Mediagazer: Chasing Mayhem With Peter Nickeas, the Chicago Tribune's Overnight Crime Reporter (Ben Austen/New York Magazine)

2:00 AM ET, September 29, 2014

Top News:

Softbank in Talks to Acquire DreamWorks Animation — Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp. is in talks to acquire DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Los Angeles Times, The Wrap, Business Insider, The Verge, VentureBeat, Engadget, PC World, Reuters, Bloomberg and Deadline

Catalina Albeanu / Journalism.co.uk:

Polish newspaper launches interactive data journalism platform — Gazeta Wyborcza set up BIQdata.pl, ‘the first website of its kind’ in Poland, to offer more visuals and interactive data analysis to its subscribers — Credit: By Luke Legay on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Jeremiah Patterson / Online News Association:

Seattle Times, Pro Publica, NPR take home 2014 Online Journalism Awards — CHICAGO — Coverage of natural disasters and health care as well as the making of a T-shirt took top honors Saturday night at the 2014 Online Journalism Awards, which ended the Online News Association Conference.

Discussion: @raju and Los Angeles Times

Ben Austen / New York Magazine:

Chasing Mayhem With Peter Nickeas, the Chicago Tribune's Overnight Crime Reporter — “Did you guys have a shooting on the expressway? No? Okay, I’ll try back later.” — Shares — “Cold is the best crime deterrent,” says Peter Nickeas, the overnight reporter covering violence …

Brady Dale / Columbia Journalism Review:

How tech reporters can deepen their beat — Ask a tech journalist about the latest cool features from the likes of Google Maps or Spotify, and they are likely not only to be able to rattle them off, but also to give astute opinions about whether those features position a product for success.

Discussion: @s_m_i

Jackie Spinner / American Journalism Review:

The Big Conundrum: Should Journalists Learn Code? — In the new multimedia world journalists inhabit, Fernando Diaz, the managing editor of Hoy, Chicago's Spanish-language daily, is placing his bets on computer codes. — His last two hires were both developers: Nick Bennett …

Discussion: @cerenomri and @markstencel

Dan Froomkin / The Intercept:

Non-denial denials: carefully chosen words can mislead, as CIA director's case shows — Anatomy of a Non-Denial Denial — The non-denial denial is an art that takes many forms in official Washington. — The basic idea is that when you or your organization are accused of doing something …

Trevor Timm / Freedom of the Press Foundation:

Eric Holder was the worst Attorney General for the press in a generation. We deserve better. — Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would resign yesterday, after serving as the nation's top law enforcement official since President Obama came into office in 2009.

Discussion: @jonathanwpeters, @onekade, @anamariecox, @seanlahman, @freedomofpress and Jack Shafer

Steven Pinker / Wall Street Journal:

The ‘curse of knowledge’ leads writers to assume their readers know everything they know — The ‘curse of knowledge’ leads writers to assume their readers know everything they know — Why is so much writing so bad? Why is it so hard to understand a government form …

Discussion: Forbes

Brian Knowlton / New York Times:

US State Department fights ISIS social media propaganda with accounts like @ThinkAgain_DOS — Digital War Takes Shape on Websites Over ISIS — WASHINGTON — Along with its surprising military success, the Islamic State group has demonstrated a skill and sophistication with social media previously unseen in extremist groups.

Discussion: TechCrunch, bookforum.com, Telegraph, VICE News, Bloomberg and ABC News

Ryan Devereaux / The Intercept:

Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb — Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News's bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua's Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California …

Discussion: @elgranjuego, @brendan_fischer, @ggreenwald, @jayrosen_nyu, @ggreenwald and Columbia Journalism Review

Timothy B. Lee / Vox:

How experiments with online services in '80s led newspapers to believe the web wasn't a serious threat in the '90s — Newspapers weren't late to online news — they were way too early — When a new technology is invented, there's often a lot of doubt about its utility.

Discussion: @mattyglesias and @ruthoutspoken