Mediagazer: The Verge is giving extra credit (and links) to primary sources (Nieman Journalism Lab)

9:05 AM ET, August 2, 2012

Top News:

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Lehrer's publisher runs ads telling bookstores to send back “Imagine” for a refund — Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is running digital ads telling booksellers to send back copies of Jonah Lehrer's Imagine for a full refund. — Earlier this week, Tablet magazine's Michael Moynihan reported …

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.

Erik Wemple / Washington Post: Writer dares to defend Jonah Lehrer

Paul Tullis / The New York Observer:
L'Affaire Lehrer: In Defense of Jonah

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

Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Verge is giving extra credit (and links) to primary sources — When technology site The Verge site launched last fall, Josh wrote a broadly laudatory review on the site's design and infrastructure. We had one quibble, though, about how The Verge gave credit to other sites …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

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.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Time Out listings magazine goes free — Reviews and events mag begun in 1968 looks to advertising revenue based on circulation boost to 300,000 — Almost 45 years after Tony Elliott launched Time Out, charging a shilling an issue, the grandaddy of listings magazines is set to be reborn …

Discussion: Digital Spy and paidContent

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: eMedia Vitals, Quora, broadstuff, GigaOM, VentureBeat, CNET and TechCrunch

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

SoundCloud expands its effort to become the YouTube of public radio and podcasts — SoundCloud is arguably the biggest music-sharing community since MySpace, but now the company is eyeing a different kind of audio: the spoken word. — The website was founded five years ago by two sound guys …

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, eMedia Vitals, NetNewsCheck Latest, NYT Bits, VatorNews, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Caller and The New Republic

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: NetNewsCheck Latest and NBCUniversal

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

Discussion: Forbes, 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.

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, PAPERMAG, AdAge and Deadspin

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:

Discussion: 10,000 Words and Poynter

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, Reuters, Guardian, The Wrap, TVNewser, Adweek, Home Media Magazine and Deadline.com

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

Discussion: paidContent, TVNewser and Capital New York

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