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

12:00 PM ET, May 8, 2012

Top News:

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Writer fired by Chronicle of Higher Ed: ‘The vitriolic reaction is kind of surprising’ — The editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education has apologized and severed the publication's relationship with the writer of a blog post about Black Studies that “did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards …

Discussion: Racialicious

Jim Romenesko:

Chronicle of Higher Education ousts blogger over black studies post — The Chronicle of Higher Education says it now agrees with the “several thousand of you [who] spoke out in outrage and disappointment that The Chronicle had published an article that did not conform to the journalistic standards …

Christopher Shea / Wall St Journal: Chronicle of an Academic-Media Firestorm

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Decline Of Reader Apps Likely Due To News Feed Changes, Shows Facebook Controls The Traffic Faucet — No, Facebook news reader apps aren't declining because users suddenly got fed up with auto-sharing. The user loss is likely due to the transition to “trending articles” …

Discussion: Poynter and Softpedia News

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: The Wall Blog, The Atlantic Wire, currybetdotnet, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, the Econsultancy blog, Inside Facebook, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Verge and @bydanielvictor

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

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Poynter, FishbowlDC, Politico, Broadcasting & Cable, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Business Insider, Mediaite, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

The Atlantic Names Its New Business News Site: ‘Quartz.’ Quartz? Yep. Quartz. — Naming a new website in the year 2012 requires a fair amount of creativity and compromise. All the obvious good domains have been taken, and plenty of the bad ones, too. — Atlantic Media went heavy …

Discussion: Folio, FishbowlNY, New York Magazine and @mlcalderone

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Phone hacking: Andy Coulson wins leave to appeal over ruling on legal fees — Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has won permission to appeal against a high court ruling that News International is not liable to pay his potential legal fees over the phone-hacking scandal.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and Press Gazette

Associated Press: Phone Hacking Investigator In UK Supreme Court Bid

The Independent: IoS exclusive: Coulson owned News Corp shares while at No 10

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Journalism: Dying by a thousand cuts, or being reinvented? — There are plenty of warning signs about the ongoing disruption in the media industry, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. But when it comes to their journalistic competition, many traditional outlets still seem …

Discussion: Poynter

Michael Wines / New York Times:

China Expels Al Jazeera Channel — BEIJING — Al Jazeera, the satellite broadcasting network, was forced by the Chinese authorities to close its China news operations of its English-language channel on Monday, the first such action in almost 14 years and the strongest sign yet …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Poynter, AJE, Washington Post, China Real Time Report, Guardian, Globe and Mail, The New Yorker Blog, @mlcalderone and The Next Web

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive ‘Traffic’ — Readers aren't stupid. They know when your product is cheap. — For a time, people measured site ‘traffic’ by the number of page views on that site. So, any time someone opened a page on that publication, it counted as one.

Discussion: CJR, parislemon, State of the Fourth Estate, Gawker, FrontBurner and The Atlantic Wire

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Key Strategic — and Digitally Inclined — CBS Exec Lurie Departs — Zander Lurie — CBS's SVP of strategic development, who worked on a number of its key digital initiatives — is leaving the media giant. — Lurie has been involved in everything from the company's acquisition of Clicker …

Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:

A Closer Look At Chorus, The Next-Generation Publishing Platform That Runs Vox Media — The modern online newsroom is a 24/7 operation. It needs power tools to work efficiently, like modern carpenters need electric drills to build houses. The problem is that most content management systems …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Vox Product, Thanks:@ry_hudson

Richard Blackden / Telegraph:

Warren Buffett tells Omaha gathering he may buy more newspapers — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said that he may buy more newspapers even though the profits they make will be “nothing like the old days.” — Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, eats a Dairy Queen ice cream bar …

Discussion: Garcia Media and FishbowlNY

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:

Tom Brokaw Doubles Down On WHCD: 'If You Go, It'll Steal Your Soul' — Tom Brokaw doubled down on his criticism of the White House Correspondents Dinner during a Tuesday conversation with the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz. The NBC News veteran caused a major stir on Sunday when he said that it was time to …