Mediagazer: Why did New York Times call George Zimmerman ‘white Hispanic’? (Erik Wemple)

2:50 AM ET, March 29, 2012

Top News:

News Corp. Said to Plan U.S. Sports Network to Rival ESPN — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWSA) is taking steps to start a national U.S. sports network on cable television aimed at challenging Walt Disney Co. (DIS)'s ESPN, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Discussion: Forbes, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, PBS, The Wrap, Deadline.com, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, @pkafka, Politico, msnbc.com, Guardian and AllThingsD

Guardian:

Daily Mail made 1,728 potentially illegal requests to private detective — Journalists at the tabloid spent about £143,000 on requests to Steve Whittamore for information between 2000 and 2003 — The Daily Mail spent an estimated £143,000 asking a private eye …

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Australian minister wants News Corp inquiry

Discussion: The Wrap and The Journalism Foundation

Lucy Manning / ITV News:
Newspaper payments for potentially illegal information revealed

Discussion: Reuters, @iburrell, Guardian, National Updates and themediablog.typepad.com

Matt Siegel / New York Times:
Murdoch's News Ltd. Rejects TV Piracy Claim in Australia

Discussion: Media Decoder, Deadline.com, Reuters, Australian Finance Review, Australian Financial Review and The Independent

Press Gazette:
Thurlbeck: Phone-hacking was rife across Fleet Street

Discussion: Frontline

Keach Hagey / Politico:

Ex-Rocky editor offered WashPost ME job — John Temple, editor of the Honolulu-based local news site Civil Beat and former editor of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, has been offered managing editor job at the Washington Post, POLITICO has learned. — The job has been open since Raju …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Anthony Rieber / Newsday:

Jeremy Lin meets with ex-ESPN headline writer — Knicks star Jeremy Lin had lunch on Tuesday with the former ESPN employee who was fired last month for writing a headline about Lin that included a racially insensitive word. — Lin met with Anthony Federico, a 28-year-old Connecticut man, during a Knicks off-day.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Gothamist

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

The WaPo Ombudsman's Faulty Paywall Analysis — The NYT's meter is saving or adding more than $70 million in revenue a year already — Washington Post ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton has a flawed analysis on the logic of a possible paywall there and on the performance of the one that already exists at The New York Times.

Discussion: Poynter

Erik Wemple:

Why did New York Times call George Zimmerman ‘white Hispanic’? — Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg is lashing out at the New York Times for its coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. His gripe? The paper's stylebook. Let Goldberg describe his concern:

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, National Review and Mediaite

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Subscription Manager MediaPass Raises $1.75M — It's no secret that publishers are scrambling to find ways of making money online. On the subscription/paywall side, a startup called MediaPass wants to help, and it just raised $1.75 million in Series B funding.

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:

Orwell Prize 2012 Journalism and Blog longlists announced — Guardian journalist Paul Lewis is among those on the Journalism Prize longlist after submitting one day of tweets sent during the London riots — A total of 12 journalists and 18 bloggers have been named as contenders for this year's Orwell Prize.

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Lost journalists documentary hits $50k goal on Kickstarter — A documentary that will follow photojournalist Tim Page in his continued search for the stories of journalists who went missing in Cambodia in the 1970s has crowdfunded $50K — A US production company has raised an initial goal …

Dylan Byers / Politico:

NY Times Guild members win their 35 hours — The New York Times yesterday sent “a new, comprehensive proposal” to the Newspaper Guild of New York, in which it offered — among other things — to give Guild members a one-percent raise (plus a one-percent bonus in the second year) and to drop the proposal to end the Guild medical plan.

Discussion: The FJP, The Huffington Post and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Michael Wolff / Guardian:

Mobile and the news media's imploding business model — Smartphones will soon be the primary news source for most Americans. That's if anyone can still make money by reporting — Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source.

Discussion: Forbes and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Syria, citizen journalism and the capital “T,” truth — As we have described a number of times at GigaOM, journalism has become something virtually anyone can practice now, thanks to social tools and digital media. This democratization of distribution has had a profound effect on the coverage …

Elizabeth Flock / Washington Post: Are Syrian citizen journalists embellishing the truth?

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Group Plans Protest of The Village Voice — Village Voice Media, which operates Backpage.com, is coming under more fire for maintaining an adult section that allegedly has been used by people to buy and sell minors for sex. A group led by Groundswell, a social action service of the Auburn Seminary …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and The New York Observer

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

ESPN should find ways to cover the Trayvon Martin story rather than become part of it — ESPN.com's Jemele Hill did a very nice, tight column this week explaining how the lives of professional athletes are connected to the life and death of Trayvon Martin. — Contrast that to ESPN's bouncing …

Discussion: Guardian, Techdirt, @PSFK, NY Daily News and The Newspaper Guild

Committee to Protect Journalists:

Two independent journalists killed in Syria — Syrian security forces shot and killed two freelance British journalists of Algerian descent and wounded a third during an attack on Monday in the town of Darkoush near the Turkish border, according to news reports and a witness interviewed by CPJ.

Discussion: The Journalism Foundation and Guardian