Mediagazer: Breitbart.com and the Obama footage: Showmanship prevails (Erik Wemple)

12:40 AM ET, March 12, 2012

Top News:

Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers — Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks' ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio. — Rush Limbaugh made the right …

Discussion: Mediaite, Radio-Info.com, ChasNote, Media & Entertainment, New York Magazine, The Raw Story, Boing Boing, Deadline.com, The Huffington Post and Saint Petersblog

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Why Rush Limbaugh's Apology for Sandra Fluke ‘Slut’ Remarks Bombed — Commentators often talk their way out of trouble these days. But Limbaugh couldn't convince the media he was sincerely sorry for calling Sandra Fluke a ‘slut.’ Howard Kurtz explains why.

Discussion: FishbowlDC

David Carr / New York Times:

A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators — As words and articles became digitized over the last 15 years, they began to float, there for the plucking and replication elsewhere. Words like “curation” and “aggregation” became the language of the realm, sometimes used as substitutes for describing the actual creation of content.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online

Jack Shafer:

Chris Hughes friends the New Republic — Chris Hughes joins the pantheon of vanity press moguls with the announcement today of his purchase of a majority interest in the New Republic. The 28-year-old Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, commands a net worth that Forbes put “in the $700 million range” last year.

Discussion: Mashable!, Washington Post, getthefive.com and The Huffington Post

Mike Shields / Adweek:

Gawker Founder Nick Denton Plans To Revamp Site's Comment Strategy — Once upon a time, in the early days of blogging, Gawker founder Nick Denton said, publishers hoped that the Web would help them “capture the intelligence of the readership.” — But now? “That's a joke,” he said.

Discussion: AllThingsD, Gizmodo and Daily Dot

Erik Wemple:

Breitbart.com and the Obama footage: Showmanship prevails — Who could have fathomed the comedy show that Andrew Breitbart kicked off at his speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month? Before a supportive audience, the Internet entrepreneur made a grand promise.

Discussion: Mother Jones and Forbes, Thanks:@erikwemple

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

‘Kony 2012’: Two sides to being a digital media sensation — ‘Kony 2012’ is a YouTube success, but Invisible Children finds that digital media attention can be a double-edged sword as its detractors rise. — Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, during a meeting with a delegation …

Discussion: Guardian, Wall Street Journal and Forbes

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Visualized: Incorrect information travels farther, faster on Twitter than corrections — Many times on Twitter I've witnessed what I call The Law of Incorrect Tweets: … The goal should be to make the correction as viral as the mistake. But that's a challenge, and Tuesday at Harvard's Truthiness …

Discussion: Truthiness in Digital Media

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

New York Times CEO Robinson's Exit Compensation Package Tops $23 Million — Janet Robinson, the New York Times Co. chief executive officer who was pushed out in December, received an exit package, including stock options and retirement benefits, of more than $23 million.

Discussion: Reuters, Deadline.com and Media Decoder

Daniel Denvir / The Atlantic Cities:

The Case for Saving the Metro Editorial Board — Until fairly recently, local editorial pages held something close to a monopoly on publicly stated opinion in metropolitan areas. — “There weren't a lot of other places where people were saying this is a good candidate, this is a bad candidate …

Pulse:

Pulse Goes Local: Discover What's Happening Around You — Today we're launching Local, a brand new category providing a simple and effective way to discover what's happening around you. With everything from breaking news, sports, food and deals, Pulse Local will always keep you in the know …

Discussion: App Advice, TUAW, VentureBeat, WebProNews and Fortune

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Politico Planning Big Slate of Web Video Shows — WASHINGTON — Seeing an emerging playing field where Internet delivered video news will eventually be on par with cable, Politico will broadly expand its video programming this year, says Jim VandeHei, Executive Editor, in this interview with Beet.TV

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Thanks:@beet_tv

Ryan Tate / Gawker:

Twitter's Secret History As the World's Worst Tech or Media Business — Twitter Inc.'s been spinning quite a turnaround story in the press lately. The microblogging service “has finally turned a corner,” declares the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek. “It's a juggernaut,” a company executive tells the magazine.

Discussion: CNET, Business Insider, The Next Web, @benpopper and @pkafka