Mediagazer: Digital-only Financial Times would still be a difficult trick to perform (Peter Preston/Guardian)

3:15 PM ET, August 8, 2012

Top News:

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

The New York Times Is About to Say Goodbye to About.com — The New York Times' time with About.com may be coming to an end. The paper has been looking to get rid of the struggling Web site, which produces high-volume, low-cost content, and has a deal in place to sell it to Answers.com.

Discussion: Media Money …, The Wrap, Radio & Television …, VentureBeat, New York Times, Capital New York, paidContent, Adweek, JIMROMENESKO.COM, AdExchanger, New York Magazine, FishbowlNY, Mashable!, mediabistro.com, NYConvergence.com and Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

NY Times Co. Stock Trading Up On About.com Sale Report — When The New York Times Co. took a $192 million write-down on About.com at the end of last quarter and lowered its guidance for the unit, I said the company was caught between its past and its future. — See you later, past.

Edmund Lee / @edmundlee:

NYTimes confirms “it is engaged in discussions regarding the potential sale of its About Group. No definitive agreement has been reached.”

Steve Myers / Poynter:

New York Times news apps team ventures into product development with Olympics syndication — The New York Times has built an impressive online home for its Olympics coverage, with instantly-updated results, medal counts, athlete bios, and of course stories and photos.

Discussion: @zimbalist

Linda Holmes / NPR:
Good Business, Bad Quality: How NBC Is Both Right And Wrong On The Olympics

Discussion: business.time.com, Poynter and Associated Press

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:
BBC's Olympics Broadcasts Focus on Live Coverage

Discussion: Search Engine Land

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Obama Is an Avid Reader, and Critic, of the News — WASHINGTON — A few months after President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package passed, he began to notice news reports, but not about the jobs the bill might create or how much of the country's infrastructure it would repair.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Poynter, NewsBusters.org blogs, Media Decoder, thenation.com/blogs/180, TVNewser, Washington Wire, The Raw Story, The Huffington Post, Prof Chris Daly's Blog and The Caucus

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

70 journalists killed in six months — At least 70 journalists and support staff were killed while on assignment in the first half of this year, making it one of the bloodiest periods of recent times. — Fifteen were confirmed dead in Syria alone between January and June …

Howard Finberg / Poynter:

6 foundations tell journalism schools to change faster or risk future funding — As thousands of educators head off to Chicago for the 100th anniversary convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, I can promise that one of the most talked-about topics …

Discussion: Knight Foundation

James Poniewozik / Time:

Politifact, Harry Reid's Pants, and the Limits of Fact-Checking — Fact: I do not know whether Mitt Romney paid federal income taxes, when, or how much, in any year before 2010, for which he publicly released his tax returns. Fact: You probably do not either, unless you are among …

Discussion: CJR, Pressing Issues, Capital New York, CJR, The Raw Story and The Huffington Post

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Two years after the tipping point, papers' web readership is booming — As newspapers' print circulation continues to decline, publishers now get the majority of their readers online. But what does that look like in practise? — I crunched ABC and ABCe (UK) data for the last 12 years to discover the long view.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Big Data is a big deal for newspapers — Just when you thought you had a handle on digital publishing, here comes a paradigm shift that will be more counterintuitive and more disconcerting for newspapers than all the technological innovations that have come before.

Discussion: ZDNet, Digiday and eMedia Vitals

Lynne Marek / Chicago Business:

Journatic cuts 10% of full-time workforce — (Crain's) — Journatic LLC cut six of its 60 full-time employees this week as the Chicago-based media company restructured part of its editorial production, according to a source familiar with the move. — The workers cut were based in various parts of the U.S., according to the source.

Discussion: Poynter

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Washington Post's TruthTeller project hopes to birth real-time fact-checking — Steven Ginsberg saw the future of fact-checking while listening to a politician tell lies in Iowa last summer. — “It was one of those small parking lot affairs outside a sports bar and the candidate …