Mediagazer: Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash (Eric W. Dolan/The Raw Story)

9:15 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, @stefanjbecket, @lyramckee, @scottleadingham, @nbj914, @nikhilgoya_l, @feldmaniac, @katz, @circa and @jeremyscahill

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

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

Discussion: Yahoo, Business Insider, Valleywag, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, The Register, Bloomberg, TechRadar.com, The Independent, 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, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, 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 …

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

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 …, Business Insider, SlashGear 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

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: FishbowlNY, LA Observed and 10,000 Words

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

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

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Next: Yahoo Also Eyeing Automated Video App Maker Qwiki in $50 Million Deal — According to sources close to the company, Yahoo is considering paying up to $50 million for Qwiki, the New York startup that makes an Apple iPhone app that allow users to turn photos, music and videos into short movies automatically.

Discussion: CNET, Business Insider, Forbes, memeburn, App Advice, Mashable and WebProNews

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Gallup: Only 23% of Americans trust newspapers, TV news — The bad news: Just 23 percent of Americans told Gallup they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, the same percentage who said they trust TV news. The good news: Both are still more popular than big business, organized labor, HMOs and Congress.

Discussion: MediaPost, Kirk LaPointe's …, Gallup and 24/7 Wall St.