Mediagazer: The Twitter Death Epidemic (Barb Palser/American Journalism Review)

9:45 PM ET, February 28, 2012

Top News:

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

As Staff Flees, TechCrunch's Traffic Plummets — TechCrunch, the long-time darling of the digerati, is smashed to bits and all of AOL's horses and men will be hard-pressed to put it together again. The site has lost almost every one of its top writers and traffic has fallen sharply, dropping by 35 percent from a year ago.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Boing Boing, AllThingsD and TechCrunch

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:
AOL sees three more major talent departures

Discussion: Betabeat, WebProNews, FishbowlNY and AllThingsD

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

News of the World ‘may have paid £850,000’ to Glenn Mulcaire — Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes submits table which he says shows phone-hacking investigator's earnings — The private investigator who allegedly conducted “industrial scale” phone hacking on behalf of the News …

Telegraph:
Crimewatch presenter: NotW spied on me because of its links to Daniel Morgan murder case

Discussion: Reuters, The Independent, Guardian, Metro.co.uk, Guardian, Journalism.co.uk and Press Association

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Leveson inquiry: banning unofficial police interviews would ‘help abuse’

Discussion: Press Gazette

Tom Harper / This Is London:
Rebekah's gift horse from Met shows its close ties to Murdoch newspapers

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, FleetStreetBlues, Press Association, Guardian, Guy Fawkes' blog, Press Gazette and Guardian

Jim Romenesko:

The Daily threatens to sue reporter for tweeting objection to story — Earlier this month, Luke Kummer tweeted this objection to the handling of his reporting, then resigned from The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad publication. He then received this warning from the HR manager for The Daily and New York Post:

Discussion: The New York Observer and FishbowlNY

Barry Petchesky / Deadspin:

“Twitter Is Not Your Personal Playground,” ESPN Reminds Its Employees — A mole sends along the following email, which was spammed out to ESPN talent on Monday: … Going unmentioned is the brow-mopping and relief in Bristol that controversies over childish Twitter fights over attribution …

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Once Film-Focused, Netflix Transitions to TV Shows — Belying the “flix” in its name, Netflix is now primarily an Internet streaming service for television shows, not feature films. — TV series now account for more than half of all Netflix viewing. That helps to explain why this Wednesday …

Discussion: Engadget, WebProNews, The Consumerist, Shelly Palmer Digital Living, Gizmodo, /Film and SlashGear

Tim Carmody / Wired:
Oscar Night Turns Into a Winning Night for Netflix, Too

Discussion: PC Magazine and GigaOM

BBC:

Syria unrest: UK's Conroy freed from besieged city — Briton Paul Conroy has been rescued from the besieged Syrian city of Homs, but France's President Sarkozy has withdrawn an earlier statement that wounded journalist Edith Bouvier is also safely in Lebanon. — Her whereabouts remain unclear, hours after she apparently left Homs.

Discussion: Committee to Protect …, The Huffington Post, Reuters, Reuters, Guardian, ABCNEWS, Associated Press, Digital Spy, CNN, Poynter and Committee to Protect …

Stephen Farrell / At War:
Conflict Reporting in the Post-Embed Era

Discussion: Telegraph, Freedom of the Prez and The Editor's Desk

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

MTV Mobile Moves Into Social TV With Digital Agency AKQA — Viacom's MTV is making one more move into trying to capture the youth market on the platform where it's increasingly spending most of its time: the broadcaster, in partnership with digital agency AKQA, has launched “Under The Thumb,” a new social TV app.

Discussion: AdAge, Adweek and rbr.com

Kerri Macdonald / Lens:

A Tumblr From Times Past — For generations, most of the photographs housed in the newsroom archive of The New York Times — known affectionately as “the morgue” — have been hidden away from the public eye in filing cabinets and manila folders. — There are exceptions, of course.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Mashable!, The Lively Morgue and Poynter

Mark J. Perry / CARPE DIEM:

Newspaper Ad Revenues Fall to 60-Yr. Low in 2011 — The chart above displays total annual print newspaper advertising revenue based on actual annual data from 1950 to 2010, and estimated annual revenue for 2011 using quarterly data through the third quarter, from the Newspaper Association of America.

Discussion: Seeking Alpha and The Atlantic Online

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why Warren Buffett is wrong about newspaper paywalls — Warren Buffett, one of the world's wealthiest men, got that way by making smart investments in companies like Gillette and Coca-Cola Co., and now he has acquired a newspaper: the Omaha World-Herald, which he bought recently for $150 million.

Discussion: CJR, Poynter, Publishing Executive …, Warren Buffett Watch and NetNewsCheck Latest

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Condé Nast leads the pack in just-released nominations for big digital-magazine award, the Digital Ellies — With a total of 10 nominations, Condé Nast is leading the pack in the American Society of Magazine Editors' third annual National Magazine Awards for Digital Media, otherwise known as the Digital Ellies.

Discussion: MPA, MinOnline, Folio, Adweek and FishbowlNY

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Julian Assange claims ‘intellectual property’ — Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks, may have been the subject of a U.S. government indictment, according to reports out today. — In 2011, the vice president of Stratfor, the private intelligence firm whose emails …

Discussion: TPM Idea Lab and This Just In

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Does WikiLeaks still matter?

Discussion: Sydney Morning Herald, Jack Shafer, The Firewall, Mashable!, Editors Weblog, Capital New York, The Atlantic Online, Foreign Policy and paidContent:UK

Crispin J. Burke / At War:

As Social Media Expands, Military Bloggers Find More Outlets — This month, the editors of The Thunder Run published a two-part lament on the decline of the milblog, echoing a post by Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy from January of last year. But milblogging is far from dead.

Barb Palser / American Journalism Review:

The Twitter Death Epidemic — All of the bogus tweets about celebrity deaths underscore why it's silly to assert that Twitter “beat” the news media in reporting Whitney Houston's demise. Tues., February 28, 2012. — Barb Palser (bpalser@gmail.com) is director of digital media for McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Co.

Discussion: @mathewi

Dave Itzkoff / ArtsBeat:

Michael Mann Brings ‘Witness,’ Documentary Series About War Journalists, to HBO — Having taken a deep dive into the world of hardened gamblers for the HBO drama “Luck,” the director Michael Mann is reteaming with that cable channel to create a documentary series about the lives of combat photographers.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Deadline.com