Mediagazer: Google acquires media companies without becoming one (Jeff Sonderman/Poynter)

4:00 AM ET, August 15, 2012

Top News:

Times Co. Names Mark Thompson Chief Executive — The New York Times Company has named Mark Thompson, the departing director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, as its new president and chief executive. — Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper's publisher …

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics: BBC's Mark Thompson Jumps Out of the Frying Pan and into the New York Times Cauldron

Michael Barthel / Salon:

Cut, paste, plagiarize — Major media organizations had faith in Fareed Zakaria. CNN gave him 60 minutes each week — several million dollars' worth of time — to say whatever the hell he wanted, more or less. Time gave him a column, too, the one in which (as reported …

Discussion: @penenberg, @penenberg, @penenberg, @penenberg and @penenberg

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Fareed Zakaria: ‘People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta’ — Fareed Zakaria's Washington Post column has been suspended for a month. He tells Paul Farhi, “People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta” now that Time and CNN have suspended him for plagiarism.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, American Thinker, Washington Post and Poynter

David Frum / The Daily Beast:

A False Charge Against Fareed Zakaria — Is Fareed Zakaria a quote thief? This is the latest charge brought against the CNN host. From both hard evidence and direct personal experience, I can answer: No. Last week, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg charged that Fareed Zakaria had used work of Jeffrey's without attribution.

Discussion: @davidfolkenflik

Jeffrey Goldberg / The Atlantic Online:
Fareed Zakaria Responds to the Charge of Quote-Stealing

Discussion: Poynter

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
More questions raised about Fareed Zakaria's work

Discussion: NewsBusters.org blogs, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Online, Plagiarism Today, American Journalism Review, The Panic Virus and The Huffington Post

Irene Caselli / Guardian:

Ecuador ‘to grant’ Julian Assange asylum — Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has agreed to give the WikiLeaks founder asylum, according to an official in Quito — Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has agreed to grant Julian Assange asylum, officials within Ecuador's government have said.

Discussion: Wired, Telegraph, WebProNews, Bloomberg, Mashable!, The Atlantic Wire, Gawker, Foreign Policy, CNET and Digital Spy

Estelle Shirbon / Reuters: Assange seeks London-Quito ticket but Sweden looms

Erik Wemple:

Politico puts ‘stop reading’ sign in article — Politico today tells us that there's an “unmistakable consensus” among Republican Beltway operatives that the choice of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate “has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong.”

Discussion: Guardian, Politico, The Hill and CNN

Zeke Miller / BuzzFeed:

Romney Campaign Bars Press From Ryan, Adelson Event — LAKEWOOD, Colorado — Presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's first major fundraiser will be closed to the press, in apparent violation of the Romney-Ryan campaign's oft-strained agreement with the reporters who cover the campaign.

Discussion: Politico, Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post and Gawker

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:
Is Paul Ryan a Ticking Time Bomb as Mitt Romney's Running Mate?

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, The Daily Beast, Mediaite, New York Times, Mother Jones, Forbes, NewsBusters.org blogs, Change of Subject, TVNewser, The Huffington Post, Erik Wemple and Erik Wemple

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Google acquires media companies without becoming one — Google is “unarguably a media company” following its acquisition of travel-guide publisher Frommer's, Jeff Bercovici writes. “The travel-guide publisher is indisputably a content business, not a platform or a network or anything else more quintessentially Google-y.”

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Skift and Forbes

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Should we trust Google when it comes to piracy and search? — As we reported earlier, Google recently announced that it will start filtering its search results based in part on the number of copyright-takedown requests that have been filed against a site: according to a blog post from the search giant …

Discussion: Plagiarism Today, The Week and ReadWriteWeb

Eric Goldman / Ars Technica:

Heavy dose of hyperlinks gets defamation lawsuit against Gizmodo tossed — Judge: links allow readers to decide ultimate truth for themselves. — Eric Goldman is an associate professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and directs that school's High Tech Law Institute.

Discussion: @nicknotned, The Atlantic Online and Techdirt

Steve Myers / Poynter:

NY photojournalist gets cameras back after arrest, but not press credentials — Robert Stolarik's cameras were confiscated when he was arrested on Aug. 4 while photographing police on a public street. He has them back now, but he still hasn't received his press credentials.

Discussion: NPPA Advocacy Committee, Hit & Run and The Huffington Post

James Estrin / Lens:
Criminalizing Photography — Mickey H. Osterreicher …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Hit & Run and The FJP

Anil Dash:

Stop Publishing Web Pages — Most users on the web spend most of their time in apps. The most popular of those apps, like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Tumblr and others, are primarily focused on a single, simple stream that offers a river of news which users can easily scroll through, skim over, and click on to read in more depth.

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Boxfish Launches An iPad App To Help You Find What's Hot On TV — There's no shortage of video discovery apps out there. There are some, like Showyou, which aim to usual social signals to tell you what videos are worth watching online; and there are others, like Fanhattan …

Discussion: The Next Web and GigaOM

Dylan Byers / Politico:

A debate over the presidential debate moderators — They're old, they're white, and they rarely if ever use Twitter. They are also, arguably, the best people for the job. — Ladies and gentlemen, meet the moderators of the 2012 presidential debates. — On Monday, the Commission …

Discussion: TVNewser and The Huffington Post

Ben Fritz / Los Angeles Times:

Leading Variety bidder is owner of National Enquirer — An owner of the National Enquirer's parent company is now the leading bidder for Hollywood trade paper Variety. (Variety website / August 13, 2012) — Avenue Capital, a New York hedge fund whose holdings include the parent company …