Mediagazer: OTUS and the golden age of political reporting (Jack Shafer)

2:25 PM ET, December 26, 2011

Top News:

A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court — How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost? — In base economic terms, the value of individual Twitter updates seems to be negligible; after all, what is a Twitter post but a few bits of data sent caroming through the Internet?

Discussion: Forbes, VatorNews, Betabeat and Marketing Pilgrim

Ben Farmer / Telegraph:

Congress calls on Twitter to block Taliban — American congressmen are calling on Twitter to block Taliban propagandists from the micro-blogging site. — Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt …

Discussion: VatorNews, Business Insider, Future of Journalism and Boing Boing, more at Techmeme »

David Collins / Daily Mirror:

Sue Caroll: Piers Morgan and Ed Miliband lead tributes — Sue Carroll photographed in March 2011 — Tributes to Sue Carroll flooded in today from the worlds of journalism, showbiz and politics. — Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “She spoke truth to the powerful and punctured the vanity of celebrity.

Discussion: Guardian

Tara Conlan / Guardian:

Columnist Sue Carroll dies of cancer — Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace leads tributes to writer, 58, who had cancer of the pancreas — Tributes have been paid to Daily Mirror columnist and The Alan Titchmarsh Show pundit Sue Carroll, who has died aged 58.

Discussion: Mirror.co.uk

Wyatt Williams / Creative Loafing Atlanta:

Can Don Lemon set CNN straight? — Cable news is broken and the ‘CNN Newsroom’ anchor could be the guy to fix it — Earlier this year, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” ran a segment titled “CNN's Don Lemon appears to not care for CNN.” The clip shows the Atlanta-based “CNN Newsroom” …

Discussion: The Maynard Institute, Mediaite and TVNewser

Nancy Phillips / Philly.com:

Seventh victim tells of Conlin abuse — Yet another woman has come forward to say that Hall of Fame baseball writer and former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin sexually abused her when she was a child. — The woman said Conlin assaulted her at the beach in Margate, N.J. …

Jack Shafer:

OTUS and the golden age of political reporting — Just what the country needed: Another political Web site. — At the beginning of the week, ABC News launched OTUS, its political news supermarket with its top political reporters (Jake Tapper, Jonathan Karl, Amy Walter, and George Stephanopoulos) hunkering on the site's home page.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and @romenesko

David Carr / New York Times:

Rules for the New Ways of Watching — For the last year, media pundits like me have been running around screaming our heads off about falling skies and collapsing paradigms, and yet as 2011 comes to end, the sky is still there. — Yes, competition is storming out of every device and connection …

Mona Zhang / 10,000 Words:

Growth of Twitter Fueled by Media Coverage — A new study by MIT, which seeks to understand Twitter's “contagion process,” has found that news media played a crucial role in the site's growth. The study tracked development from 2006 to 2009, and also found that more traditional forms of social networking …

Discussion: Marketing Pilgrim and UnBeige

Dean Starkman / CJR:

The Hole In FON Theory — Continuing the discussion about the future of news with Clay Shirky — I thank Clay Shirky and other posters for their responses to “Confidence Game: the limited vision of the news gurus.” Since Clay and I are going to differ on a few things …

Dan Kennedy / Nieman Journalism Lab: 2012 will bring “the great retrenchment” among newspaper publishers

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Caseby's squalid note to The Guardian editor shows News International's true face — I was surprised when I switched on Newsnight last week to hear that Nick Davies had refused to take part in a discussion with The Sun's managing editor, Richard Caseby. — I've known Davies for more than 35 years …

The Independent:
For Leveson, the ‘what ifs’ that must follow The Guardian's clarification are legion

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Huffington Post and Guardian

Randall Stross / New York Times:

Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War — LAST year, Christmas was the biggest single day for e-book sales by HarperCollins. And indications are that this year's Christmas Day total will be even higher, given the extremely strong sales of e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook.

more at Techmeme »

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

Can a sports network known for its male brand serve the female fan? — We watched with great interest this year as ESPN launched espnW, a brand designed to grow the female portion of ESPN's audience. — “W” is mostly a website at this point, grown out of a blog born in December 2010.

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Times Co. Calls Union Back to Negotiate — New York Times Co. (NYT) contacted union leaders about restarting contract negotiations a day after the publisher announced last week the retirement of Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson, according to the local Newspaper Guild.