Mediagazer: Criticism Greets List of Debate Moderators (New York Times)

4:10 PM ET, August 19, 2012

Top News:

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:

How Management Killed “The Village Voice” — Mike Lacey figured out sex ads on the Internet, but little else. The paper edges toward collapse. — Follow — Alt-weeklies are always dying. But the news Friday that four editorial staffers were laid off or had their hours cut to part …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Foster Kamer / The New York Observer:

Layoffs Hit Editorial Staff at The Village Voice — Layoffs are hitting the editorial staff at The Village Voice today, and they're hitting some of the most widely-read staff writers in the office. The Observer has heard from multiple sources familiar with the situation that the bad news …

Discussion: The Maynard Institute … and AAN

New York Times:

Criticism Greets List of Debate Moderators — Complaining about the moderators of the presidential debates is a time-honored tradition of the election season. Usually, the complaints wait until the moderators have actually asked a question. — Not this year.

Discussion: TVNewser, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Pressing Issues, theGrio, Media Decoder and TVNewser

Dan Frommer / ReadWriteWeb:

Why Twitter Just Pushed Developers Aside: To Secure Its Future — Twitter's long-awaited crackdown on outside apps could prove to be one of the boldest and most controversial moves in its history. But if you consider Twitter's position, it's actually reasonable. And it could play an important role in Twitter's survival.

Discussion: NYT Bits, Techland, Daily Dot, Reportr.net and the Econsultancy blog

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Twitter's API changes will have a real impact on news developers

Discussion: TechCrunch, Nova Spivack, Mashable!, CNET, PandoDaily, GigaOM, ZDNet and Storify

Zack Whittaker / CNET:

Assange: The WikiLeaks ‘witch-hunt’ must end — Speaking to the public from Ecuador's embassy in London, Julian Assange calls for the U.S. to cease its “witch-hunt” against WikiLeaks and to not “persecute its staff and its supporters.” — LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today addressed …

Discussion: Guardian, Associated Press, Guardian, New York Times, ZDNet, Reuters, BBC, Gawker, CNN and Guardian

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Mobile's not the next big thing, just a path to it — The Knight Foundation's News Challenge just announced its next theme: mobile. And that's a good thing because news organizations have been all-too pokey in figuring out how to serve people in this venue.

J. Nathan Matias / MediaShift Idea Lab:

Did Global Voices Use Diverse Sources on Twitter for Arab Spring Coverage? — Citizen journalism and social media have become major sources for the news, especially after the Arab uprisings of early 2011. From Al Jazeera Stream and NPR's Andy Carvin to the Guardian's “Three Pigs” …

Rachel Kaufman / MediaJobsDaily:

The Breakup, Part Two: Who Covers The Media Beat Better? — In the second part of our look at Poynter in the post-Romenesko era and JimRomenesko.com in the post-Poynter era, we chose a random week to read both JimRomenesko.com and Poynter's MediaWire thoroughly.

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:

‘The Tonight Show’ Lays Off 20 Staffers And Host Jay Leno Takes Pay Cut To Save Jobs — SATURDAY UPDATE: Jay Leno's spokesman has now issued this statement: “Jay's foremost concern is for the wonderful people who work for The Tonight Show. He did what was necessary to ensure their well-being.”

Discussion: Media Decoder, newsfeed.time.com, Mediaite, Guardian and Digital Spy

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

TV news salaries rose just 2% this year as Web staff wages stagnated — RTDNA — TV news stations may be hiring (staffing was up 4.3 percent in 2011), but salaries rose only 2 percent, according to an RTDNA/Hofstra University annual survey. “That thin margin of growth suggests that a lot …

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Oracle, Google file list of paid journalists — A federal judge last week wrote that he was “concerned” Oracle and Google had paid journalists and bloggers to comment on their highly-publicized intellectual property trial and ordered them to provide a list of names. The responses are now in.

Discussion: Softpedia News, AllThingsD and CNET

Politico:

Obama's soft-media strategy — Forget Chris Matthews — he'll take Nancy O'Dell. — President Barack Obama has been taking a lot of questions in the two months since his last press conference or national news interview. He's just been doing them with ESPN, Entertainment Tonight …

Discussion: The Fix