Mediagazer: Gene Weingarten is wrong about bacon-cats and journalism (Alexandra Petri/Washington Post)

2:50 PM ET, October 28, 2011

Top News:

Gene Weingarten / Washington Post:

Modern journalism meets LOLcats — As you know, I sometimes worry aloud about my profession. Beset by financial pressures in a bewildering new digital world and waging a fevered, desperate battle to keep readers and attract new ones, journalism seems to be cheapening itself.

Discussion: First Draft, @jake_bernstein, @benhuh, @geneweingarten and Chickaboomer

Alexandra Petri / Washington Post:

Gene Weingarten is wrong about bacon-cats and journalism — Gene Weingarten is a cantankerous old fud. — “Every time I write despairingly about what's happening to my profession,” Gene writes this week, “there erupts an online clatter from younger journalists who contend I am …

Discussion: Poynter

Ben Huh / Washington Post: Cheezburger's Ben Huh: Weingarten is confusing journalism with the business of newspapers

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

Lefty journalism professor tries to discredit the Tea Party by passing along sensational footage to his buddies at the Times!!! — Yesterday I was the target of a “sting” operation by right wing trickster James O'Keefe. I will tell you what happened. — But first, here is the product of that sting …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Poynter, On Media's Blog, Erik Wemple, The Atlantic Wire, AllThingsD, Forbes, Globe and Mail and The Wrap

Joel B. Pollak / Big Journalism:
New O'Keefe Video: Jay Rosen, Clay Shirky Discuss How the New York Times Promoted Obama, Protected Occupy

Discussion: @andrewbreitbart and The New York Observer

The Official Google TV Blog:

An Update on Google TV — In the 1970s, there were just a few networks on TV. Cable changed things by adding hundreds of new channels like HBO, ESPN, and MTV. The Internet marks a new chapter for television. This chapter is not about replacing broadcast or cable TV; it's not about replicating what's on TV to the Web.

Discussion: VentureBeat, AllThingsD, AppleInsider, Between the Lines Blog, Mashable!, Pocket-lint, WebProNews, FT Tech Hub, Droid Life, Reuters, Techland, Gadget Lab, Engadget, Electronista, This is my next and Forbes, more at Techmeme »

Claire Cain Miller / Bits:

Google Tries Again With Google TV — Google TV arrived last fall to lukewarm reviews. Its remote control was big and complicated, its software was clunky and confusing, and it didn't live up to the promise of Internet-connected TV's — that they would allow us to cut the cable cord and watch whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.

Discussion: Multichannel, PC Magazine, TechCrunch, Benzinga, CNET News, TechCrunch and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Caitlin E. Curran / Gawker:

How Occupy Wall Street Cost Me My Job — Joining the Occupy Wall Street protests has its dangers. You could get pepper-sprayed or end up in handcuffs. Or, as Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran explains, your boss could see a photo of you holding up a sign at a protest and fire you the next day.

Discussion: Forbes, Boing Boing, The New York Observer, On Media's Blog, Media Matters for America, ThinkProgress and Gothamist

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Spooking Flipboard: Yahoo's Livestand and Google's Propeller Set to Launch Next Week — Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN's Zite and AOL's Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you're about to get some bigfoot company.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, paidContent, Electronista and ReadWriteWeb, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Ad Sales Are Either Okay, Growing Slower, or Soft. Pick Your Answer! — Given that the world's economy seems to keep teetering on the precipice, it's no surprise that ad spending might pull back a bit. And we've seen predictions to that effect for some time.

Discussion: AdAge, Bloomberg, Guardian, MediaPost, Adweek, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Cablevision: More Video Subscriber Losses, But Rate Appears To Be Slowing — There seems to be no escaping the cable industry's continuing decline in basic video subscribers, and Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) was no exception in Q3, though the rate of those losses appeared to be slowing.

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Clear Channel Cuts D.J.'s Across the Country — Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio station operator in the United States, dismissed dozens of local D.J.'s this week, affecting small stations from Syracuse to Spokane, Wash., and raising fresh concerns about the homogenization of radio programming.

Discussion: rbr.com, Gawker, mediabistro.com, Chickaboomer and @mediaredef

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Cyborg no more! The BBC moves to human-edited Twitter feeds — Move over, auto-tweets: This week, the BBC has switched its @BBCNews Twitter feed to all-human curation. (One small step for a news feed; one giant leap for newsfeedkind.) — It's a lot like the experiment The New York Times tried …

Discussion: Editors Weblog and Guardian

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Cox Media combining jobs at AJC, other papers — Cox Media Group, which operates The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, will restructure operations throughout its newspaper division, the company announced Thursday. — The company will consolidate different newsroom and business functions …

Discussion: News & Views …, Charles Apple and Poynter

Dylan Byers / Adweek:

‘Guardian’ Correspondent Levels Plagiarism Charge at Reuters Two Moscow journalists report very similar stories By Dylan Byers — “Wow. Thanks to @Reuters for at least changing a few of the words from my story,” Miriam Elder, The Guardian's Moscow correspondent, tweeted Thursday …

Discussion: @dylanbyers, Poynter and Reuters

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Obama 2012 campaign heads to Tumblr — When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008, his use of social media was among one of the many contributors to his win. — Twitter, Facebook, blogging — Obama's campaign team had all that covered to help him build a ground swell …

Discussion: CNET News

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

WSJ To Run E-Book Bestseller Lists Powered By Nielsen BookScan — With e-books now making up about 20 percent of sales for many big publishers, it's essential for bestseller lists to include them in order to give an accurate picture of what is selling. The Wall Street Journal …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Associated Press and mediabistro.com