Mediagazer: One on One: Robin Sloan, Author and ‘Media Inventor’ (Nick Bilton/NYT Bits)

12:45 AM ET, October 15, 2012

Top News:

Michael Moynihan / The Daily Beast:

Nicholas Lemann: Journalism Is Doing Just Fine — It's not perfect, but it's not dying, says Nicholas Lemann, departing dean of Columbia Journalism School. He tells Michael Moynihan why he left, and why he's bullish on the industry. — Steven Errico / Photographer's Choice-Getty Images

Discussion: @jimmyso, @rajunarisetti and @ksablan

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong — Here's a pocket history of the web, according to many people. In the early days, the web was just pages of information linked to each other. Then along came web crawlers that helped you find what you wanted among all that information.

Discussion: TechCrunch, A VC, @buzzfeedben, GigaOM, Felix Salmon, SocialTimes, Business Week, @digiphile and @mathewi

Alexandra Topping / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch calls phone-hacking campaigners ‘scumbag celebrities’ — News Corp chief causes outrage on Twitter with caustic dismissal of victims who lobbied David Cameron last week — Rupert Murdoch has labelled victims of phone hacking “scumbag celebrities” after they met David Cameron during the Conservative party conference.

Discussion: Crikey, @dangillmor, @jeffjarvis and @rupertmurdoch

Natasha Singer / New York Times:

Do-Not-Track Movement Is Drawing Advertisers' Fire — THE campaign to defang the “Do Not Track” movement began late last month. — Do Not Track mechanisms are features on browsers — like Mozilla's Firefox — that give consumers the option of sending out digital signals asking companies …

Discussion: The Verge

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Amplification & the changing role of media — For the past few days, I have been thinking about the evolution of what media is and its expanded role in the information ecosystem. What got me thinking was Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey's decision to blog his side of the story about his reduced role at Twitter.

Discussion: @zimbalist and @kevinmarks

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Reddit leaders deflect censorship criticism and defend hands-off policies — In wake of the Gawker ban controversy, Reddit's powerful moderators test commitment to free speech — Reddit's prides itself on its decentralized meritocracy —"subreddits are a free market.

Discussion: Gawker and PandoDaily

John Herrman / @jwherrman:
Reddit's top admin tells me Gawker article ban “was a mistake on our part” http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos / leaked-chat-logs-between-reddit- moderators-and-sta ...

Discussion: BuzzFeed

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

Suddenly everyone wants New Yorker style content. Only one catch: Who is going to write it? — One of our most popular stories all week has been David Holmes's report about how Tumblr wants to pay for journalism. And not just cat pictures, re-written press releases, or 300 word snark-fests by junior reporters paid $12 a post.

David Carr / New York Times:

TV Debates That Sell More Than Just Drama — In 1960, John F. Kennedy was trailing Richard Nixon as they stepped into the crucible of the first nationally televised debate. While Kennedy soared, Nixon stumbled and never recovered. — Network television played a definitive role, but those were very different times.

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

One on One: Robin Sloan, Author and ‘Media Inventor’ — Robin Sloan is the author of the book “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book tells the story of Clay Jannon, an out-of-work, tech-obsessed Web designer who ends up getting a job …

Discussion: TeleRead and FishbowlLA

Mara Shalhoup / Chicago Reader:

Thanks to smartphones, we're now in the golden age of reading — If you tune it at all to the near-constant chatter about the precarious state of quality journalism, you've probably heard that the digital revolution is largely to blame for quality journalism's decline—that publishers beholden …

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of near-term numerology — Think about this. The Tampa Tribune, a paper that would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars a decade ago, sold this week for $9 million. — Its seller, Media General completed the disposal of its newspaper properties …

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Amazon to Kindle customers: There's an antitrust refund incoming — Amazon has begun notifying Kindle users that they may have a refund on ebook purchases in the pipeline, in the aftermath of the antitrust settlement around price-fixing by publishers. The message, sent out to users …

Discussion: Ars Technica, Reuters and CNET