Mediagazer: Viacom Inc. Plans Television Viewing Apps By End Of Year (Edmund Lee/Bloomberg)

3:50 PM ET, August 4, 2012

Top News:

Cait O'Riordan / BBC:

Digital Olympics: week one in numbers — It's the end of the first week of London 2012, a week that's seen record numbers of people accessing the BBC's Games coverage online and across mobile, tablet, connected TV and Red-Button. As data flows in, my team and I have been looking at exactly …

Discussion: The Next Web and Digital Spy

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Crossing the newspaper chasm: Is it better to be funded by readers? — Both the Financial Times and the New York Times have either already crossed or are close to crossing an important threshold: namely, the point at which revenue from reader subscriptions exceeds the revenue they get from advertising.

Felix Salmon:

Jonah Lehrer, TED, and the narrative dark arts — One of the most interesting takes on l'affaire Jonah Lehrer comes in a book review which was almost certainly written before any of the latest revelations: Evgeny Morozov's hilarious and masterful dismantling of Parag Khanna in particular and the whole TED mindset in general.

Discussion: The New Republic and @evgenymorozov

Seth Mnookin / The Panic Virus:
Jonah Lehrer's missing compass

Discussion: Guardian, New York Magazine and Forbes

Steve Myers / Poynter:
Plagiarism, more fake interviews in Jonah Lehrer's ‘Imagine,’ ‘How We Decide’

Discussion: TwitLonger, Los Angeles Times, The Wrap, The New York Observer and Cognoscenti

Sultan Al Qassemi / Foreign Policy:

Breaking the Arab News — Egypt made al Jazeera — and Syria's destroying it. — While civil war rages on the Syrian battlefield between regime loyalists and myriad rebel factions, another battle is taking place in the media world. Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, the two Gulf-based channels …

Discussion: The Corsair and The Huffington Post

Steve Myers / Poynter:

How AP photographer captured Gabby Douglas Olympics photo: Practice, practice, practice — Associated Press photojournalist Greg Bull was waiting for that moment, the point in Gabby Douglas' balance beam routine at which she leaps the highest, spreading her arms and legs and looking straight up at the ceiling.

Discussion: Boing Boing, Softpedia News, Associated Press, Speakeasy, The Newspaper Guild, Deadspin and MiamiHerald.com

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

Cable Companies Shifting Emphasis From TV — The two largest cable operators are looking to an unlikely source of inspiration: Google Fiber, their newest formidable competitor. — Time Warner Cable Inc. Chief Executive Glenn Britt and Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts separately …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Viacom Inc. Plans Television Viewing Apps By End Of Year — Viacom Inc., the television programmer that owns cable networks Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central, plans to unveil television viewing apps for tablets before the end of the year. — “We are rolling out apps in partnership …

Discussion: Bloomberg

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Newhouse on New Orleans changes: 'There's every reason to be upset and angry, but...' — Steven Newhouse knows a lot of people don't like his company's decision to reduce print frequency and staff at its newspapers and move most of its publishing online. — “There's every reason to be upset …

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu

Steve Newhouse / Poynter: Steve Newhouse explains Michigan transition, Times-Picayune future

Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:

Look Ma, TV! First broadcast TV phone appears on MetroPCS — Starting now, MetroPCS is in the free-to-air TV business, but the sets it's selling are rather small, fitting not only into the palm of your hand but within the confines of a smartphone screen. MetroPCS on Friday began selling …

Discussion: Softpedia News, Multichannel, AllThingsD, SlashGear, PC Magazine, CNET, Gizmodo, The Verge and Engadget

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Magazine Newsstand Sales Still Falling in 2012 — The numbers coming from the Audit Bureau of Circulations on Tuesday are likely to show yet another soft performance for magazine newsstand sales, especially for women's titles. — Many of the biggest women's newsstand players saw double …

Erik Wemple:

Harry Reid, keep talking to the Huffington Post — In 1995, a reporter for the Daily Local News of West Chester, Pa., recorded some newsworthy comments by a member of the Parkesburg Borough Council. The remarks were directed at the council's president and the mayor, who were “liars,” …

Discussion: New York Times, The Huffington Post and The Raw Story