Mediagazer: Newtown teaches us, once again, to discount early reports (Jack Shafer)

10:40 PM ET, December 17, 2012

Top News:

Michael Wolff / Guardian:

Did NPR's Andy Carvin overreach his Twitter calling on Newtown shooting? — Carvin became a one-man social media hub on the Arab spring, but the school shooting exposed flaws in his retweet method — If it bleeds, it leads - that most reliable axiom of journalism - may be nowhere as true as on Twitter.

Discussion: Poynter, @mattseaton, @fieldproducer, @ckanal, @jayrosen_nyu, @bradleydaviswsj, @jayrosen_nyu, @tamerelg, @antderosa and Charles Apple

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Rupert Murdoch Wants Stricter Gun Laws After Newtown, But Fox News Doesn't Get the Memo — At 7:58 p.m. on Saturday evening, gun control's newest advocate took to Twitter to call for stricter firearm legislation. “Nice words from POTUS on shooting tragedy,” wrote News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch …

Discussion: Inside Cable News and The Huffington Post

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

In real-time journalism, declaring what you won't report can be just as important as what you will — It started with confusion at the scene of the crime. A source told CNN the killer was named Ryan Lanza. — Soon several news organizations published images from a Facebook profile belonging to a man with that name.

Jack Shafer:

Newtown teaches us, once again, to discount early reports — “It's inevitable that some first reports will be wrong,” Dan Rather warned viewers on Sept. 11, 2001, as he and his colleagues at CBS covered terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in real time.

Discussion: BuzzFeed and GigaOM

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Sandy Hook coverage: Is ‘good enough’ good enough?

Discussion: Tea Party Nation, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, NationalJournal.com, Hit & Run, Yahoo! News, AdAge and TVNewser

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:
Connecticut shootings: Not a media story

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Erik Wemple, Media Decoder and New York Times

Eric Deggans / Tampa Bay Times:
Understanding Newtown shooting coverage: Accepting errors in breaking news seems the biggest mistake

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Softpedia News and The Huffington Post

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal: Errors in Newtown Shootings Coverage Reflect Growing Pressures

Chloe Sladden / Twitter Blog:

Coming Soon: Nielsen Twitter TV Rating — Today Nielsen announced an agreement with Twitter to create the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating,” an industry-standard metric that is based entirely on Twitter data. — As the experience of TV viewing continues to evolve, our TV partners have consistently asked …

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating just made Twitter the first purely social ranking of US TV program popularity

Discussion: TechCrunch

John Cook / Gawker:

Richard Engel is Missing in Syria; NBC News Enforces News Blackout — NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyava, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for.

Discussion: @jeremyscahill, @jeremyscahill, @sarahmmimms, @the260, PolicyMic, Minnesota Public Radio, @mcmeljo, @joelrubin, @gideonyago, Twitchy, National Enquirer, @jameslongmanbbc, @sallykohn and @hemlockmartinis

Michael Kelley / Business Insider:
Famed NBC Correspondent Missing In Syria

Discussion: Twitchy

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Baron: It's ‘probable’ Washington Post newsroom will shrink — Incoming Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron tells Paul Starobin “It's probable” the paper's headcount will go down, but that he hopes the Post can do more on local reporting. “I don't think for a minute that local journalism …

Paul Starobin / The New Republic:
Martin Baron's Plan to Save The Washington Post

Discussion: FishbowlDC

Nat Ives / AdAge:

A Look at Newspapers Turning a Profit — Yes, There Are Some — and Those That Are Not — Speculation surged last week that Michael Bloomberg, New York's billionaire mayor and founder of Bloomberg LP, might buy The Financial Times, after The New York Times reported he'd been thinking about it.

Discussion: mediabistro.com, USA Today, @michaelroston, FishbowlNY and Noted

Mark Sweney / Guardian: Print in 2013: Newspapers cut costs and seek tablets of salvation

Dan Gillmor / Guardian:

Why we all have a stake in the Freedom of the Press Foundation — This new nonprofit to protect WikiLeaks and other whistleblowers from payment systems blocking deserves our support — Two years ago this month, the major online payment systems - Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and more …

Discussion: GigaOM, The Huffington Post, Groundswell, Electronic Frontier Foundation, The UpTake, Guardian, Big News Network.com and Media News

The Huffington Post:
Crowd Funding the Right to Know

Discussion: Freedom of the Press … and Boing Boing

Sam Thielman / Adweek:

Participant Media Acquires Documentary Channel, Halogen TV — Participant Media has acquired cable networks Documentary Channel and Halogen TV and will combine them into a single as-yet unnamed cable network to launch next summer with a distribution of some 40 million households …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Cable Television News, AdAge and Broadcasting & Cable

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Hulu's Year-End Report: We're Pretty Darn Big! (And We're Not Saying Anything Else.) — Hulu has put out its 2012 numbers and, boy, are they good for a company that everyone said would never work: Almost $700 million in revenue, and “more than” three million paying customers for its Hulu Plus subscription service.

Discussion: Hulu Blog, TechCrunch, 24/7 Wall St., Adweek and GeekWire

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Hulu's 2012: Revenue up 65% to $695M, subscribers double to 3M, 28% more advertisers

Discussion: Reuters and GigaOM

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Washington Post signs up with NewsCred in push for dollars, exposure — NewsCred, which offers publishers and brands a growing library of elite news content, announced this week that the Washington Post is the latest to join its syndication service. — According to NewsCred CEO Shafqat Islam …

Discussion: Business Insider and AllThingsD

London Evening Standard:

Guardian to make its move Down Under — Watch out, Rupert Murdoch. The Guardian, which has led the way exposing the phone-hacking scandal in the Murdoch empire, is expanding in his own backyard, with a Guardian Australia news operation. — Glamorous deputy editor Katherine Viner …

Discussion: Crikey, TheAustralian and mUmBRELLA

McKay Coppins / BuzzFeed:

News Outlets Send Letter To Romney Campaign Contesting Expenses — Nine news outlets that covered the election sent a joint letter Monday to former Romney campaign officials to contest expenses billed to their reporters. BuzzFeed, which is among the outlets that signed the letter, first reported on the dispute last week.

Discussion: @jbenton

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Newtown: Costas no-comments tragedy — A few weeks ago, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas railed against U.S. “gun culture” during halftime of a “Sunday Night Football” broadcast. His editorializing came after Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher's shot his girlfriend to death and then committed suicide in front of his head coach.