Mediagazer: Bake-Off At Sports Illustrated! Jon Wertheim, Chris Stone Battle To Take Over Weekly Magazine (John Koblin/Deadspin)

McKay Coppins / BuzzFeed:

Romney's Team Turns On The Press — A frustrating week in Boston. “The polls are close, and so the media starts cheering on their guy,” says one adviser. — DULLES, Va. — As Mitt Romney finishes his second week of dismal news coverage — with slipping polls and a combustible international crisis driving …

Discussion: Capital New York, RedState, Forbes and The Daily Dish

Erik Wemple:
Fact-checkers say no to Romney ‘apology’ claims

Discussion: Mediaite, Associated Press, Mashable! and FactCheck.org

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:
Obama-rooting reporters — In these days of media conspiracy …

Discussion: Examiner and Mediaite

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

‘The Wall Street Journal’ pushes its glossy magazine to monthly (almost) — The Wall Street Journal's glossy luxury title, WSJ., may soon be losing its editor, Deborah Needleman, who—as we reported yesterday—has been offered a job editing rival magazine T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Discussion: WWD Media Headlines, FishbowlNY and WWD

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Study: Smaller news websites depend more on social media for traffic than larger sites — In any local market, the dozens or hundreds of available news websites make up a news ecosystem. — In any real-life nature ecosystem — think of the food chain diagram you learned in 5th grade — the many species develop their own roles.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Knight Digital Media Center

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

‘USA Today’ Redesigns — USA Today is about to roll out the biggest redesign in its history, but is it too late? On the eve of the paper's 30th anniversary, John Hartman, author of The USA Today Way, said the paper is showing “all the makings of a death spiral” and predicted that it would shut down within three years.

Discussion: Gawker, Poynter, New York Times, AdAge, MediaPost, Mashable!, The Atlantic Wire, @jbenton, USA Today, Reuters, Capital New York, @ckrewson, FishbowlNY, Gannett Blog, USA Today and JIMROMENESKO.COM

John Koblin / Deadspin:

Bake-Off At Sports Illustrated! Jon Wertheim, Chris Stone Battle To Take Over Weekly Magazine — Who's in charge at Sports Illustrated? Earlier this summer, longtime editor Terry McDonell told his staff that he was dialing back on some of his responsibilities.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Jim Romenesko:

Survey: U.S. publishers optimistic about future of newspapers — A survey by Missouri School of Journalism's Reynolds Journalism Institute finds that most publishers of U.S. dailies remain optimistic about the future of newspapers: 40% are “somewhat optimistic,” 25% are “very optimistic,” 4% are “not optimistic,” and 31% are neutral.

Pamela Erens / Los Angeles Review of Books:

Is The Atlantic Making Us Stupid? — JAMES BENNET WANTS US to have a conversation. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who took the helm in 2006, has overseen a remarkable rise in the magazine's fortunes and profile. He has turned The Atlantic from a money bleeder into a moneymaker …

Discussion: Jonathan Last Online

Brooks Barnes / Media Decoder:

Disney Unexpectedly Reveals Movie Write-Down and Sluggish Ad Revenue — James A. Rasulo, Disney's chief financial officer, unexpectedly revealed two important tidbits at a gathering of Wall Street analysts on Thursday: The company will take a $50 million write-down at its movie studio …

Discussion: The Wrap, Cable Television News, Reuters, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Friendster founder launches social-news app, but will it fly? — Even if he never achieves anything world-changing again — which he is certainly hoping to do — Jonathan Abrams will always be remembered as the guy who founded Friendster, the very first web-based “social network.”

Discussion: TechCrunch

Paul Bond / Hollywood Reporter:

‘Innocence of Muslims’ Shot on Paramount-Built Set — Hollywood production worker talking to FBI as authorities probe L.A. location used in “JAG.” — The Innocence of Muslims, a movie that has enraged radical Islamists who have rioted and committed murders in the Middle East this week …

Discussion: Gawker

Erik Wemple:

Group petitions Sun-Times over sexist questions — It's not just that the Chicago Sun-Times asked Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan whether she could juggle a possible governorship with the demands of bringing up two young children. Such an errant, though sexist, question might well have gone unnoticed.

Discussion: Change.org

Sara Morrison / CJR:

Aggregation aggravation — Politico's Maggie Haberman has a pretty liberal view of how much to quote when aggregating. Should she be more conservative? — How much aggregation is too much? It's been years since aggregator extraordinaire Huffington Post entered the online media fray …

Discussion: Politico

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Washington Post Co. Names SurveyMonkey CEO to Board — Dave Goldberg, the chief executive officer of SurveyMonkey.com LLC and husband of Facebook Inc. executive Sheryl Sandberg, will join Washington Post Co.'s board, giving the company more Silicon Valley experience.