Mediagazer: 4 warning signs that a promising young writer may be developing dangerous habits (Craig Silverman/Poynter)

1:15 AM ET, August 2, 2012

Top News:

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

4 warning signs that a promising young writer may be developing dangerous habits — When it was merely a matter of self-plagiarism, some saw the coverage of Jonah Lehrer's transgressions as an overheated case of schadenfreude. — The fact that his previous books had previously come under fire …

Discussion: bookforum.com

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Jonah Lehrer Was Going To Give A Speech On Ethics. It's Canceled, Obviously. — Jonah Lehrer's fabrications have already cost him his gig at The New Yorker and an unknown number of future book sales, and now they're cutting into his lucrative sideline as a speaker.

Paul Tullis / The New York Observer:

L'Affaire Lehrer: In Defense of Jonah — Amid the pile-on of denunciations of Jonah Lehrer, the New Yorker writer whose invention of a Bob Dylan quote was uncovered earlier this week by a contributor to the Tablet, his former editor steps up to defend him. I was Jonah Lehrer's editor at Seed magazine …

Discussion: The Daily Beast, @dylanbyers, @sisario, Stephen Baker, Poynter, @ethanwsj and Poynter

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Writer dares to defend Jonah Lehrer — It wasn't just the research that made Michael Moynihan's gotcha piece on Jonah Lehrer so definitive. Nor was it the evidence that he marshaled against Lehrer for those hard-to-trace quotes attributed to Bob Dylan in his book “Imagine:How Creativity Works.”

Washington Post:

The Washington Post Launches Crowdsourcing Platform — The Washington Post today announced it has launched a new platform for crowdsourcing. “Crowd Sourced” is The Post's special feature that allows Post journalists to ask questions about today's concerns and begin a conversation about these issues.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Time Warner's New Strategy For CNN: To Find a New Strategy — Does Time Warner have a programming strategy for CNN at the ready to replace the failed one pursued by departing worldwide president Jim Walton? It sure didn't sound like it on the media conglomerate's second-quarter earnings call.

Discussion: Guardian, Adweek, The Wrap, Home Media Magazine and Capital New York

Michael Wolff / Guardian:
So, what's next for CNN?

Discussion: paidContent, TVNewser and The Daily Beast

Gavin Polone / Vulture:

Apocalypse Nikki: Polone Challenges the Power of the Vengeful Finke — Starting about six years ago, I, like most people I know who work in the entertainment business, checked Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily first, before perusing the other trade websites for news on the industry in which I work.

Discussion: LA Observed and FishbowlLA

Andrew Das / New York Times:

How Swimming Photographers Make Their Underwater Moment — LONDON — As Al Bello struggles to wedge his lean body into his scuba gear, it appears that taking the photographs has to be the easy part. — Bello pulls the skintight black shirt over his shoulders, tugs the legs of his shorts closer …

Discussion: SND, AdAge, PAPERMAG and Deadspin

Charlie Warzel / Adweek:

So How Are the Olympics Performing Online? NBC Won't Say Neither will comScore, Nielsen, or anybody else just yet — Five days into the Olympics and here is what we know: NBC is pretty consistently killing it with its TV ratings, beating its Beijing numbers four nights in a row.

Discussion: NBCUniversal

Brent Lang / The Wrap:
NBC May Break Even on Summer Olympics Coverage

Discussion: Multichannel, Reuters, Radio & Television … and Broadcasting & Cable

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

A Further Blow to Online Lurking: Quora Will Now Publicly Show Who Has Read a Post — Quora today is introducing a feature that shows which of its users have read each Quora post, and how they found it. It's another move by a social Web service to share passive activities …

Discussion: Quora, GigaOM, CNET, broadstuff, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Is Twitter a publisher or a distributor? There's a crucial difference — There are a whole host of issues raised by the case of Guy Adams, the British journalist whose Twitter account was recently suspended and then reinstated — including the potential clash between Twitter's desire …

Discussion: MediaShift and entertainment.time.com

Guy Adams / The Independent:
Twitter backs down at last - but why did I get banned?

Discussion: Erik Wemple, Poynter, MediaFile and Journalism.co.uk

Matt Buchanan / BuzzFeed:

Twitter Launches Political Index: The Twitter Pulse Of The Election — The Twitter Political Index could be one of the most powerful social media tools of the election. — Right now, if you want to know how the country feels about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, you have to rely …

Discussion: Twitter Blog, NYT Bits, Los Angeles Times, SocialTimes, The New Republic and The Daily Caller

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Jose Canseco hired as a paid columnist by Vice — Vice, the irreverent, Brooklyn-based magazine-turned-multiplatform media brand, has hired Jose Canseco—former professional baseball player-turned-outspoken author and Twitter user—as a paid weekly columnist for its website.

Jessica Roy / Betabeat:

The Digg Bang Theory: Can Betaworks Make a Run on Reddit? — In the winter of 2004, soon after the husks of once-great dot-com startups had dried and shriveled, a 27-year-old college dropout named Kevin Rose deployed a barebones new site, simply named “Digg.” — It was one of the first social networks in existence.