Mediagazer: Lolcats Could Save the Washington Post (Alexander Abad-Santos/The Atlantic Wire)

7:30 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: @jake_bernstein, @geneweingarten, @benhuh, First Draft and Chickaboomer

Ben Huh / Washington Post:

Cheezburger's Ben Huh: Weingarten is confusing journalism with the business of newspapers — Journalism still has much to learn about timeliness when an oft-awarded columnist like Gene Weingarten is 34 days late to a story. Journalism still has much to learn about reporting when the writer …

Alexander Abad-Santos / The Atlantic Wire:

Lolcats Could Save the Washington Post — Players: Gene Weingarten, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at The Washington Post who doesn't understand lolcats (or readers' infatuation with lolcats); Ben Huh, CEO of meme network I Can Has Cheezburger? which gave birth to the lolcat.

Discussion: Washington Post

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

Discussion: Poynter

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.

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, CNET News, GigaOM, Benzinga, TechCrunch and TechCrunch

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: Reuters, The New York Observer, Betabeat, Media Matters for America, Politics & Elections Blog, Forbes, ThinkProgress, GalleyCat, City Room, On the Media, The Atlantic Wire, Boing Boing, On Media's Blog, OccupyWallSt News 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: VentureBeat, VatorNews, Business Insider, CNET News, Medacity, ReadWriteWeb, mocoNews, Future of Journalism and Electronista, more at Techmeme »

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

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

Discussion: The New York Observer, Betabeat and @andrewbreitbart

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

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

CBS, Warner Bros. Sell “Gossip Girl” Again — This Time to Hulu — CBS and Time Warner's Warner Bros., who just did a large re-run deal with Netflix for their CW network shows, have sold the same programming again. This time the buyer is Hulu, who is paying for the rights to show the stuff soon …

Discussion: MediaFile, Media & Entertainment, Home Media Magazine, CNET News, TechCrunch, paidContent, Media Decoder, Hulu Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, rbr.com, AdAge, The Wrap, Company Town and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

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.

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, Reuters and Poynter

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: Lost Remote, Forbes, Editors Weblog and Guardian

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: Gawker, rbr.com, Business Insider, Chickaboomer, mediabistro.com and @mediaredef

Steve Myers / Poynter:

News developers worried about new cost to use Google Maps — If the developers in your newsroom seem unusually stressed this week, it's probably because Google will start charging for use of the Google Maps API after Jan. 1. “An era has ended for the first API that really made mashups mainstream …

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Guardian and Softpedia News

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: paidContent, Charles Apple, News & Views … and Poynter