Mediagazer: Nerds Rush to Nate Silver's Defense (Elspeth Reeve/The Atlantic Wire)

9:50 AM ET, October 31, 2012

Top News:

David Holmes / PandoDaily:

Meet the man behind “Is Twitter Wrong?” who helped debunk fake pictures during Hurricane Sandy — Yesterday was a big day for citizen journalism. At one point during the storm users were posting 10 pictures to Instagram every second, and check out this dizzying website that displays in real …

Discussion: Poynter, Nieman Storyboard, New York Magazine, The Verge, Storyful Blog, CNET, GigaOM, mediabistro.com, Chicago Tribune and iMediaConnection Blog

Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:

Councilman Pushes For Charges Against Twitter User Who Spread Falsehoods — “I hope the fact that I'm asking for criminal charges to be seriously considered will make him much less comfortable and much less smug,” says Vallone — New York City Councilman Peter Vallone told BuzzFeed Tuesday …

Discussion: Betabeat, New York Times, New York Magazine, The Week, Forbes, ZDNet, BuzzFeed Politics, BuzzFeed, Poynter, FishbowlDC and Real-Time News from Mobile

Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

Tweeting fake news in a crisis — illegal or just immoral? — When Hurricane Sandy battered their city on Monday night, New Yorkers looked after each with courage and generosity. Unfortunately, a few people behaved badly and one person was downright despicable.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Forbes, PublishersWeekly.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, mediabistro.com, Poynter, Techdirt, Philly.com, The Huffington Post, Business Week, Guardian, AppNewser, Hillicon Valley and BuzzFeed

Jack Stuef / BuzzFeed:
Shashank Tripathi, Last Night's Twitter Villain @ComfortablySmug

Michael J. De La Merced / DealBook:

With Lucasfilm Deal, Disney Spends Big to Land a Lucrative Franchise — With its $4.05 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm, the Walt Disney Company is proving yet again that it is willing to pay up to land a big franchise. — Disney's takeover of Lucasfilm, keeper of the the Star Wars franchise …

Discussion: Business Wire, Slate, Corporate Intelligence, Media Decoder, /Film, Forbes and Forbes

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4.05B including ILM, LucasArts and other tech, Star Wars VII coming in 2015 — Media giant Disney has purchased movie and TV production house Lucasfilm for $4.05B in cash and stock. Star Wars Episode 7 is targeted for release in 2015, with more feature films expected to continue the Star Wars saga.

Guardian:

BBC to investigate death of journalist who complained of harassment — Family of Russell Joslin, who died on 22 October, accuses corporation of failing to act on his reports of sexual harassment — Police and the BBC are to investigate the apparent suicide of a journalist who complained …

Discussion: BBC

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

Impressive integrity from two New York Times writers over BBC scandal — Margaret Sullivan and Joe Nocera raise troubling questions about their own paper's incoming president and CEO, Mark Thompson — Over the past month, two New York Times columnists have displayed brave …

Discussion: Telegraph

Michael Wolff / Guardian:
The Jimmy Savile scandal, Mark Thompson and the New York Times

Discussion: London Review of Books and @emilybell

Jim Romenesko: NYT publisher to NYT columnist: No comment on Mark Thompson

Joe Nocera / New York Times:
The Right Man for the Job?

Discussion: Guardian, @dansabbagh, Guardian, The Wrap and The Raw Story

Elspeth Reeve / The Atlantic Wire:

Nerds Rush to Nate Silver's Defense — The great war between people who write about politics for a living is not between liberals and conservatives, but between humanities majors and math nerds, and their battleground is currently the validity of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight election prediction model …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Change of Subject, Wonkblog, TechCrunch and Daily Download

Jeremy Wagstaff / Reuters:

Analysis: E-readers grapple with a future on the shelf — (Reuters) - Amidst our growing love affair with the tablet, spare a thought for its increasingly shelfbound sibling: the e-reader. — Take Taiwan's E Ink Holdings Inc, which makes most of the monochrome displays for devices …

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Newspaper Circulation Holds Steady Again — Digital Circulation Now 15.3% of the Total — Paywalls still seem to be paying off for newspapers. — The industry's average weekday circulation over the six months ending in September slipped just 0.2% from the equivalent period a year earlier …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Danah Boyd / Wired:

Truth, Lies, and ‘Doxxing’: The Real Moral of the Gawker/Reddit Story — Sitting U.S. President Ford was visiting San Francisco in 1975 when a woman attempted to shoot him. A former marine named Oliver Sipple grabbed the gun, preventing the assassination attempt.

Discussion: The Kernel

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

Vimeo launches tips jar for content creators. More of this, please, media industry — Vimeo has just launched a tip jar to help content creators earn money from their videos. A “pay to view” option is coming soon. These are the first steps in what could become a widespread micropayments ecosystem on the video-sharing site.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Washington Post Sunday circulation drop bad, but not quite as bad as it looks — The Washington Post's average Sunday circulation dropped 20.2 percent over 2011, according to the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report. But just like in the May report, the September report didn't count …