Mediagazer: Freedom Of Information Act Machine Fights Government Secrecy By Automating Transparency Requests (Billy Gallagher/TechCrunch)

10:45 PM ET, July 20, 2013

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff — Nate Silver, the statistician who attained national fame for his accurate projections about the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, is parting ways with The New York Times and moving his FiveThirtyEight franchise to ESPN …

Discussion: PandoDaily, Business Insider, @carr2n, TechCrunch, Fast Company, paidContent, Deadline.com, @stevestreza, Politico, Mediaite, @pkafka, The Verge, New York Magazine, @dangillmor, The Wrap, LA Observed, Variety and The Huffington Post, Thanks:@steverubel

Calvin Woodward / Associated Press:

Pioneering journalist Helen Thomas dies at 92 — WASHINGTON (AP) — Helen Thomas, the irrepressible White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill nine presidents — often to their discomfort and was not shy about sharing her opinions, died Saturday. She was 92.

Discussion: New York Times, NPR, CNN, Politico, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Mediaite, Associated Press, PolicyMic, @ohnorosco, Deadline.com, @digiphile, Bloomberg, @cjbsc, TVNewser, The Huffington Post, The Independent, Gawker, @jmfbrooks, Yahoo! News, Big News Network.com and Guardian

Jeremy Lybarger / Mother Jones:

Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era? — In late May, the Chicago Sun-Times took the unprecedented move of gutting its photography department by laying off 28 full-time employees, including John H. White, a 35-year veteran who had won the paper a Pulitzer.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu

Jacob Harris / Source:

The Perils of Polling Twitter — Jake Harris on just a few of the myriad reasons why using tweets as data is less-than-ideal — In this case study — But what does Twitter think? If you are a data journalist in a newsroom, you will hear this question sooner or later in your career.

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …

Billy Gallagher / TechCrunch:

Freedom Of Information Act Machine Fights Government Secrecy By Automating Transparency Requests — The Freedom of Information Act Machine, an open online platform that automates Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, launched on Kickstarter two days ago and has already surpassed its funding goal.

Discussion: Columbia Journalism Review, The Verge, @johnwolfson, @johnwolfson, @johnwolfson, Fast Company and Consumerist

Glenn Peoples / Billboard:

Exclusive: Windowing Hurts Sales, Increases Piracy, Says Paper Released by Spotify — Windowing is doing more harm than good, suggests a new paper by Will Page, director of economics at Spotify and former chief economist at PRS for Music. — In “Adventures in the Netherlands: Spotify …

Sarah Hill / Mediashift:

How Google Glass Will Change the Future of Broadcast Journalism — Want to stay current on media and technology from around the web? Get MediaShift's Daily Must Reads in your in-box! — News gathering is a difficult job and if you're a working journalist, you already understand …

Discussion: GigaOM, Thanks:@mediatwit

Yochai Benkler / Guardian:

Bradley Manning ‘aiding the enemy’ charge is a threat to journalism | Yochai Benkler — Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people. That's what this trial is really about — Thursday, Colonel Denise Lind, the judge in the Bradley Manning court martial …

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Starting a Conversation at The Times About Women as News Sources — The illustration from a children's book, published in 1969, says it all about the role of women in newsrooms at that time. — “... The Story of Newspapers - before women were invented,” quipped the journalist Graham Carter on Twitter …

Chris Chafin / The Awl:

War Reporting For Bloody Dummies — Recently I saw the journalist Clare Morgana Gillis, and asked her about her war reporting. “If you want to know a bunch of stuff about my background and whatever you can Google it,” she said. She is tall and intimidating, was wearing wraparound sunglasses at the time …

David Carr / New York Times:

Behind Rolling Stone's Cover, a Story Worth Reading — Of all the outraged responses to the Rolling Stone cover of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspect in the Boston marathon bombings, those from Boston were particularly acute. Mayor Thomas Menino wrote a letter of protest to Rolling Stone …

Discussion: New Yorker, PolicyMic and Guardian

Todd Spangler / Variety:

YouTube Pay Channels Aren't Taking Off Yet, Some Partners Say — Two months after site's launch of subscription services, several content providers haven't seen much activity — YouTube, which has built an Internet video empire based on free, ad-supported content, has not signed …

Discussion: Guardian and WebProNews