Mediagazer: Breaking News Is Broken (Farhad Manjoo/Slate)

9:30 AM ET, April 20, 2013

Top News:

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Breaking News Is Broken — CNN's coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing has been flawed at times. — Screen Grab Courtesy of CNN/YouTube — Inspired by the events of the past week, here's a handy guide for anyone looking to figure out what exactly is going during a breaking news event.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and TechCrunch

Choire Sicha / The Awl:

Is Your Social Media Editor Destroying Your News Organization Today? … Over the last few years, most media companies have taken on social media editors, lots of them young-ish, lots of them “digital natives.” (Some neither, of course!) Many of their jobs are construed as helping newsrooms …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TechCrunch, Forbes, Guardian, Online NewsHour, The Wrap, The Drum and Most Recent

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

On a wild night of news, a remarkable press performance — Last night was one of the wildest nights of news I can ever recall. — With Boston already on edge in the wake of the bombing of the Boston Marathon, the two suspects fingered by the FBI on Thursday set off on a rampage.

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Pete Williams and the threat to CNN — NBC's Pete Williams is currently trending worldwide on Twitter — and not without merit. On a major story that has been defined by inaccurate and conflicting reports and wild speculation, Williams has been calm, dilligent and correct.

Discussion: The Fix, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, mediabistro.com, Washington Post, Capital New York and TVNewser

USA Today:

USA TODAY founder Al Neuharth dies at 89 — Allen H. Neuharth, the newspaper visionary and former Gannett chairman who founded USA TODAY, helped create a museum dedicated to news and became one of the industry's most influential and sometimes controversial figures, died Friday at his home in Cocoa Beach, Fla. He was 89.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter and FishbowlNY

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

It Wasn't Sunil Tripathi: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster — How a terrible misidentification of two people with no connection to the Boston bombing spread so far, so fast — In the middle of the last night's nearly unbelievable turn of events, for a few hours …

Discussion: Techdirt, NDTV News, The Atlantic Wire, Gawker, GigaOM, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Mother Jones, Forbes and New York Magazine

Alex Hern / New Statesman:
Reddit, Boston and the missing student

Discussion: The Lede, Columbia Journalism Review, New Yorker, The Atlantic Wire, CNET, News Desk, Business Insider, Guardian, WebProNews, TechCrunch, paidContent and Slate

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Next up for Google TV: An NBC app with full, free episodes? — Google TV has long lacked one key feature: Free or fixed-price access to full episodes of shows the day after they air on TV. There is no Hulu Plus app for Google TV devices, and all the big broadcasters block the Google TV browser …

Steven Musil / CNET:

Twitter, BBC America announce video partnership — The pair will offer the first “in-tweet branded video synced to entertainment TV series,” according to a BBC America tweet. — It looks like Twitter is ready to make its rumored foray into the TV business.

Discussion: AdAge, TechCrunch, Lost Remote, Digital Media Wire, VatorNews, AllThingsD and Softpedia News

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Wikipedia and other sites owned by the Wikimedia Foundation now get 500m unique visitors each month — More than 500 million unique visitors now access Wikipedia and other websites owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikibooks, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, on a monthly basis.

Discussion: Wikimedia blog, Softpedia News and WebProNews

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

BBC iPlayer watched on tablets more than smartphones for first time — Top Gear two-parter from Africa and Comic Relief made March the corporation's joint best month, with 272m requests — More TV viewers watched BBC programmes like Top Gear and Doctor Who from a tablet computer than a mobile for the first time in March.

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Press regulation: minor bloggers excluded from exemplary damages — Political parties reach agreement on ‘micro businesses’ with turnover of less than £2m for amendment to crime and courts bill — Bloggers with a turnover of less than £2m annually and fewer than 10 employees …

Reuters:

Penguin offers to scrap Apple e-book deals to end EU antitrust case — (Reuters) - British media group Pearson's Penguin unit has offered to scrap e-book deals with Apple that imposed price restrictions on Amazon and other retailers, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday.

Discussion: EU Press Room, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, PublishersWeekly.com and AppleInsider