Mediagazer: MTV, Comedy Central, other Viacom channels go dark for DirecTV (Roger Cheng/CNET)

3:45 PM ET, July 11, 2012

Top News:

R.I.P. Newscore: News Corp.'s Weird News Wire Goes Dark, Sheds Staff — As News Corp. shores up its print and television properties leading up to the company's highly publicized split, its scrappy and beloved internal newswire Newscore has quietly gone dark, with at least 20 positions eliminated …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Rupert Murdoch puts ‘The Daily’ ‘on watch’ — Rupert Murdoch's ‘The Daily’ may not be long for this world. — The iPad-only magazine launched to great fanfare in early 2011, but has languished ever since — chiefly because you can only access it on an iPad.

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Operation Elveden: two journalists arrested on suspicion of conspiracy — Sunday Mirror reporter one of two journalists arrested, with Daily Star Sunday deputy news editor understood to be the other — Two journalists, including one from the Sunday Mirror, were arrested this morning …

Discussion: @joshhalliday and Media Decoder

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette: Could Mirror Elveden arrest prompt domino effect?

John Paton / Digital First:

In Defense of the Times-Picayune — Stop me if you've heard this one. — An old and distinguished business in New Orleans has seen more than half of its revenue disappear in five years and has decided to change how it conducts business - before it goes out of business.

Discussion: American Journalism Review, The Buttry Diary, @stevebuttry and @jeffjarvis

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Carla Robbins out at NY Times editorial page — New York Times deputy editorial page editor Carla Anne Robbins stepped down, POLITICO has learned. — In an email to staff on Monday, editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal said “Robbins has decided to step down as Deputy Editorial Page Editor …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and @dylanbyers

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

NBC, Microsoft Planning Online Divorce — MSNBC.com to be rebranded under deal — NBC and Microsoft plan to announce a deal to finally part company, with the network buying back the remainder of their hugely popular MSNBC website from the software giant, say people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Mediaite, Politico, @alexkoppelman, @rafat, @dylanbyers and @howardkurtz

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

NBC and Facebook to Announce Olympics Partnership — Users of Facebook, later this summer, will be reminded about NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games in London. And viewers of NBC's coverage, at the same time, will be nudged to talk about the Games on Facebook.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Forbes Real Time, Lost Remote, Los Angeles Times, Daily Dot, PC Magazine, the Econsultancy blog, Mashable!, PopWatch and The Wrap

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Can a publisher use crowdfunding to replace ads? — We've already seen Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding platform, used to finance some fairly interesting media experiments, including books from authors like Seth Godin, record albums by artists like Amanda Palmer and even an entire magazine in the case of Matter.

Discussion: VentureBeat, The Verge, The Wall Blog, mediabistro.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, eMedia Vitals, Mashable!, GeekWire, Penny Arcade and The Next Web

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:
A digital publishing model that works

Discussion: The Media Business and eMedia Vitals

Roger Cheng / CNET:

MTV, Comedy Central, other Viacom channels go dark for DirecTV — It's unclear how long the blackout — which hits more than 20 million customers — might last after DirecTV and Viacom fail to come to terms on distribution fees. DirecTV and Viacom failed to reach a new deal on programming fees …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Speakeasy, VentureBeat, Blog.Viacom, Guardian, Media Decoder and @peterlauria3

Nieman Journalism Lab:

Ellington CMS finds a new home — We wrote last month about what looked like the end of the road for Ellington, a content management system designed for news organizations and built on Django. Its owner, the parent company of the Lawrence Journal-World, decided the free CMS world had advanced …

Discussion: Folio and eMedia Vitals

Joe Coscarelli / New York Magazine:

The New York Times Gets a ‘Rare Glimpse’ Quite Often — Diligent readers of the New York Times are, on one hand, de facto public editors, tracking large-scale shifts in the hallowed pages and speaking up — in their own best interest — to keep the paper honest.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:
Why The New York Times eschews formal social media guidelines

Discussion: FishbowlNY and The Educated Reporter

Jim Romenesko:

The world has put veteran journalists out to pasture — A job-seeking veteran reporter who was laid off from a Chicago newspaper a few years ago forwarded a Sun-Times Media help-wanted ad to Chicago Reader media critic Michael Miner and asked, “Is it legal?” (His answer: “I don't know.")

Michael Oneal / Chicago Tribune:

Judge signals he'll OK Tribune Co. reorganization plan … U.S. Bankrutpcy Judge Kevin Carey signaled that he will confirm a plan to end Tribune Co.'s epic bankruptcy case in an opinion he plans to release this week. — At a status hearing in the case held in Delaware Wednesday morning …

Thomas Grove / Reuters:

Russian Wikipedia closes site to protest Internet law — (Reuters) - The Russian version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia closed its site on Tuesday in a one-day protest against what it said were plans by President Vladimir Putin to create his own version of the “Great Chinese Firewall” to block dissent on the Internet.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Fifth-graders alert Washington Post to Titanic error in ‘adorable’ letter — Wednesday morning, The Washington Post's Dennis Drabelle opened his mail to find a rather large letter informing him of an error in one of his stories. “Based on our research,” wrote Mrs. Reed's fifth-grade class …

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Netflix's lost year: The inside story of the price-hike train wreck — One year ago tomorrow, CEO Reed Hastings took the first of a series of missteps that angered customers and nearly derailed his company. Current and former employees disclose what went wrong. — Follow @sandoCNET

Discussion: ZDNet

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Roger Ailes biographer encounters third-rate online taunting — Journalist Gabriel Sherman has a bio page at gabrielsherman.com. It notes that he's written quite a bit over the years, for the New York Observer, New York magazine, the New Republic, et alii. Other fun facts: … What a jerk!