Mediagazer: Olympics Give ‘Today’ a Way to Reassert Its Morning Dominance (Brian Stelter/New York Times)

1:05 PM ET, July 30, 2012

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Olympics Give ‘Today’ a Way to Reassert Its Morning Dominance — LONDON — Savannah Guthrie, the freshman host of NBC's “Today” show, is interviewing five members of the American men's gymnastics team at the Tower of London when her producer, Don Nash, decides to veer off script.

Discussion: TVNewser

Timothy Burke / Deadspin:

NBC Also Edited Out A Tribute Featuring Two Dead U.S. Servicemen From Their Opening Ceremony Broadcast — NBC explained that it skipped a memorial to terrorism victims in its broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony because its show was “tailored for our American audience.”

Discussion: USA Today and Gawker

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab: One year since she was hired, Vivian Schiller's “wild ride” at NBC is just beginning

Reuters:
Don't tweet if you want TV, London fans told

Discussion: The Next Web, PC Magazine, Media News, Fast Company, Media Week, ZDNet, CNET, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Guardian and The Verge

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
#nbcfail economics — Reading the #nbcfail hashtag has been at least …

Discussion: New York Times, Poynter, Forbes, Guardian, Mediaite, Broadcasting & Cable, When Media Collide, Los Angeles Times, entertainment.time.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, Deadspin, Dave Winer, SocialTimes, @danlevythinks, Lost Remote, Multichannel, Mashable! and Inside TV

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Clearly, Tape Delay Isn't Hurting NBC's Olympics Ratings

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Rafat Ali: Media builds a brand, data builds the revenue — Rafat Ali — who built paidContent, sold paidContent, took two years off to travel and said he did not want to go back to beating his head against the collapsing wall of journalism — is back in journalism.

Discussion: Adweek, Folio, AdAge, @jasonhirschhorn and eMedia Vitals

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Rafat Ali's Skift aims to be the Politico of travel websites — U.S. travel is a $2 trillion dollar industry, but Rafat Ali believes it doesn't have a go-to, digital native news site the way the tech, finance and meda sectors do. So he decided to create one.

Discussion: Skift.com, AllThingsD and AdAge

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

Henry Blodget's Second Act — On any given day, the website known as Business Insider is likely to lead off with a photograph of an attractive woman and followed by headlines about the end of the world and a slideshow featuring the latest iPhone rumors. — It is far afield of what used to be financial journalism.

Discussion: Capital New York, JIMROMENESKO.COM, @felixsalmon and eMedia Vitals

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo: Free Food! Friday Afternoon All-Hands! New Work Spaces! Fab Swag! — Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer's second week is showing even more signs of what the company will be like under her regime. — In short: It will be just like Google, from whence she came.

Discussion: Dave McClure, CNET, Mashable!, Betabeat, Marketing Land, Business Insider, ConversionRater, Softpedia News and VentureBeat

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

BusinessWeek was in danger of being closed before it was sold to Bloomberg — Stephen B. Shepard, the former editor in chief of BusinessWeek from 1984 to 2005, has a forthcoming autobiography called “Deadlines and Disruption: My Turbulent Path from Print to Digital.”

Discussion: Poynter

Jim Romenesko:

Post-Dispatch columnist's advice to CEO: Don't announce layoffs just after pocketing a bonus — Veteran St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan points out that “at the same time the workers are stressed, the big bosses are making more and more.” In fact, it seems there is a certain correlation between layoffs and bonuses.

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Spin Announces Layoffs and Drops Nov./Dec. Issue — Two weeks after its takeover by an online media company, Spin magazine's future as a print publication was cast further into doubt on Friday when 11 employees — a third of the staff — were laid off and publication plans for the bimonthly magazine were suspended.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Erik Wemple and Folio

Joan Juliet Buck / The Daily Beast:

Joan Juliet Buck: Mrs. Assad Duped Me — As the Boeing 777 from London arrived at the gate of Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo on December 2, 2010, its passengers queued up to deplane, many with the local newspaper under their arm. “Brazil fears terrorism at the 2016 Olympics …

Discussion: @tcarmody

Suzan Fraser / Associated Press:

Omar Khashram, Al-Jazeera Reporter, Wounded In Syria — ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — An Al-Jazeera cameraman says a colleague was wounded while they were covering clashes in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo. Hakan Bayginer says Ankara-based Al-Jazeera correspondent Omar Khashram …

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Curbed's Lockhart Steele weighs in on advertising — and Nick Denton — Everyone likes the idea of a thriving website sustained by a community of local readers. But too often “local” has been the stuff of journalistic ideals rather than real-world business plans.

Discussion: AdExchanger, Thanks:@jeffjohnroberts