Mediagazer: Tumblr's Media Director Quits (Sam Biddle/Valleywag)

11:35 PM ET, June 18, 2013

Top News:

Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:

Michael Hastings, ‘Rolling Stone’ Contributor, Dead at 33 — The bold journalist died in a car accident in Los Angeles — Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned.

BuzzFeed:

Statement On Michael Hastings — BuzzFeed is saddened to report that Michael Hastings died in a car accident early this morning in Los Angeles. He was 33. — Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief, said in a statement: — We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone.

Eric W. Dolan / The Raw Story:

Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash — The journalist and author Michael Hastings died at the age of 33 on Tuesday morning. According to his employer BuzzFeed, Hastings was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles. — “We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone …

Discussion: Slate, Business Insider, WorldViews, @nbj914, @feldmaniac, @katz, @circa, @scottleadingham, @jeremyscahill, @lyramckee, @stefanjbecket and @nikhilgoya_l

Craig Timberg / Washington Post:

Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment — Google is preparing to ask the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government.

Discussion: Forbes, Reuters, The Verge, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Salon, CNNMoney.com, Hillicon Valley, VentureBeat, @trevortimm, AllThingsD, Guardian, Mercury News, The Daily Beast, @rajunarisetti, Quartz, @eff, ReadWrite, Wired, @samgustin, Mashable, Digits, Engadget, RT, Techdirt, GigaOM, CNET, The Daily Caller and ZDNet

Salvador Rodriguez / Los Angeles Times:
Yahoo discloses how much government data requests it gets

Discussion: Valleywag, Business Insider, Mercury News, Christian Science Monitor, The Register, Bloomberg, TechRadar.com, The Independent, BBC, ZDNet, CNN, CNNMoney.com, Reuters and Guardian

Isaac Chotiner / New Republic:

“What Part of ‘Politico’ Do You Not Understand?” — A conversation about the dark art of driving the conversation — The dominant mode of Washington journalism tends to both reflect and entrench the values of its era. The eminent writers and editors of the immediate postwar age …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Gawker, @bcappelbaum, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, FishbowlDC, Poynter and @jayrosen_nyu

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:
Nate Silver: Politico Co-Founders Lack ‘Curiosity For The World Outside Of The Bubble’

Discussion: @evgenymorozov and The Huffington Post

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Photographer sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M over viral sharing model — A photographer says BuzzFeed should pay copyright damages not only for an unauthorized photo that appeared on its site — but for the dozens of other sites on which the photo appeared. — An Idaho photographer, Kai Eiselein …

Discussion: The Awl, Poynter, WebProNews, Guardian and FishbowlNY

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

More on the Plane That Didn't Crash, and ‘Truthiness’ — A few weeks ago, I wrote about the plane that didn't crash - that is, about a Lives piece in The Times Magazine that has drawn significant criticism from aviation experts including Patrick ("Ask the Pilot") Smith and from James Fallows …

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Tumblr's Media Director Quits — Tumblr brought Mark Coatney aboard from Newsweek to bolster the site's editorial side—"to show how [Tumblr] can be key to connecting journalists and readers." Three years (and a Yahoo acquisition) later, and another early employee is gone. That's two in only a few weeks.

Discussion: CNET, Still Not Going To Do …, SlashGear, Business Insider and Betabeat

Brett Logiurato / Business Insider:

Fox Business Terminates Contract With Contributor Who Was Paid $50,000 To Boost A Stock — Fox Business Network has terminated the contract of contributor Tobin Smith, who was paid $50,000 to tout the stock of Petrosonic Energy, a network spokesperson told Business Insider.

Discussion: MarketWatch and TVNewser

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

AOL's Patch Limps Toward Profitability — After more than five years of reporting on school-board meetings and community bake sales, AOL Inc. (AOL)'s Patch is now at the center of another story: whether the company's bet on local news can be profitable. — Patch, with more than 900 sites …

Discussion: Street Fight

Edward Wyatt / New York Times:

F.C.C. Nominee Favors Competition Over Regulation — WASHINGTON — President Obama's nominee to head the Federal Communications Commission told a Senate committee on Tuesday that his top priorities, if he is confirmed, would be consumer protection, increasing competition …

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, Radio & Television …, Mashable and @jbflint

Janko Roettgers / paidContent:

Yet another YouTube funding: Bedrocket invests in Shira Lazar's What's Trending — Thought there was no money in producing original content for YouTube's audience? The folks at Bedrocket Entertainment beg to differ — and just invested in What's Trending.

Discussion: The Next Web, Variety and Guardian

Chris Ariens / FishbowlLA:

FishbowlLA Going on Hiatus — Mediabistro's FishbowlLA is taking five. In the meantime, FBLA co-editor Richard Horgan has moved over to FishbowlNY to cover the Hollywood trades, awards season and a broad range of national media stories. — Launched in 2005, the site has seen its fair share …

Discussion: 10,000 Words, FishbowlNY and LA Observed

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Study: Facebook third most popular news source in Arab world — Broadcasters Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya named top outlets for accessing news across the region, followed by Facebook — Copyright: Image by owenwbrown on Flickr. Some rights reserved — Facebook is the third most popular outlet …

Discussion: Yahoo! News

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Which blogs stay and which go at ‘The New York Times’? — As we reported several months ago, The New York Times is in the midst of reviewing all of its blogs to determine which will stay and which will go as it prepares for a major web overhaul. — The blogs have been a significant part …