Mediagazer: Newspaper Association of America shows new trends in paywalls (Laura Hazard Owen/paidContent)

3:00 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, @sisario, @dylanbyers, 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: Multichannel, Guardian, Adweek, Home Media Magazine, The Wrap and Capital New York

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

Discussion: paidContent, TVNewser and The Daily Beast

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Newspaper Association of America shows new trends in paywalls — The Newspaper Association of America recently examined 156 newspapers that have enacted some kind of paywall on their website. The data itself is for members only, but the NAA gave us a look. A few stats:

Steve Myers / Poynter:
NAA list shows newspaper paywalls typically allow 11 free articles

Discussion: 10,000 Words

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

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

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

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, Radio & Television …, Reuters and Broadcasting & Cable

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.

Rebecca Greenfield / The Atlantic Wire:

HBO, Here Are Those Cord-Cutting Stats You Asked For — Time Warner will never offer HBO Go as a standalone streaming service because it's not what the people want, says CEO Jeff Bewkes, asking us to look at the data, which he claims proves there aren't that many cord-cutters.

Discussion: AllThingsD, Gizmodo and The Verge

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, VatorNews, The New Republic and The Daily Caller

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 Washington Post