Mediagazer: Google and the News, Part 2,389: The Company Is Co-Hosting a Conference on Investigative Reporting and Tech (Megan Garber/The Atlantic Online)

11:55 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 …

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

Discussion: Press Gazette

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:
Phone hacking: six News of the World staff instructed Mulcaire, papers allege

Discussion: Guardian, BBC, The Independent, Guardian 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: New York Magazine, 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 …

Discussion: Erik Wemple

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: Mashable!, Capital New York, FishbowlNY, The Lively Morgue and Poynter

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: Erik Wemple, Poynter, CJR, Publishing Executive … and Warren Buffett Watch

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

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, /Film, Gizmodo, SlashGear and Wired

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

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

NYC Newspapers Defend Spying On Muslims — NEW YORK — Bob McManus, editorial page editor of the New York Post, blasted the Associated Press on Tuesday, suggesting that the news organization cares more about winning a Pulitzer Prize than the threat of terrorism. — “It will win its prizes, or not,” McManus wrote.

Discussion: New York Times, NY Daily News and Capital New York

Megan Garber / The Atlantic Online:

Google and the News, Part 2,389: The Company Is Co-Hosting a Conference on Investigative Reporting and Tech — An investigative reporter might spend weeks (or months, or years) working on a single story, guided by her sense that the facts she's uncovering will expose injustice and illuminate wrongs …