Mediagazer: The Colorado shooting and the crowdsourced future of news (Mathew Ingram/GigaOM)

4:45 PM ET, July 21, 2012

Top News:

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:

Rupert Murdoch steps down from NI boards — Rupert Murdoch's grip on UK newspapers is loosening “finger by finger”, as he resigns string of directorships. — Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly insisted that he remains committed to his UK newspapers, vowing that he will remain a “very active chairman” of the publishing busines.

Discussion: Mediaite, Reuters, Washington Times, Runnin' Scared, The Atlantic Wire and @jeffjarvis

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The Colorado shooting and the crowdsourced future of news — Only a few days ago, we were writing about how users of Twitter and Reddit used those networks to tell a compelling story about a mass shooting in Toronto, and now the same phenomenon is playing out in real-time during another horrific incident …

Discussion: The Wrap, Beet.TV, Poynter, CNN, Jordan Ghawi, BuzzFeed and Poynter, Thanks:@megangarber

Alex Pappas / The Daily Caller:

Colorado tea partier describes ‘surreal’ day of wrongly being linked to theater massacre — Colorado Tea Party Patriots member Jim Holmes told The Daily Caller in a Friday interview that his day has been “surreal” after falsely being linked to the movie theater massacre in Colorado by an on-air ABC News reporter.

Discussion: NewsBusters.org blogs, ABCNEWS, Instapundit and Poynter

Jack Shafer:

What the Colorado shooting says about us — The Colorado movie massacre imposes on us once again the temptation to extrapolate lessons from a demented act of violence. Depending on the lens through which the massacre is viewed, it has encouraged some to restate their case for gun control …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Crooks and Liars, The New Republic and Slate

Jakob Schiller / Wired:

When Tragedy Hits, Photojournalists Balance Reporting and Emotion — “He was screaming at the top his lungs, ‘Have you seen my son?’” says Barry Gutierrez, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who has been covering today's shooting in Colorado for the Associated Press.

Discussion: The Raw Story

Media Decoder:
Hollywood Struggles for Proper Response to Shooting

Discussion: Rolling Stone, Daily Mail, The Informer, msnbc.com, The Wrap, AdAge, Adweek, ComicBook.com, The Wrap, The New Yorker Blog, Deadline.com and Hollywood Reporter

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:
How 18-Year-Old Morgan Jones Told The World About Aurora

Discussion: Poynter, NPR, FishbowlLA, Mediaite, Erik Wemple, Gawker, FishbowlNY, HyperVocal, Poynter, Washington Post and Politico

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:

Alexander Cockburn, Left-Wing Journalist, Dies At 71 — Alexander Cockburn, a prominent radical columnist and journalist, has died at 71 after a lengthy battle with cancer. — Cockburn's death was announced by his friend and journalism partner Jeffrey St. Clair on Counterpunch, the website they ran together.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Runnin' Scared, Hit & Run, BuzzFeed, CounterPunch, The Nation and NewsBusters.org blogs

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Wielki sukces! Piano Media expands its national paywall model to Poland — Piano Media, the Slovakian company with plans to erect a pan-European paywall, expanded today into its third and largest market, Poland. Seven major media companies have agreed to put some of their content behind a single national paywall.

Rethink Digg:

v1 — As betaworks and Digg both announced on their blogs, we are taking over Digg and turning it back into a startup. What they didn't mention is that we're rebuilding it from scratch. In six weeks. — On August 1, after an adrenaline and caffeine-fueled six weeks, we're rolling out a new v1.

Discussion: Business Insider, WebProNews, The Next Web, @digg, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, CNET and Fast Company

Jessica Roy / Betabeat: Betaworks Team Announces Ambitious Goal: Rebuild Digg From the Ground Up. In Six Weeks.

Abigail Pesta / The Daily Beast:

The War on ‘Teen Vogue’: Young Readers Escalate Campaign for More ‘Real Girls’ — Teenage girls are stepping up a fight for the magazine to show a wider range of body types, claiming the current images can spark eating disorders and other problems. Abigail Pesta reports. — Does Teen Vogue digitally zap zits?

The Daily:

Sorkin cleaning the “Newsroom” — Aaron Sorkin has been doing press all week defending his critically-panned HBO show, “The Newsroom,” but behind the scenes he's cleaning house. Most of the writers on the cable drama about a Keith Olbermann-type television news demagogue have been fired …

Discussion: FishbowlLA, Gawker, ArtsBeat and Business Insider

Ellen McCarthy / Washington Post:

Michael Caruso, Smithsonian's new editor, sees a livelier future for magazine — Michael Caruso announced his arrival at Smithsonian Magazine with a cover image of a 50-foot snake poised to bite off the heads of unsuspecting readers. — Subtlety is not Caruso's strong suit, nor his ambition.

Sarah Carr / CJR:

How to worry about a clicks-driven Times-Picayune — A departing reporter's worst-case fears — If clicks drove coverage at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans —a more realistic prospect than it's ever been—what kind of publication would we get? We can look at past traffic and get a rough answer …

Discussion: Cision and American Journalism Review