Mediagazer: Is This Thing On? Yahoo Firing Proves the Perils of Feeding Many Platforms (David Carr/Media Decoder)

12:00 AM ET, August 31, 2012

Top News:

Is This Thing On? Yahoo Firing Proves the Perils of Feeding Many Platforms — David Chalian, the Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, was fired in record time on Wednesday after he was overheard on a hot mic making a remark about Mitt Romney and his wife not caring about the African-American victims of Hurricane Isaac.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Times, Breaking News …, Hillicon Valley, NewsBusters.org blogs, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, US News, Politico and Mediaite

Jack Shafer / Reuters:

Column: Why the Yahoos at Yahoo were wrong to fire David Chalian — If you're a journalist and you've ever said anything “inappropriate,” as David Chalian got caught doing yesterday — and you know you have — please step forward to be fired now. — Chalian, the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org blogs

Wired:

Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes — It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America's many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere.

Discussion: Gawker, CNET, Los Angeles Times, NYT Bits, TUAW, Kotaku, WebProNews, Gizmodo and AppNewser

Phil Stewart / Reuters:

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens legal action over bin Laden book — (Reuters) - The Pentagon warned on Thursday in a letter to a former U.S. Navy SEAL that he was in material breach of non-disclosure agreements with his book detailing his first-hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Rebecca Shapiro / The Huffington Post:

CBS News Uses Makeup To Hide Identity Of Navy SEAL Who Wrote Bin Laden Book (VIDEO) — CBS News took an unconventional approach to protect the identity of the Navy SEAL who penned the book about the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Navy SEAL sat down with “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley for an exclusive “60 Minutes” interview.

Discussion: TVNewser

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' response to HBO Nordic: It's on! — Hot on the heels of HBO's announcement that the network is going over the top in Northern Europe, comes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings challenge for it to do the same in the U.S. Hastings posted the following comment Thursday afternoon on his Facebook page:

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, WebProNews and Gizmodo

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

HBO to stream its content to customers without cable for the first time, but only in Europe — In mid-October, HBO will sell streaming subscriptions to non-cable customers for the first time, but it won't be for customers in the US, Variety reports. The premium TV network announced its plans …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Variety, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Tries Cranking Up the Money Machine: More Precise Targeting = More Ad Dollars — Someone smart who doesn't work at Twitter tells me that the company expects to do $350 million in revenue this year. — Here's one of the ways they could get there: A new slug of ad dollars, generated by an overhaul of its ad platform.

Discussion: Twitter Advertising, Inside Facebook, The Next Web, AdAge, Forbes, AdPulp, MediaPost, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Mashable!, Business Insider and CNBC

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Behind the Latest Palin-Fox Fight — Last night's kerfuffle between Sarah Palin and Fox News was a classic display of Sarah Palin being, well, Sarah Palin. But her Facebook outburst complaining about Fox canceling her appearance at the Republic National Convention reveals something deeper …

Discussion: Politicker, Mediaite, The Huffington Post and Deadline.com

Ernesto Londoño / Washington Post:

U.S. journalist reportedly in Syrian custody — American freelance journalist Austin Tice, who has been unaccounted for in Syria for more than two weeks, has been captured and is being held in Syrian government custody, according to people familiar with the matter, including a senior diplomat.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

If Content Is King, Multiscreen Is The Queen, Says New Google Study — New research out from Google, working with market analysts Ipsos and Sterling Brands, puts some hard numbers behind the often-noticed trend of how people in the U.S. are using a combination of phones, tablets, computer and TVs to consume digital content.

Discussion: Beyond Search, Trends in the Living Networks, Google Mobile Ads Blog, CNET, Forbes and GigaOM

James Bennet / The Atlantic Online:

'We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers' — Critics have for many years inveighed against “false equivalence” or “false balance” in the mainstream press. This long crusade has finally achieved its grail, or at least a version of it: In this campaign season …

Discussion: CJR, New York Times, EdCone.com, New York Magazine and The Atlantic Online

Bonnie Kavoussi / The Huffington Post:
Fox News' Sally Kohn: Paul Ryan's RNC Speech ‘Was Attempt To Set World Record For Blatant Lies’

Discussion: Fox News, @antderosa and @moorehn

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:
Media Calls Out Paul Ryan Falsehoods

Kevin Kelleher / Fortune:

News Corp doesn't have much to show for its boldness — Relative to its peers in old media, News Corp. made some aggressive moves in technology. Few have paid off. — FORTUNE — Top executives working in the turbulent arena of digital media are nomadic — or they quickly learn to be.

Discussion: Guardian

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

CNN Camerawoman On Harassment At RNC: 'I hate that it happened, but I'm not surprised at all' — Patricia Carroll, the CNN camerawoman at the center of a controversy at the RNC is speaking out. On Tuesday, Carroll was on the job in the Tampa Bay Times Forum when two attendeeds threw nuts at her and said …