. — “We have made some editorial changes, including a small reduction in our full …

Discussion: On Media's Blog, Poynter, @jackshafer, @antderosa, American Journalism Review, New York Magazine, paidContent and @dangillmor

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

EXCLUSIVE: Media Pioneer Jim Romenesko To ‘Semi-Retire’ — NEW YORK — When Jim Romenesko attended an annual Poynter Institute board meeting in 2002, a few years after bringing his pioneering brand of media blogging and aggregation to the journalism school's site, some of the country's top editors complained …

Rem Rieder / American Journalism Review:

The Romenesko Revolution — He has had an enormous impact on media coverage. Wed. August 24, 2011 — Rem Rieder (rrieder@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's editor and senior vice president. — Life without Romenesko. It's impossible to contemplate. — Luckily we won't have to.

Discussion: Poynter, Media Nation and Editors Weblog

Bill Mitchell / Poynter:

How the Romenesko Years have changed journalism and Poynter — It was the summer of 1999, still early days on the Web, and former Poynter president Jim Naughton and I were scheming ways of creating a site that journalists would find useful to the point of habit-forming.

Discussion: New York Times, Media News and Future of Journalism

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

CNN Correspondents Describes Being Held Hostage In Libya — NEW YORK — For the past six days, CNN's Matthew Chance feared that he and roughly 35 journalists trapped by Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli's Rixos hotel might be somehow used as part of the crumbling regime's endgame — or even executed.

Steve Myers / Poynter:
Journalists freed from Rixos hotel in Tripoli

Discussion: CNN, Mediaite, Reporters Without Borders, Mediaite, TVNewser, The Big Picture, The New York Observer, Jon Slattery, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wire and Press Gazette

New York Times: Times Journalists Briefly Held by Loyalists in Tripoli

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:
On the Media: A front-row seat to Libyan rebellion

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Martin Belam / currybetdotnet:

Let's train journalists for the future, not for the past — I'll be speaking tonight at the London Hacks/Hackers meeting, and one of the points I'll be making is that the digital publishing revolution is a perpetual revolution, one that requires constant learning.

Adam / One Man & His Blog:

Nostalgia is not a viable approach to journalism (part 267) — Yesterday, a rather depressing story about journalism training appeared on the Press Gazette site. It wasn't depressing because of the headline finding: … As Joanna Geary pointed out in the comments, that has a definite “Pope revealed to be Catholic” element.

Discussion: AndyDickinson.net, newsplexer and David Higgerson

Tom Grubisich / Street Fight:

Why Hyperlocal News Is Better Than Ever — Hyperlocal news is on the threshold of a period of impressive achievement. I'm not talking about revisiting the wishful thinking of the previous decade, when we were regaled with dithyrambics about “grassroots” and “citizen” journalism.

Granta:

Interview: Anthony Shadid — Anthony Shadid is a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. Over his fifteeen year career he has won numerous awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage across the Middle East. Shadid's fluency in Arabic and his deep understanding of the region …

The Huffington Post:

Four Italian Journalists Reportedly Kidnapped In Libya — ROME — Suspected regime loyalists kidnapped four Italian journalists and killed their local driver in Libya as the group traveled down a highway to Tripoli on Wednesday, the Italian foreign ministry said.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

YouTube Refuses “The Godfather” After All — If you've never seen “The Godfather,” you really ought to rethink your priorities. It's as great as everyone says it is. And it features Al Pacino from a long time ago, before Al Pacino pretty much played Al Pacino caricatures. And Marlon Brando!

Discussion: VentureBeat, The Next Web, Speakeasy, PopWatch, ArtsBeat and Gizmodo

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC foreign editor defends Libya coverage — News chief admits corporation was scooped by Sky's Alex Crawford in race to Tripoli, but says ‘war is not a competition’ — Jon Williams, the BBC's foreign editor, has defended the corporation's coverage of the battle for Tripoli after it was beaten …

Discussion: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

Joe Flint / Company Town:

For Murdoch, media has often been about friends and influence — In 1996, the teenage son of a prominent political figure in Washington, D.C., got suspended from his tony prep school. — Not wanting to see himself, his family or his boss embarrassed by his son's actions, the father scrambled to keep the incident out of the news.

David Weigel / Slate:

The Krugman Google+ Saga: Or, Why Fact-Checking is Important … - Completely Implausible Republican Candidates Who May Still Join the Race! - Why Patricia Marx Made the Heroine of Her New Novel a Lingerie Designer - Are East-Coast Buildings as Earthquake Proof as West-Coast Buildings?