Mediagazer: The Tow Center Announces First Round of Tow/ Knight Research Projects (Taylor Owen/Tow Center for Digital …)

7:35 AM ET, August 27, 2013

Top News:

To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense — ESPN likes to call itself the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and by most every measure it is in a league of its own. The network produced 35,000 hours of programming in 2012, including at least half of all live athletic events televised in the United States.

Discussion: @kevinq, @richsandomir, @rayburnc and @derekwillis

Dave Zirin / The Nation:

ESPN Journalists Speak Out on Concussion Documentary — NFL Hall-of-Famer Harry Carson speaks during the session on PBS's upcoming Frontline documentary “League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis” at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour in Los Angeles.

Discussion: @timkarr, @geoff_calkins, @artsapphire, @katrinanation, @richarddeitsch, The Huffington Post, TVNewser, Forbes, FishbowlNY, @tvnewslab, Sports Illustrated and eMedia Vitals

Dean Starkman / Columbia Journalism Review: ESPN's journalism problem

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

To make journalism harder, slower, less secure — That's what the surveillance state is trying to do. It has the means, the will and the latitude to go after journalism the way it went after terrorism. Only a more activist press, working together, stands a chance of resisting this.

Discussion: GigaOM, @wblau, @conor64, Free Press, @niemanlab, The Huffington Post, @joshuafoust, Guardian, Kirk LaPointe's …, BuzzFeed and New York Times

Jonathan Franklin / Truthout:

Exclusive Glenn Greenwald Interview: “I Won't Be Kept Out of My Country for Doing Journalism!” — Glenn Greenwald, the US lawyer-turned-blogger-turned- journalist, has been writing about state-sponsored repression, surveillance, torture and leaks for years. He has four best-selling books …

Discussion: @whenpigsflyyy

Laura Poitras / Spiegel Online:
Miranda Detention: ‘Blatant Attack on Press Freedom’

Discussion: @pandymonium01, @kenroth, @aljavieera, @astradisastra and @runasand

Taylor Owen / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:

The Tow Center Announces First Round of Tow/ Knight Research Projects — Over the past few months we have been putting together an exciting new program of research, the Tow/Knight Projects, marking a first for us at the Tow Center, the Columbia Journalism School, and the changing field of journalism.

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: @stevebuttry and @derekwillis, Thanks:@pbsmediashift

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Sirius Is Sued Over Music Royalties for Pre-1972 Recordings — The entity that collects performance royalties from digital music services—and distributes them to performers and record labels—sued satellite-radio giant Sirius XM Radio Inc. for allegedly refusing to pay for recordings made prior to 1972.

Discussion: Reuters, Billboard, AllAccess.com, SlashGear and @ethanwsj

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / Digits:

Open Secret About Google's Surveillance Case No Longer Secret — The Justice Department recently won a court battle to keep an Internet company from talking about federal demands for user data, arguing that even disclosing the company's name would damage national security.'

Discussion: @rohanjay, @mattcutts, @ramez, Techdirt, Daily Dot, @occupywallstnyc, @antderosa, The Verge, CNET and ZDNet

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

Dick Gordon leaving public radio's ‘The Story’ — “The Story,” the nationally syndicated public radio news interview program produced at North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, will air for the last time on October 11. Long-time host Dick Gordon “plans to return to his native Canada …

Discussion: WUNC, @babesofnpr, @wunc, @smalljones, @shiplives, @alexschelldorf and @tweetreinhard

Evan McMurry / Mediaite:

Howard Kurtz Announces New Fox Sunday Show, Media Buzz — On Monday afternoon, former Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz announced his new Fox News show, Media Buzz, which will debut on September 8th at 11 a.m. — “The one-hour show will focus on the state of the news media in addition …

Discussion: TVNewser, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Variety, Erik Wemple, The Wrap, Politico, Hollywood Reporter, @howardkurtz and Inside Cable News

John Kroll Digital:

Does journalism make a difference in a community? — The first day of my first journalism class in college, we went around the room saying our names and answer a couple of questions from the prof, former Chicago's American and Chicago Today editor Dick Hainey.

Discussion: @stevebuttry

Carl Marcucci / Radio & Television Business Report:

Piolin sues former staffers over extortion — Former Univision Radio-syndicated Spanish-language star Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo filed a civil extortion lawsuit 8/26 against six former Univision employees and their LA attorneys for attempting to “shake him down” for nearly $5 million by threatening …

Discussion: LA Observed