Mediagazer: Michael Hastings' Family Chides Media for Inaccuracies, Guards His Legacy (Sara Morrison/The Wrap)

9:30 PM ET, August 27, 2013

Top News:

Christine Haughney / New York Times:

Times Web Site Affected by External Hacking Attack — The New York Times Web site was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon following an attack on the company's domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. The attack also required employees of The Times to stop sending out sensitive e-mails.

Discussion: The Next Web, Guardian, GigaOM, The Next Web, New York Times, @nickkristof, @nicoleperlroth, Business Insider, @bennyfactor, The Verge, @laurahazardowen and Daily Dot

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

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: Twitter Status, TechCrunch, SocialTimes, The Verge, @chaughney, @emilydparker and The Daily Caller

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 …

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

Discussion: @stefanjbecket and @nycjim

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

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

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, City Desk, The Wrap, @jamesfallows, @ezraklein, @richarddeitsch, @jayrosen_nyu, @aseitzwald, The Raw Story and The Huffington Post

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

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

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: It's a Gadget, @rafat, @antderosa, @rafat, GigaOM, ZDNet, @felixsalmon, FishbowlNY, @nytimesbits, @jayrosen_nyu, @peterlauria3, Talking Biz News, @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, @wrightdavid, FishbowlNY, @joshuahol, @jason, Hit & Run, ANIMAL, @dangillmor, @bydanielvictor, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, @brianstelter, @scottbix, @timcast, CBS New York and Gothamist

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Apple TV Bulks Up Again, With New Apps From Disney, Weather Channel, Vevo — Apple's TV hobby continues to expand in scope: Apple has added five more apps to its Web TV box, from providers including Disney, the Weather Channel and Vevo. — Some of the apps are free, and offer on-demand programming …

Discussion: VEVO.com, Forbes, MacRumors, @pkafka, CNET, 9to5Mac, GigaOM, The Next Web, BGR, @nsj, TechCrunch, Engadget, 9to5Mac, stratechery and Broadcasting & Cable

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD: Google Makes Its Apple TV-Killer More Appealing for Apple Owners

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Al Jazeera America Launch Ratings — Al Jazeera America launched last week, and we have the ratings from Nielsen 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 and The Huffington Post

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: Inside Cable News, Politico, @jonathanalter, TVNewser, @jesseberney, @nowwithalex, @davidfolkenflik, @nickconfessore, @byrontau, @johnjcook, Business Insider, The Huffington Post and msnbc.com

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

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

Sara Morrison / The Wrap:

Michael Hastings' Family Chides Media for Inaccuracies, Guards His Legacy — The BuzzFeed reporter's legacy of fearlessly confronting powerful institutions will be remembered by his family, friends and an annual fellowship for journalists like him — In the wake of the L …

Discussion: The Informer

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

The big ‘New York Post’ digital revamp, close up — Coincidence? ‘New York Post,’ ‘Daily,’ next-door neighbors at News Corp. HQ, both score big with ‘THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN FREAKING’ headline — Looking for answers for nypost.com, Rupert Murdoch and Col Allan rely on a standby general: Jesse Angelo

Discussion: @jarroddicker

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The difference between a tablespoon and an ocean: An academic blog finds a home at The Washington Post — The Washington Post is in content-acquisition mode. Yesterday The Monkey Cage — a much admired group blog run by political science professors interested in connecting their field's work …

Discussion: @erniesander and The Monkey Cage

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.