Mediagazer: GOOD Founder Ben Goldhirsh Talks About Launching a New Platform and Firing Editorial Staffers (Tessa Stuart/LA Weekly)

4:25 PM ET, September 28, 2012

Top News:

Jessica Testa / BuzzFeed:

Car Chase Ends In Man Shooting Himself On Live TV — Shepard Smith's “get off it, get off it, get off it” came too late. WARNING: This post contains two versions: one that shows the suicide and one that does not. Proceed with caution.

Discussion: Gawker, Business Insider, @fmanjoo, @joshsternberg, @buzzfeedandrew, @jeffsonderman, @editorialiste, @matthewwells, @flashboy, @michaelroston, @producermatthew and @producermatthew

Rebecca Shapiro / The Huffington Post:

Shep Smith Apologizes For Fox News Airing Live Suicide: ‘We Really Messed Up’ — A shaken Shep Smith apologized to Fox News viewers after the network failed to cut away from a car-jacker committing suicide on air. Throughout Smith's 3:00 p.m. show, the network cut to and from a live car chase near Phoenix, Arizona.

Discussion: Politico and Poynter

RT America / @rt_america:

BREAKING Arizona car-hacker just shot himself in the head after high-speed chase. Fox News carried it live.

David Kravets / Wired:

Justice Department's Warrantless Spying Increased 600 Percent in Decade — The Justice Department use of warrantless internet and telephone surveillance methods known as pen register and trap-and-trace has exploded in the last decade, according to government documents the American Civil Liberties obtained via …

Discussion: Naked Security, Hot Air and Forbes

Pete Yost / Associated Press:
Feds' use of surveillance devices rises sharply

Discussion: ACLU and Business Insider

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

Journalism has an originality problem, not a plagiarism problem — Professional journalism isn't facing a plagiarism problem. It's facing an originality failure. — And you can't blame the Internet. Our originality breakdown results from many pressures — the overwhelming volume …

Discussion: @laureni, Canada's online magazine and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Obama administration's FOIA record worse than Bush's — Bloomberg News found that 19 of 20 federal agencies did not comply within 20 days to a request for travel expenses made under the Freedom of Information Act. Jim Snyder and Danielle Ivory report:

Discussion: Bloomberg, The Public Editor's Journal and Hit & Run

Edward Wyatt / New York Times:

F.C.C. Approves Auction Process for Spectrum — WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission gave preliminary approval on Thursday to a process to pay television broadcasters to voluntarily give up some of their public airwaves, which then would be auctioned to cellphone companies for wireless Internet service.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Hillicon Valley and The Next Web

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Music publisher blocked iPhone 5 music service, report says — Sony/ATV and Apple couldn't agree on licensing fees and that's why we didn't see a Pandora-like music service from Apple, according to a story in the New York Post. — Some people waited days in line for the iPhone 5.

Discussion: New York Post, TechCrunch, BGR, iDownloadBlog.com and MacRumors

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Google's Copyright Crackdown Punishes Author For Torrenting His Own Book — Over the years, we've pointed out repeatedly a massive Achilles Heel for Google: its often dreadful customer service. Trying to communicate with Google can often be like facing a giant white monolith, rather than any sort of human being.

Discussion: Forbes and Start Programming with Python

The Atlantic Wire:

Iran's News Agency Reruns ‘The Onion’ As Real News — Iran's state-run FARS News Agency just published a shocking new Gallup Poll that was actually “conducted” by the fake news titans at The Onion. This FARS post from today (datelined Tehran) is a word-for-word copy of this article that went …

Discussion: New York Magazine, Fars News Agency, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Lede, Media Decoder, Gawker and @theonion

Tessa Stuart / LA Weekly:

GOOD Founder Ben Goldhirsh Talks About Launching a New Platform and Firing Editorial Staffers — When word hit the street back in June that GOOD Magazine would be transforming its website into a “platform” — oh, and it was firing the majority of its editorial staff — readers and media-watchers …

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

The ‘Voice’ moves on, and so does Tony Ortega — It's only been a week since Tony Ortega's last day as editor-in-chief of The Village Voice, which is searching for a successor under a newly formed parent company in which the Voice will no longer share business with the controversial classified website Backpage.com.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Can Boutique Publishing Be Big Business? NSFW Corp. Says Yes — Believe it or not, there was a time when 1 million people was a respectable audience. In the era of Facebook, Google and ad networks, a million people is a rounding error. Publishers who try to play the audience game …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Friday Q&A: Kevin Delaney on making Quartz an essential international brand — Before Quartz became a device-morphing business site and the buzz of online journalism circles, it was a blank canvas. That's an enviable position these days, particularly if you've got the backing of Atlantic Media …

Discussion: GigaOM, eMedia Vitals and Folio

Tim Kenneally / The Wrap:

‘Innocence of Muslims’ Filmmaker Arrested by Feds — Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man whose film “The Innocence of Muslims” has sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, was taken into custody Thursday by federal authorities for allegedly violating his probation.

Discussion: L.A. NOW, Poynter, New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes and Reuters

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Pandora Founder Takes to Own Airwaves in Royalty Battle — In an unlikely entry into the political campaign season, Pandora founder Tim Westergren is taking to his own airwaves to urge listeners to contact their congressional representatives about what Pandora calls “discrimination against internet radio.”

Peter Rawlings / Bloomberg:

NBCUniversal Media Planning $2 Billion of 10- and 30-Year Bonds — NBCUniversal Media LLC, the U.S. media and entertainment company, plans to sell $2 billion of debt in two parts in its first offering in more than a year. — NBCUniversal, which is 51 percent owned by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) …

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Former Copyright Boss: New Technology Should Be Presumed Illegal Until Congress Says Otherwise — One of the reasons why we live in such an innovative society is that we've (for the most part) enabled a permissionless innovation society — one in which innovators no longer have to go through gatekeepers …

Discussion: Boing Boing and Hit & Run

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

A tale of two Skys: ‘second screen’ split for News Corp in Europe — They may have the same name and the same largest shareholder - but the Sky pay-TV firms in the UK and Germany don't appear to share a common view on the “second screen” TV opportunity. — In the UK, BSkyB is excitedly injecting …

Discussion: Sky News