Mediagazer: Why Political Coverage is Broken (Jay Rosen/Pressthink)

12:50 PM ET, August 26, 2011

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Slate Lays Off Staff. Does Its Model Still Make Sense? — You don't have to be an ink-and-paper newspaper to be a dinosaur. — Slate, one of the original internet-only magazines, has laid off four journalists, including someone whose words I often quote in this column, press critic Jack Shafer.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Washington Post and Slate, Thanks:beet_tv

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Slate's Layoffs Signal Flaws in Web Model — Unexpected ‘Head Winds’ Buffet Online Pioneer's Ad Sales — Since its mid-1990s launch, the online magazine Slate has been a study in whether a Web-only news organization can support a staff of professional journalists churning out original, reported content.

Discussion: Poynter

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Twilight of the Media Critics

Discussion: Medacity, The Daily Caller and Future of Journalism

New York Post:

Staff cries Wolff — Adweek's top editor, Michael Wolff, is on the hot seat, The Post has learned. — Senior executives at Prometheus Global Media, which owns the title, have been telling business associates that they are unhappy with Adweek under Wolff, sources said.

Discussion: @rickwebb, @espiers and MediaPost

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

In Britain, a Meeting on Limiting Social Media — LONDON — British officials and representatives of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry met Thursday to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest, while trying to dodge charges …

Discussion: Techland, The Next Web, The Business Insider and Guardian

Peter Greenberg / Poynter:

Travel is news, so why am I the only travel editor at a major network? — People know me because of travel. But the classic error that many people make - and it's a well-intentioned error - is when they say to me, “When did you make the transition from journalism to travel?”

Discussion: Editors Weblog and Journalism.org

Amy Wicks / WWD:

Kim Kardashian's People Cover a Hit — KARDASHIAN'S A HIT: Kim Kardashian and her over-the-top wedding to New Jersey Nets player Kris Humphries easily beat out the last celebrity wedding cover story to break on people.com (the marriage of Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth) …

Discussion: Forbes and FishbowlNY

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Contessa Brewer Leaving Daily Anchoring at MSNBC — Contessa Brewer, who has been a fixture on MSNBC since 2003, will no longer be an anchor on the network, TVNewser has learned. — For the last year-and-a-half Brewer has anchored the NoonET hour on MSNBC as well as hosting the weekend documentary series “Caught on Camera.”

Discussion: Inside Cable News, The Huffington Post, TVWeek.com and LA Observed

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Study: iPad users spend most time with news apps compared with other types — An app analytics company says that news apps generate the longest periods of use among iPad owners. “Based on data from apps subscribing to the firm's analytics platform, users spend over two and a half times …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Future of Journalism, GigaOM, The Loop and App Advice

David Smydra / Google News Blog:

Google News now crawling with Googlebot — (Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog) — Google News recently updated our infrastructure to crawl with Google's primary user-agent, Googlebot. What does this mean? Very little to most publishers. Any news organizations that wish …

Discussion: Softpedia News, Search Engine Land, Future of Journalism and WebProNews

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Why Political Coverage is Broken — My keynote address at New News 2011, part of the Melbourne Writers Festival, co-sponsored by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation at Swinburne University of Technology. (Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2011.) — This talk had its origins …

Discussion: Poynter

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

Advice for building engagement through newsroom Twitter accounts — Like many institutional Twitter accounts, Journal Register Co. newsroom accounts need to be more engaging and conversational. — We tweet a lot of links to our content. But we're not very personable.

Spencer E. Ante / Wall Street Journal:

Tumblr Set to Close Big New Financing — Blogging service Tumblr has a funny name and scant revenue. It has also convinced investors it is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. — The New York-based company is poised to raise $75 million to $100 million in venture capital …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Adweek, FT Tech Hub and Reuters, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The Twitter effect: We are all members of the media now — Anyone who has gotten the latest news about Steve Jobs' resignation or the revolution in Libya from Twitter is probably used to the idea that the real-time information network has become a powerful tool for journalism — a point we've made often.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Thanks:rawporter

Carl Sessions Stepp / American Journalism Review:

Hyperlocal Heroes — A firsthand look at how some members of the burgeoning roster of hyperlocal news Web sites do their jobs Mon. August 29, 2011 — Carl Sessions Stepp (cstepp@jmail.umd.edu), AJR's senior editor, teaches at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

Discussion: Street Fight

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Big hopes, smaller size: Why The Cincy Enquirer is going tabloid — For newspapers, rolling the dice doesn't always involve paywalls. Take The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Columbus Dispatch, both of which recently announced plans to switch their printing formats from classic broadsheet …