Mediagazer: The Guardian: Yep, it was “major changes” by Facebook that caused drop in social reader traffic (Justin Ellis/Nieman Journalism Lab)

4:30 PM ET, May 8, 2012

Top News:

Rupert Murdoch's big backer sounds News Corp warning — Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the second-biggest shareholder in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has revealed his frustration with the fallout from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and admitted that it is harming the reputation …

Discussion: Hillicon Valley

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: Associated Press, Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk

Amy Chozick / New York Times:
Steering Murdoch in Scandal, Klein Put School Goals Aside

Discussion: Capital New York

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Phone-hacking scandal: Glenn Mulcaire denies protecting News International

Discussion: BBC

Free Press: 70,000 Petition Congress to Hold Hearings on News Corp. Corruption

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

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: Hit & Run and 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

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Guardian: Yep, it was “major changes” by Facebook that caused drop in social reader traffic — Scary charts once again dominated the future of news yesterday when both Forbes and BuzzFeed wrote about what appeared to be sharp declines in the use of Facebook social reader apps …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, The Wall Blog and The FJP

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, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, NetNewsCheck Latest, BuzzFeed, currybetdotnet, the Econsultancy blog, CNET, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Inside Facebook, Softpedia News and The Verge

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, @mlcalderone and FishbowlNY

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Ongo, an attempt at a pan-media paywalled aggregator, is closing — Less than a year and a half after launch, the subscription aggregation startup Ongo — a newspaper-industry effort to create a pan-media subscription system — is shutting down. It'll close its doors by month's end …

Discussion: AllThingsD and @rafat

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

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 …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

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 …

Discussion: Mediaite, Chickaboomer and American Journalism Review

Katherine Fung / Huffington Post:

New York Times Journalists Demand End To Contract Negotiations — New York Times staffers made another demand for the paper to end the dispute over their contract in a new video released on Monday. The video features Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Kevin Sack, Dan Barry and Amy Harmon urging …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

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 …