Mediagazer: Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism (Sean Parker/TechCrunch)

8:50 PM ET, June 27, 2013

Top News:

What an NSA charm offensive looks like — Banged and bruised in the press over the NSA secrets liberated by Edward Snowden and serialized in the Guardian and the Washington Post, the national security establishment resorted to a little media offense earlier this week with a series of conversations with major news outlets.

Discussion: @hbobrien and @ravisomaiya

Dan Mitchell / Fortune:

Media is ruining the NSA debate — The debate over how much privacy we should give up in return for how much protection is necessary, but complicated. It's too important leave it to Twitter and cable news. — FORTUNE — The revelation of the National Security Agency's collecting …

Discussion: Guardian and @ryanchittum

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Anonymous Government Officials Use Media To Make Case Against Snowden — NEW YORK — In April 2011, the Associated Press reported that U.S. airstrikes in Yemen 15 months earlier had forced al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to reconsider how it communicates.

Discussion: Pressthink, FAIR Blog, Business Insider, @jayrosen_nyu, New York Times and Vanity Fair

Jessica Testa / BuzzFeed:

How Glenn Greenwald Became Glenn Greenwald — Before he was the Guardian's eyes on the National Security Agency, Greenwald was a Manhattan litigator with an itchy trigger finger. “He doesn't care if the entire world hates him.” — Before Glenn Greenwald was the journalist who broke …

Discussion: Slate, PolicyMic, @katienotopoulos, @tomgara, @tomgara, @tomgara, NY Daily News, Politico, The Dish, The Daily Caller, Capital New York, Gawker, Business Insider and New York Magazine

Sean Parker / TechCrunch:

Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism — OUR WEDDING My wife, Alexandra, and I met five years ago, fell in love, and almost immediately began fantasizing about our wedding day, which, we both agreed, should take place deep within an enchanted forest.

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:

WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI — On an August workday in 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport.

Discussion: Techdirt, The Week, The Verge, Fast Company, Mashable, @dylanbyers, Pressing Issues, Talking Points Memo and @mlcalderone

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

New York Times Set to Sell Globe for Fraction of Purchase — New York Times Co. (NYT), which is accepting bids for the Boston Globe today, is likely to fetch a price that's about a 10th of what it paid in 1993, a sign of the industry's deterioration over the past two decades.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Tech Deals, FishbowlNY, Wall St. Cheat Sheet, 10,000 Words and New York Magazine

Constanze Letsch / Guardian:

Turkish PM's treason claims against BBC reporter chills other journalists — Turkish journalists see Recep Tayyip Erdoan's attack on presenter for BBC's Turkish service as a warning to them all — Based in London, where she is a presenter for the BBC's Turkish service …

Discussion: Big News Network.com, @washingtonpoint and Today's Zaman …

BBC:
Twitter under pressure in Turkey

Discussion: @emilydparker, RT, Europe and Daily Dot

Ciara Byrne / Co.Labs:

Circa's Object-Oriented Approach To Building The News — Since newspapers first started to print, the basic unit of news has been the article, an unstructured blob of data. A news article contains standard elements like a headline, quotes, facts and photos. It has a clear beginning and an end.

Discussion: paidContent, @digidave and @deciara

Aaron Mesh / Willamette Week:

Black and White and Red All Over — Owners of the Oregonian gamble on the newspaper's digital future. — The death of The Oregonian as you know it came at 9:58 am on June 20. — That's when reporters, editors, photographers and designers who put out the 163-year-old daily newspaper were told to …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post, New Orleans Times-Picayune, TVSpy and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Jim Romenesko:

Wikipedia founder's net worth is said to be just above $1 million — Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' income “is a topic of constant fascination,” writes Amy Chozick, and he's well rehearsed in brushing off questions about it. … * Jimmy Wales is not an Internet billionaire (nytimes.com)

Discussion: New York Times

Bloomberg:

Zuckerberg Brings Silicon Valley Friends to Sun Valley — Facebook Inc. (FB), Google Inc. (GOOG) and Netflix Inc. (NFLX) are sending more executives to the annual Allen & Co. gathering of moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, the latest sign of technology's growing role in entertainment.

Greg Gilman / The Wrap:

Nickelodeon's ‘Alien Dawn’ Slapped With Lawsuit by Former Intern — Plaintiff Kevin Hicks has filed suit against the production company and producers behind the Nicktoons program — Yet another lawsuit has been filed against a production company in Hollywood as interns continue to rise up and demand compensation for unpaid work.

Discussion: Variety

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Spotify to more than double its New York engineer workforce — The music-streaming service and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announce the expansion together, which will include a new headquarters and 130 new jobs. — Follow @@joan_e — NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg …

Discussion: Forbes, The Next Web, Business Insider, VentureBeat, PandoDaily and Mashable

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Yahoo News Gets A Makeover, But The Bigger Improvements Are Under The Hood — A little over a month after Yahoo partnered with Twitter to beef up its homepage news feed with relevant tweets from news organizations, the company is today announcing a major makeover for one of its flagship properties, Yahoo News.

Discussion: Yahoo!, The Next Web, paidContent, CNET, FishbowlDC, Fast Company and Pocket-lint

Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:

Apple Spells Out iTunes Radio Terms — Ahead of its launch of an online radio service Apple circulated terms to independent record labels last week, many of them more generous to the music companies than what rival Pandora Media currently pays. — Apple intends to pay royalties to labels based …

Discussion: Wall St. Cheat Sheet, App Advice, PhoneArena, GigaOM, 9to5Mac, Business Insider, BGR, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Engadget, Electronista, CNET, MacRumors, AllAccess.com and AppleInsider

Matt Burns / TechCrunch:

Aereo To Launch Its Internet Streaming TV Service In Chicago On September 13 — Despite court battles, Aereo is on a roll. The startup just announced its streaming TV service will hit Chicagoland September 13. This comes just a month after the company announced its Atlanta launch details.

Discussion: PolicyMic, Lost Remote, Radio & Television …, VentureBeat, Home Media Magazine, The Next Web, Broadcasting & Cable, The Verge, Variety, GigaOM, Electronista and Softpedia News

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A proof of concept for a news site sending a push notification to a desktop computer — Earlier this month, I wrote about a feature of the upcoming version of Mac OS X ("Mavericks") that could be of interest to news sites: the ability to send push notifications to users on desktop and laptop computers.

Discussion: 9to5Mac

Erik Hayden / Hollywood Reporter:

Soledad O'Brien in Talks for Al Jazeera America Production Deal — The former CNN host's company, Starfish Media Group, would produce long-form programming for the forthcoming cable network. — Soledad O'Brien's Starfish Media Group is in advanced negotiations with Al Jazeera America on a production deal …

Discussion: TVWeek.com, The Huffington Post and The Daily Caller

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Northern Ireland decides not to follow English and Welsh libel reforms — Northern Ireland minister for finance and personnel says he has ‘no plans to review the law on defamation’ in province — Northern Ireland has decided not to implement historic reforms to libel legislation …