Mediagazer: Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger (Kashmir Hill/Forbes)

12:30 AM ET, December 9, 2011

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Collegiate Times shifts publishing to Twitter, Facebook for shooting coverage — The website of Virginia Tech's independent student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, is struggling with traffic as people seek information on a campus shooting Thursday. The home page now redirects to a sparsely designed …

Discussion: Washington Post, Guardian, The New York Observer, Runnin' Scared, College Media Matters, New York Magazine, DCist, This Just In, Media Decoder and newsfeed.time.com

Adam Hochberg / Poynter:

News orgs take to social media to find Va. Tech witnesses, photos — News organizations from around the country are using social media to locate witnesses and obtain interviews and photos of today's campus shooting at Virginia Tech. “Call our newsroom if you know anyone that goes to Virginia Tech …

Discussion: Mediaite, WDBJ-TV, Gawker, Poynter and The Daily

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details... Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses …

Discussion: CNET News, Gawker, TorrentFreak and Electronic Frontier Foundation, more at Techmeme »

Leonora LaPeter Anton / St. Petersburg Times:

‘60 Minutes’ piece on homelessness spawns viral misquote — A recent 60 Minutes piece on homeless families in Central Florida living in their cars generated lots of buzz nationally. — The compelling piece, which ran Nov. 27, explored the lives of two teens living with their father …

Steve Myers / Poynter: ‘60 Minutes’ homelessness statistic was apparently too good to check

Michael McAuliff / The Huffington Post:

Rupert Murdoch Lobbies Congress To Restrict Internet … WASHINGTON — News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch threw his weight behind Congress' attempt to restrict the Internet, personally lobbying leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday for two measures that purport to combat piracy.

Richard Verrier / Company Town:
Hollywood moguls convene in nation's capitol for a change

Discussion: Deadline.com

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Civic journalism 2.0: The Guardian and NYU launch a “citizens agenda” for 2012 — Last August, Jay Rosen published a blog post arguing for “a citizens agenda in campaign coverage.” The idea, he wrote, “is to learn from voters what those voters want the campaign to be about …

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter and The New York Observer

Guardian:
The citizens agenda: making election coverage more useful

Discussion: Pressthink

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Verizon And RedBox Planning Major Partnership For Early 2012 Launch — Yesterday, it was reported that Verizon was planning a Netflix competitor and in talks with various content producers to provide the streams and downloads. TechCrunch has obtained additional information on this story …

Discussion: Deadline.com, GeekWire, rbr.com, Gizmodo, Fortune, Consumer Reports News, Engadget and FT Tech Hub

Read It Later Blog:

Who Are the ‘Most-Read’ Authors? — Saving a story for later can tell us a lot about loyalty, longevity and quality—and it changes the way we think about the most popular stories on the web — If we're to believe Woody Allen, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

Discussion: Media Decoder, Felix Salmon, Future of Journalism, Nieman Journalism Lab and Poynter, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent: Who Are The Most-Read Authors On The Web?

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger — No miscarriage of justice here. — It was the $2.5 million dollar lawsuit heard round the blogosphere. The Seattle Weekly reported that an “Oregon blogger” had been found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay an investment firm $2.5 million.

Discussion: Poynter, ABC News, The Raw Story, The Huffington Post, Big Journalism, Associated Press, ShortFormBlog, Media Decoder, The Daily Weekly, FOI FYI, Mashable! and GigaOM

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New York Times Election 2012 iPhone app launches — Big, rapid change can be hard to implement at any organization the size of The New York Times, so I appreciate how the talented journalists, designers, and coders within the Times use offshoot or ancillary projects to try out new features or ways of approaching the news.

Discussion: Washington Examiner, Los Angeles Times, FishbowlNY, The Caucus, NetNewsCheck Latest and Poynter

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:

Facebook's Video Views Rising, But Mostly For Discovery — Consumers are increasingly using Facebook for video - but, despite studios and broadcasters hosting more of their content on the social network, it remains mostly a gateway to video hosted elsewhere.

Emily Witt / The New York Observer:

Adbusters Publisher Kalle Lasn to Write an Occupy Wall Street ‘Textbook of the Future’ — Kalle Lasn, the publisher of Adbusters magazine who was recently profiled in The New Yorker, has gotten a book deal with independent publisher Seven Stories. As reported in Publishers Marketplace …

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

New Twitter formalizes news wire service function — What started as a simple, chronological Twitter timeline of your friends' short messages is now actively curating the news and information that flows through the social network. … As part of a major redesign, Twitter is launching a new …

Discussion: AdAge, Twitter Developers and AllThingsD, more at Techmeme »

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Yahoo to Launch Original Comedy Channel With Bill Maher Stand-Up Performance … NEW YORK - Yahoo said Thursday it would launch the Yahoo Comedy Channel with a slate of original comedy video content featuring such comedians as Mike O'Brien, lead writer on Saturday Night Live, and Seth Morris …

Discussion: Business Insider

Stefanie Botelho / Folio:

Vogue Launches Content Archive for $1,575 Annual Subscription — Includes 120 years of articles, advertisements and photography. — For readers who can't get enough Vogue through its website, digital and print issues, Conde Nast announces a searchable database chronicling the magazine's 120-year, 4,800 issue history.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, FishbowlNY and TeleRead

Cahal Milmo / The Independent:

Brooks' links to Clifford payment cast doubt on her hacking denials — Rebekah Brooks personally negotiated a £680,000 out-of-court settlement with the publicity guru Max Clifford which led to his withdrawing a potentially explosive phone-hacking claim against the News of the World, News International (NI) revealed last night.

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:
James Murdoch: Brooks did ‘not seek authorisation’ for Clifford settlement

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and Press Gazette

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Thurlbeck rounds on NoW executives in new evidence — Former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck has told MPs about a culture of “suppression” and “paralysis” at the News of the World which he says had “catastrophic consequences” for the paper.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Guardian:
Neville Thurlbeck's letter to MPs - full text

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Nadia White / MediaShift:

Nobel Prize Winner on How New Media is Democratizing Science News — MediaShift's science journalism coverage is sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School, which offers an innovative specialized M.A. for experienced journalists who want to cover science, business, arts or politics in a sophisticated, nuanced manner.