Mediagazer: The Washington Post Is In Even Worse Shape Than You Think (Jeff Bercovici/Forbes)

7:50 PM ET, May 7, 2012

Top News:

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Secret Meeting Has ‘Washington Post’ Buzzing — Washington Post staffers are buzzing about a secret meeting between some 10 big-name Post journalists including Dana Priest, David Finkel and Carol Leonnig, and Steve Hills, the president and gm of the newspaper.

Discussion: GigaOM, The Atlantic Wire, Broadcasting & Cable, Poynter, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Business Insider, FishbowlDC, @dylanbyers, Politico, Mediaite, @digitalshields and New York Magazine

John Herrman / Buzzfeed:

Facebook Social Readers Are All Collapsing — The Washington Post was the first publication to experiment with a “frictionless” social reader app, which launched last year. If you use Facebook you've probably come across it: it manifests as a clustered list of stories that are almost …

Discussion: TechCrunch, JIMROMENESKO.COM, CNET, Inside Facebook, The Verge and @bydanielvictor

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

The Washington Post Is In Even Worse Shape Than You Think — The Washington Post Co. reported its first-quarter earnings on Friday, and the news coming out of the newspaper division was mostly grim. The unit lost $22.6 million in the quarter, with revenue down 8% and revenue from print advertising specifically falling 17%.

Discussion: Poynter

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive ‘Traffic’

Discussion: FrontBurner

Jason Pontin / Technology Review:

Why Publishers Don't Like Apps — By the time Apple released the iPad in April of 2010, just four months after Steve Jobs first announced his “magical and revolutionary” new machines in San Francisco, traditional publishers had been overtaken by a collective delusion.

Discussion: ZDNet, Betabeat, Poynter, GigaOM, Mashable!, kottke.org, Beet.TV and The Huffington Post, Thanks:@ilamont

Jim Romenesko:

Milwaukee Police Department website corrects media errors — The Milwaukee Police Department says its The Source website “provides the whole story — the one that television, radio and newspapers don't have space or time to provide their audiences.” Also, “we'll correct the news stories …

Discussion: @niemanreports and @producermatthew

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Google Gets Deeper Into the Content Business, By Putting Money Into Machinima — Google has been handing out money to video-makers so they'll make more stuff for YouTube. Now it's putting money into a video-maker itself. The search giant is set to invest in Machinima …

Discussion: Media Decoder, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Verge, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Business Insider, Beet.TV, Softpedia News, eMedia Vitals and Digital Media Wire

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

From ABC News and Univision, an English-Language Channel for Hispanics — The Walt Disney Company's ABC News division and Univision have tentatively agreed to create an English-language cable television channel for Hispanics in the United States. — The companies, which will each own 50 percent …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, The Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Yahoo! News, Media & Entertainment, Multichannel, Riptide 2.0, NetNewsCheck Latest, Company Town, AdAge, Radio & Television … and mediabistro.com

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Exclusive: Publisher sues Tumblr over porn pics — It's finally happened. In a case with big implications for the booming market in photo-sharing, a publisher is suing popular blogging site Tumblr for copyright infringement. — In a complaint filed Friday in Manhattan …

Discussion: MediaPost, Betabeat, SocialTimes, The Consumerist, PandoDaily, the Econsultancy blog and @producermatthew

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

‘60 Minutes’ Gets Younger, and Its Viewers Do Too — The oldest newsmagazine on television, “60 Minutes,” might have figured out how to halt the aging process. — Purposefully but almost imperceptibly, the CBS News program, the most popular of its genre, has become younger in recent years.

Discussion: The New York Observer, TVNewser and Chickaboomer

William Neuman / New York Times:

Colombia Rebels Confirm Kidnapping of French Journalist — A member of a Colombian guerrilla group said in a video released on Sunday that it was holding a French journalist and considered him a prisoner of war. — “The French journalist Romeo Langlois, captured in battle and wearing a military uniform …

Discussion: MiamiHerald.com and Big News Network.com

Eduardo Garcia / Reuters: Colombia rebels want media debate for Frenchman's release

Edward Wasserman / The Miami Herald:

Media silent when administration targets sources — When President Obama addressed the American Society of News Editors convention last month, the real news was what didn't happen. The watchdogs didn't bark. No discouraging word from the gathering of 1,000 of the country's top news people …

Discussion: Reason and Mother Jones

Julie Moos / Poynter:

How 2 twentysomething journalists brought down a corrupt Kentucky sheriff — Samantha Swindler, then 27, had been managing editor of the Corbin (Ky.) Times-Tribune for about three years when she asked 20-year-old Adam Sulfridge to report on a corrupt sheriff, Lawrence Hodge, who was involved in trading guns, drugs and favors.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @dancow and Poynter

Kashmir Hill / The Not-So Private Parts:

Hulu To Users: Connect Your Facebook Account Or No Social For You — Some angry Hulu users created this logo to protest a push to integrate their accounts with Facebook — Last month, video provider Hulu made changes to its social sharing features. For Facebook users, it was great …

Dylan Byers / Politico:

W.H. embargoed al-Qaeda bomb threat — The Associated Press reports today that it learned last week of a thwarted al-Qaida-affiliated plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airplane, but did not report on it because of an agreement with the White House and the CIA. However, the AP did decide to report …

Discussion: Mediaite, Poynter, FishbowlDC and Politicker

Stijn Debrouwere / stdout.be:

FUNGIBLE — We don't realize how much news media has changed in the past fifteen years. We really don't. I'm not talking about digital first or about blogging or about data journalism or the mobile web or the curation craze. Yes, journalism has evolved and is better for it. I'm talking beyond that.

Discussion: The Newspaper Guild