Mediagazer: CPJ census finds ‘15-year high’ in jailed journalists (Rachel McAthy/Journalism.co.uk)

4:45 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: B&C, Guardian, Washington Post, The New York Observer, DCist, New York Magazine, Runnin' Scared, College Media Matters, 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: vt.edu, WDBJ-TV, B&C, Mediaite, Gawker and Poynter

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: Business Insider, Opinion L.A., CNET News, Gawker, Electronic Frontier Foundation and TorrentFreak

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: Mashable!, AdAge, AllThingsD, Twitter Developers and Twitter Blog, more at Techmeme »

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, Medacity and TeleRead

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

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

CPJ census finds ‘15-year high’ in jailed journalists — There are currently 179 journalists in prison, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a rise of 34 in one year — Iran, Eritrea, China, Burma and Vietnam top the list of countries with the highest numbers of jailed journalists

Discussion: Committee to Protect …, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post and Journalism.co.uk

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

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Waze Brings Crowdsourced Social Traffic Data To Local Broadcast Stations — Social mapping and navigation company Waze is partnering with 12 local broadcast stations including KGO-TV San Francisco, KABC Los Angeles, WFAA Dallas, and WPVI-TV Philadelphia, to bring its citizen-traffic reporting platform mainstream.

Discussion: TVSpy, WebProNews, VentureBeat and GigaOM

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 …

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.

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: The New York Observer and Poynter

Guardian:
The citizens agenda: making election coverage more useful

Discussion: Pressthink

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: ABC News, The Raw Story, The Huffington Post, Poynter, Big Journalism, Associated Press, Media Decoder, FOI FYI, The Daily Weekly and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Updated: Google Launches Currents, Its New Mobile Reading App — Add Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to the growing list of companies like Flipboard, Pulse and Scribd's Float with news aggregation apps. Google quickly rolled out Currents, a free iOS/Android app, this afternoon after an All Things Digital leak …

Discussion: Google Mobile Blog, Epicenter, AllThingsD and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

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, Nieman Journalism Lab, Future of Journalism and Poynter, Thanks:jaredbkeller

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

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: The Huffington Post and Journalism.co.uk

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.