Mediagazer: Free the Files! ProPublica taps the crowd for a database-building sprint to election day (Adrienne LaFrance/Nieman Journalism Lab)

5:35 PM ET, September 30, 2012

Top News:

Clyde Haberman / New York Times:

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Publisher Who Changed The Times, Dies at 86 — Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who guided The New York Times and its parent company through a long, sometimes turbulent period of expansion and change on a scale not seen since the newspaper's founding in 1851, died on Saturday at his home in Southampton, N.Y. He was 86.

Discussion: Quote and Comment, The Week, The Daily Beast, NYC GOV, The New Yorker Blog, Associated Press, entertainment.time.com, Politico, Forbes, Gothamist, New York Magazine, Deadline.com, Mediaite, Associated Press, FishbowlNY, Chickaboomer, JIMROMENESKO.COM and The Raw Story

Julie Moos / Poynter:
Former New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger dies Saturday

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Daily Beast, Guardian, The Wrap and WWD Media Headlines

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Free the Files! ProPublica taps the crowd for a database-building sprint to election day — Political transparency geeks got both good news and bad news from the Federal Communications Commission last April. — Good news first: The FCC decided it would require television stations to put information about political ad buys online.

Guy Lucas / Newsroom With A View:

The paywall paradox — In his address to the Arizona Newspapers Association, Steve Buttry summed up the argument against newspaper websites setting paywalls or pay meters (and it is just newspapers; you never hear of TV stations debating whether to charge for access to their sites).

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, The Buttry Diary and @stevebuttry

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Who Controls the Story? — JEREMY PETERS was doing a routine reporting job earlier this year when he stumbled across something that, as he put it, “smelled funny.” — Mr. Peters, a New York Times political reporter, had asked an Obama press representative at the campaign's Chicago headquarters …

Discussion: @sulliview

BusinessWeek:

The New Al Jazeera: More ESPN, Less CNN — Remember Al Jazeera, the network that was supposed to be an Arab CNN, offering a counterweight to Western cable news? That plan appears to have been scaled back as the Qatari government-controlled network makes deep cuts in its English-language …

Reuters:

Iran jury finds Reuters guilty over video script, pending judge's ruling -Press TV — (Reuters) - An Iranian jury voted on Sunday to convict the Reuters news organisation over a video script that contained an error, Iran's Press TV reported. The final decision will be made by a judge, who is expected to issue his verdict next month.

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Paul Ryan breaks ‘no whining rule’ — On Wednesday, Mitt Romney told CBS News that he doesn't worry about media bias, signalling that the campaign was abandoning a blame-the-media strategy it had courted a week earlier. The very same day, senior Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie told Fox & Friends …

Discussion: Politico

Lewis DVorkin / Forbes:

Inside Forbes: What Mobile Means for Journalism and My Restless Nights — As the founder and CEO of a startup, VC's would always ask me, “What keeps you up at night?” It was a tedious question with only one honest answer: raising more money from you guys.

Discussion: Monday Note

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Poll Averages Have No History of Consistent Partisan Bias — Presidential elections are high-stakes affairs. So perhaps it is no surprise that when supporters of one candidate do not like the message they are hearing from the polls they tend to blame the messenger.

Discussion: Media Nation, Washington Wire, AlterNet and CNN

BBC:

Iran's Fars agency sorry for running the Onion spoof story — An Iranian news agency has apologised after being fooled by a spoof story from a US satirical website. — Fars news agency said on its website that its news item “was extracted” from the Onion website on Friday, but was taken down in less than two hours.

Discussion: AllThingsD, Al Jazeera English and Fars News Agency

Greg Mitchell / The Nation:

Yes, Newspaper Endorsements for President Do Matter, and We'll Be Charting Them — This may come as a shock to most of you, but: newspaper endorsements in the race for the White House do seem to matter (at least a little). It's become fashionable to argue otherwise, and with good reason.

Henry Belot / Wannabe Hacks:

Journalism is struggling in the UK but it's on the ropes in Australia too — Building a career in journalism has always been difficult, but it appears that retaining one has become just as challenging. Especially in Australia. — Riding on the back of a major resources boom …