Mediagazer: Poll Averages Have No History of Consistent Partisan Bias (Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight)

12:05 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, Forbes, Politico, Gothamist, New York Magazine, Deadline.com, Mediaite, Associated Press, FishbowlNY, Chickaboomer, The Raw Story and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Former New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger dies Saturday — In a note to all New York Times company employees, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., announced the death of his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, at 86. In 1963, Sulzberger became publisher of the paper, family owned since 1896.

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

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.

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.

Discussion: ProPublica

Al Tompkins / Poynter:

Will TV's long love affair with car chases come to a screeching halt as Fox broadcasts suicide live? — After Fox inadvertently aired live video of a man in Phoenix shooting himself Friday following a car chase, Executive Vice President for News Michael Clemente tried to explain how it happened.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, AlterNet, ALL HIT MUSIC K-FOX 95.5, Gawker, Slate, BuzzFeed, Guardian, The Huffington Post and Gawker

Media Matters for America:

STUDY: TV News Covered Paul Ryan's Workout 3x More Than Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss — Arctic sea ice is declining much faster than scientists expected, which has important implications for the rate and impacts of climate change. But the major TV news outlets have largely ignored …

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

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.

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

The business media needs to improve its Twitter use — The business media use Twitter as a promotional tool and are not building an online community, according to research presented Friday by two Virginia Commonwealth University professors. — Vivian Medina-Messner and Marcus Messner found …

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu and @ksablan

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 …

Doha Centre for Media Freedom:

Revolutionary press blooms underground in Syria — Amid unrest and shelling, Syrian press has seen a new growth due to “independent newspapers” — In a country suffocated for decades by state censorship and media control, dozens of independent grassroots newspapers and websites …