Mediagazer: Meet the Pentagon Contractor That Ran a Disinformation Campaign Against Two USA Today Reporters (John Cook/Gawker)

2:00 AM ET, April 21, 2012

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Departure of Disney exec sparks Twitter spat over crediting scoops — Reuters' Peter Lauria complained today that his company wasn't credited with breaking news that Rich Ross was stepping down as head of The Disney Co.'s movie studio. Do seconds divide the best and the rest?

Discussion: @peterlauria3, @bobbymacreports, @bobbymacreports, @peterlauria3, @editorialiste, @ckrewson, @peterlauria3, Forbes, @jbflint, Adweek, @eriqgardner, @davidfolkenflik, @editorialiste and @rafat

Jay Rosen:

Four Types of Scoops — Journalists tend to be obsessed with scoops, meaning: the first to break the news, and being seen as the first, which means getting credit for it among peers. — But not all scoops are created equal. I see four main types. The politics of credit-claiming vary …

David Weigel / Slate:
How “Breaking News” Broke the News

Discussion: Inside Cable News

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Nick Denton wants to turn the online media world on its head — Over the past couple of months, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton has made it clear that he doesn't like blog comments very much, and that includes the ones on his own sites such as Gizmodo and Jezebel.

Discussion: The Corsair, @sheamus, @jamiemottram and @nsolis, Thanks:@mathewi

Justin Elliott / ProPublica:

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency — News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

Discussion: @romenesko and @davidfolkenflik

John Cook / Gawker:

Meet the Pentagon Contractor That Ran a Disinformation Campaign Against Two USA Today Reporters — Last night USA Today reported that two of its staffers, Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker, were the targets of a smear campaign, including fake Twitter accounts and web sites established in their names …

Discussion: CJR, Guardian, Media Decoder, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Wire, The New York Observer and USA Today

Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:

YouTube faces massive music royalty bill in German copyright case — Summary: YouTube could face a massive royalties bill after a court case went against the video-sharing site. The ruling also ruled that YouTube alone is responsible for its users' submissions.

Discussion: New York Times, Reuters, PC Magazine, VentureBeat, Plagiarism Today, Softpedia News, Daily Dot, MediaPost, The Next Web and BBC

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

NY tabloid's new South Asian section shows ‘local’ is cultural not geographic — What do local New Yorkers really want to read about? Well, cricket and Bollywood, of course. — One of New York's longtime tabloids The Daily News has added a news section to its website called Desi that targets the city's large South Asian community.

Steven Rosenbaum / Fast Company:

Content Curators Are The New Superheros Of The Web — Yesterday, the ever-churning machine that is the Internet pumped out more unfiltered digital data. — Yesterday, 250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 BILLION emails were sent.

Jamie Keene / The Verge:

Tablets the second most popular way to watch TV, says Viacom study — The second most popular way to watch TV is now on a tablet, with iPads leading the way, according to a study by US media giant Viacom. The survey questioned 2,500 on where and how they watched full-length TV shows …

Discussion: Viacom, MediaPost and The Daily

Foster Kamer / The New York Observer:

Has The Fox Mole Really Been Blackballed from Media Jobs? — Just a few days after Gawker introduced their recent and short-lived foray into corporate espionage-cum-pranksterism in the form of The Fox News Mole, one Joe Muto found himself on CNN, speaking with Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources about the week he'd just had.

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Sebastian Junger is done with war reporting, but convenes journalists in the Bronx to learn to save each other's lives mid-combat — Sebastian Junger, the famous author-reporter, emerged from the 5-train station at the corner of Third Avenue and 149th Street in the Bronx at around 7:45 …

Discussion: Outside

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Boston Globe raises prices on 7-day delivery, but protects Sunday circulation — The Boston Globe raised prices on seven-day subscriptions but left Sunday-only subscriptions alone. The latter, Jon Chesto reports, also include unlimited access to the Globe's digital edition and costs only slightly more …

Discussion: Boston Herald, AdAge, Associated Press and Mixed Media

Jim Romenesko:

The story behind ‘one of the best op-ed pieces ever’ … Keith Devlin asked after reading Rex Huppke's Facts, 360 B.C. - A.D. 2012. — “'Tis,” responded one of his followers. — The Chicago Tribune piece went viral late Thursday, and Huppke's emailbox quickly filled with reactions to it …

Discussion: Poynter, American Journalism Review and Chicago Tribune