Mediagazer: Wall Street Journal Kicks The New York Times While It's Down (John Herrman/BuzzFeed)

7:15 PM ET, August 27, 2013

Top News:

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

NYTimes.com Goes Dark For Second Time In Two Weeks — The website of the New York Times probably doesn't go out of service more than any big site, but when it does, boy do people notice. — For the second time in two weeks, nytimes.com is returning an error message, at least for a large segment of visitors.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Guardian, AllThingsD, Gawker, Media & Entertainment, The Wrap, @jeffbercovici and ZDNet

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Wall Street Journal Kicks The New York Times While It's Down — A dropped paywall and a promoted tweet. This is a different kind of war. — The New York Times was apparently taken down today, at the hands of the notorious Syrian Electronic Army hacker group.

Discussion: The Next Web, @stefanjbecket and @nycjim

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Updated: NYTimes.com down; paper suspects “external attack” — The New York Times website is experiencing an outage as of 1 PM PT on Tuesday. This outage comes about two weeks after a larger outage where the site went down for everyone. Unlike the previous outage, the newspaper is attributing …

Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:

Syrian Electronic Army attack suspected on New York Times; group also claims Twitter hack — View Photo Gallery — A brief history of key military interventions by the United States: Since the Vietnam War, the United States has engaged in several military interventions.

Discussion: TechCrunch, @chaughney, @emilydparker, Engadget, Daily Dot and New York Times

Alexander Nazaryan / The Atlantic Wire:
Syrian Electronic Army Suspected in New York Times Website Crash

Discussion: GalleyCat, The Verge, Businessweek, VentureBeat, Los Angeles Times, Mediaite, Los Angeles Times, @corybe, @noir, @dylanbyers, CNNMoney.com, KDVR.com and Hillicon Valley

Christine Haughney / New York Times:
Times Web Site Affected by External Hacking Attack

Discussion: GigaOM and @bennyfactor

Fortune:

AllThingsD nears split with Dow Jones — FORTUNE — The future of influential tech website All Things Digital is close to being decided. Reuters reported in February that AllThingsD co-executive editors Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg had begun discussions with owner Dow Jones …

Discussion: GigaOM, It's a Gadget, Talking Biz News, @jayrosen_nyu, @rafat, @peterlauria3, @antderosa, @rafat, FishbowlNY, ZDNet, @nytimesbits, @felixsalmon, @benpopper, @mdudas and @mccarthyryanj

Russ Buettner / New York Times:

Officer Is Indicted on Charges of Lying About Photographer's Arrest — A New York City police officer who had arrested a photographer working for The New York Times has been indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors accusing him of fabricating the reasons for the arrest, the Bronx district attorney announced on Monday.

Discussion: Poynter, New York Post, Hit & Run, FishbowlNY, @joshuahol, @jason, ANIMAL, @dangillmor, @bydanielvictor, @brianstelter, @scottbix, @timcast, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, CBS New York and Gothamist

Erik Wemple:

Pari Bradlee and the brilliance of Fox News's Howard Kurtz — No one cared about the Facebook photos of one Pari Bradlee. No one cared that one of them portrayed her in a “Swiss-cheese bra.” No one cared that another showed her posing nude, “shot from the back, twisting one arm behind her.”

Discussion: Gawker, The Wrap, City Desk, @richarddeitsch, @jayrosen_nyu, @aseitzwald and The Raw Story

Dylan Byers / Politico:
Sally Quinn ‘appalled’ by Kurtz column

Discussion: Fox News, Mediaite, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, @jamisonfoser, @feldmaniac, @mattgertz and @maxblumenthal

J.K. Trotter / Gawker:

Brian Lewis Speaks Out: Roger Ailes and Fox News Should Fear Him — Brian Lewis's attorney Judd Burstein just provided this statement to Gawker: … Fox News President Roger Ailes fired Lewis in late July following accusations of “financial irregularities” and “multiple, material and significant breaches of his employment contract.”

Discussion: Politico, The Wrap, TVNewser, Business Insider, @jesseberney, @nowwithalex, @davidfolkenflik, @nickconfessore, @byrontau, @johnjcook, msnbc.com and The Huffington Post

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Huffington Post deletes 75 percent of incoming comments — The Huffington Post will soon no longer allow anonymous comments. In a post published Monday afternoon, HuffPost Media Group Managing Editor Jimmy Soni said the news organization “recognizes that many people are not in a professional …

Discussion: @poynter, The Huffington Post and The Newspaper Guild

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Al Jazeera America Launch Ratings — Al Jazeera America launched last week, and we have the ratings from Nielsen Media Research for its first few days. — Not surprisingly given the low-rated channel it replaced (Current TV), and the fact that it lost a few million homes from AT&T before launch …

Discussion: Mediaite, Lost Remote, The Huffington Post and TVSpy

Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

Google calls book scanning “transformative” in latest push for fair use ruling — Google and the Authors Guild's eight-year legal fight over digital books is coming to a head once again, as both sides prepare to make their final case next month about whether Google's scanning …

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com, @yunghi, @inafried, @tcarmody and @mphoulihan

Cindy Royal / Mediashift:

We Need a Digital-First Curriculum to Teach Modern Journalism — At the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, one panel addressed adding programming skills to the curriculum: “Why All Your Students Must Be Programmers.”

Discussion: @newswhip, @toddmundt, @pbsmediashift, @stevebuttry and @derekwillis, Thanks:@pbsmediashift

Erik Wemple:

Risen case: DOJ says new guidelines don't apply — It's been a busy summer for New York Times reporter James Risen. — • On July 19, a 2 to 1 ruling from a federal appeals court in Richmond held that he couldn't use a reporter's privilege to excuse himself from testimony …

Discussion: @joshgerstein and Politico

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Author Of UK's Terrorism Act Says It Was Never Meant For Situations Like David Miranda — In the US, we've had one of the key authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, speak out strongly, saying that the NSA interpretation of the law appears to be completely different than what was meant when the bill was written.