Mediagazer: ‘CNN Needs New Thinking,’ Says Departing President. ‘Duh,’ Says Everyone Else. (Jeff Bercovici/Forbes)

1:45 PM ET, July 28, 2012

Top News:

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

NBCOlympics' Opening Ceremony Tape Delay: Stupid, Stupid, Stupid — If you were paying attention to Twitter today, you were probably met with two conflicting sides of the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. On the one hand, you had those who were on the ground (or who had access to the live stream somehow …

Discussion: The Wrap, Yahoo! News, Lost Remote, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Guardian, Multichannel, CNET, GigaOM, @wjcarter, Speakeasy, Pocket-lint, AllThingsD and summergames.ap.org

Tom Watson / Forbes:

Olympics Coverage: NBC Apparently Thinks It's 1992, Seemingly Unaware Of Twitter's Existence — Well, NBC was trending this afternoon on Twitter across the U.S. - and not because of some hilarious new sitcom. No, it's the wired multitudes taking to that interconnected series of tubes to blab …

Discussion: Multichannel, The New Yorker Blog, Broadcasting & Cable, A VC, GigaOM, The Daily Fix, Inside Higher Ed, Guardian, AllThingsD, GigaOM and Washington Post

Timothy Burke / Deadspin:

Here's The Opening Ceremony Tribute To Terrorism Victims NBC Doesn't Want You To See — The major transitional element of today's London Olympics opening ceremony was a downtempo performance of adoptive sporting anthem “Abide With Me” by Scottish singer Emeli Sandé.

Discussion: Mediaite, Guardian, entertainment.time.com and BuzzFeed

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:

NBC insults viewer intelligence, says Olympic Opening Ceremony is too ‘complex’ for online audience — The 2012 Summer Olympics have finally kicked off, and while NBC has been boasting about the digital options it's offering US sports fans, the broadcaster offered no live streaming of the opening ceremonies …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Jordan Zakarin / Hollywood Reporter: London 2012: Primetime TV Will Rule Over Digital For Years, Says NBC Olympics EP Jim Bell

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:
How a software firm is helping the BBC and PA deal with vast Olympics data

Discussion: Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Big News Network.com and Twitter Blog

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

‘CNN Needs New Thinking,’ Says Departing President. ‘Duh,’ Says Everyone Else. — Jim Walton took over CNN at a moment of crisis. Just a year earlier, it had been knocked out of first place in the ratings by the surging Fox News. It took a few years, but Walton managed to solve the problem …

Discussion: Mediaite and BtoB Magazine

CNN:
CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton announces he is stepping down at the end of the year

Discussion: Associated Press and Mediaite

David Bauder / Associated Press:
CNN chief Jim Walton resigns after 10 years leading CNN worldwide

Discussion: CNN, Media Decoder, @andersoncooper, Bloomberg, @michaelwolffnyc, Guardian, Politico, Poynter, The Wrap, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap, Mediaite and Capital New York

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Context, code, and community: Source is one-stop shopping for newsroom developers — A lot of newsroom developers are doing good work, and part of that good work is talking about their work. See ProPublica, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune for a few examples.

Adam Martin / The Atlantic Wire:

James Holmes' Prosecutors Say Notebook Story Can't Be Trusted — That story about the notebook James Holmes supposedly mailed to a psychiatrist, outlining his plans to shoot up the movie theater was a hell of a scoop for Fox News, but now Aurora prosecutors are saying in a court filing that it was probably all a big hoax.

Discussion: @producermatthew and The Latest Word

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Mail Online's 69% revenue growth suggests paywalls not the answer — Is the website's £27m in projected revenue this year already taking it levels of turnover that paywall-only sites cannot match? — Been bored today? Chances are you logged into Mail Online. Seven clicks later, you remembered who you were.

Discussion: paidContent

Daniel Frankel / paidContent:

Dish's latest Hopper tweak reeks of legal positioning — Facing a legal showdown with the broadcast networks over commercial-skipping features in its digital video recorders, Dish Network has quietly made several operating-system tweaks designed to put the ad-circumvention process more in the hands of the user.

Discussion: Lost Remote

Bloomberg:

Google Seeks Dismissal of E-Books Case — Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit over electronic books, saying the public benefits from the company's digital-scanning program and the market isn't harmed. — Google in May lost a bid to dismiss claims by groups including …

Discussion: Reuters

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:
Google says book scanning didn't cost authors a single sale

Discussion: MediaPost

Tracie Powell / Poynter:

UT official who reviewed Post story didn't allow that when she was a reporter — Tara Doolittle, one of the University of Texas press officers who recently reviewed a Washington Post story prior to publication, is a former reporter for The Austin American-Statesman. So did she ever allow sources to do what she did?

Discussion: The Buttry Diary and City Desk

Daniel Frankel / paidContent:

Day 27 of the Dish vs. AMC standoff: Where's the subscriber revolt? — Can a major pay TV service really just drop a somewhat major channel that's currently running a widely anticipated, Emmy-winning series and get away with it? — Nearly four weeks after blacking out AMC Networks channels …