Mediagazer: Rafat Ali: Media builds a brand, data builds the revenue (Jeff Sonderman/Poynter)

1:35 PM ET, July 30, 2012

Top News:

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, AdAge and AllThingsD

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: NewsBusters.org blogs, USA Today and Gawker

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

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, ZDNet, SocialTimes, Media Week, Fast Company, CNET, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, The Huffington Post, Guardian and The Verge

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

Discussion: Poynter, Guardian, New York Times, Guardian, Reuters, Los Angeles Times and Hollywood Reporter

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, Business Insider, CNET, Mashable!, Fortune, Betabeat, Marketing Land, 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.”

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.

Michael C. Moynihan / Tablet Magazine:

Jonah Lehrer's Deceptions — The celebrated journalist fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. “It's a hard thing to describe,” Bob Dylan once mused about the creative process. “It's just this sense that you got something to say.”

Discussion: Poynter and @felixsalmon

Natalia Viana / The Nation:

How WikiLeaks Transformed Brazil's Media — This article appeared in the August 13-20, 2012 edition of The Nation. — Recommended by — 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 …

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 …

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Future in Doubt, ‘Newsweek’ Still Creating Buzz — Newsweek's ability to sustain itself in print may be in doubt, but this week's cover declaring Mitt Romney a “wimp” shows the brand is still able to generate plenty of talk. — The cover—a riff on a 1987 Newsweek cover attacking President …

Discussion: New York Magazine, Capital New York, FishbowlNY and Poynter