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journalism.org
The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports 22% of the news links on blogs last week were about the Washington Post's story on the photo that made the BP crisis center look busier than it was. Second most popular on blogs was Gene Weingarten's column lamenting the changes to newspapers in the age of online news.

Statement sent to Romenesko from Dow Jones corporate communications senior director Ashley S. Huston

As NPR's ombudsman, [Alicia] Shepard is not in a position to know about the sourcing of articles in The Wall Street Journal. Her comments that the Journal's article was "unsourced" and "thinly sourced" are erroneous, and we were surprised that she didn't give us an opportunity to set her straight or comment before she published those strong words. The Journal's article was based on solid reporting and was appropriately sourced by people familiar with the findings of the Department of Transportations analyses. In addition, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was given the opportunity to comment on our report, but chose to decline to do so. The NHTSA has not contacted us to allege any errors in our coverage.

Wall Street Journal | MarketWatch
Washington Post Co. is balking at selling Newsweek to Avenue Capital Group amid concerns over the hedge fund's plans to partner with the publisher of the National Enquirer, report Russell Adams and Mike Spector. || Related from Jon Friedman.

True/Slant
"To be honest, I'll miss True/Slant," writes Neal Ungerleider. "The idea of matching experienced writers with a guaranteed network of advertisers and readers and a salary is a good one." || More farewells from True/Slant contributors.
> Earlier: True/Slant in for a major overhaul under Forbes Media

Village Voice | Austin Chronicle
Voice editor Tony Ortega thought Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black had accused him of giving up on the "alternative" ideal, and practicing "gotcha" journalism while ignoring the workings of government. That's wrong, Black responded in the Voice comments. "Well, you're no fun, Louis," said Ortega. "I thought we'd get several more rounds out of this."

Los Angeles Times | Twitter.com
"I'll definitely do it," Shirley Sherrod said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego. || Politico.com: Andrew Breitbart didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. || Read tweets from the NABJ convention.
> Alterman on journalism's "Age of Shame"

Nieman Journalism Lab
Texas Tribune's plan calls for a third of the site's funding to come from memberships, aiming toward a goal of 10,000 members, reports Ken Doctor. MinnPost says it has signed up more than 2,000 members in its two-and-a-half year history.

Associated Press
Also, the newspaper chain says advertising trends are improving. Second quarter revenue fell 6 percent to $342 million from $365.3 million. Advertising revenue declined 8.2 percent, compared with an 11.2 percent decline in the first quarter and a 20.5 percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2009. || Read the release.

PBS.org
PBS "Need to Know" executive producer Shelley Lewis asks critics of Andy Borowitz's segment: "Is a little joking about Ms. Palin's penchant for malaprops really such a big deal?" PBS ombud Michael Getler doesn't think it is. || Watch the segment and read over 600 comments about it.

Washington Post
"Without more investigation [by mainstream media reporters], more work, more journalism, these [WikiLeaks] documents just don't matter that much," writes Anne Applebaum. || Washington Post: FBI and DOJ work with the military to identify WikiLeaks' source.

American Society of News Editors release

A small group of online-only news organizations appears to have more diverse newsrooms than the nation's traditional daily newspapers, according to a special census by the American Society of News Editors.

About one of every five full-time journalists employed by the 27 sites that responded voluntarily to the ASNE questionnaire was a journalist of color, compared to about one of every seven in the annual ASNE census of newsrooms that publish a daily newspaper. Two of every five staffers at the online-only sites were women, compared to about one of every three in the newspaper newsrooms.

ASNE released a survey of online-only news sites in April, along with its annual survey of traditional newsrooms, but subsequently dismissed those findings as an inadequate effort because only 28 sites were identified and just seven responded. This second effort at surveying online-only newsrooms used more precise qualifying standards and was aided by others in the online industry who identified more sites to include.

Questionnaires were sent to 58 sites, and 27, or 47 percent, responded. (The results of the survey are listed at the bottom of this release.) This small sample means the results of the survey may not be indicative of online-only news organizations as a group. The universe of online-only newsrooms is still taking shape.

This is in contrast to the ASNE daily newspaper survey, which has a 65 percent response rate among the more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the U.S. ASNE has taken that survey since 1978.

"We're grateful to those who pressed us on the importance of this new effort and helped us do it better. But this is still just a first step -- an important one, but a first step," said ASNE president Milton Coleman, senior editor at The Washington Post. "As this type of newswork evolves, so will our efforts to monitor it and give information and direction to those who recognize that increasing diversity in America's newsrooms and news reports is essential to our profession, our business and our society."

There were some similarities between the online-only sites and daily-newspaper newsrooms.

* Most of the journalists of color among the 27 were at the eight sites that had 10 employees or more. The majority of the journalists of color in newspaper newsrooms work at newspapers that have a circulation of 100,000 or more.

* Some 465 newspapers that responded to the ASNE survey in April, nearly all of them small, reported having no minority employees, as did 11 of the sites with smaller staffs among the 59 online-only newsrooms.

The two most diverse online-only sites were among the smaller ones -- 100 percent at The Root and 75 percent at Mission Loc@l. The Root is a site that reflects black perspectives on issues of the day. Mission Loca@l covers the Mission district of San Francisco.

The survey found that online-only sites can range from news websites established to cover defined neighborhoods and run by one or two individuals who earn no money, to well-known commercial enterprises. The survey also suggests that an increasing number of people appear to be volunteering to tell their neighbors what is going on in their immediate community.

"Perhaps it's because of the recession. Perhaps it's because if you have a laptop, you now have a website," said ASNE diversity consultant Bobbi Bowman, who directed the census. "Perhaps it's because people want to find out stuff and share it. Perhaps it's like what happened as Americans moved west. Somebody always created a newspaper in town."

Some of the largest online-only websites contacted by ASNE did not return questionnaires. Among them were AOL News, The Huffington Post, Salon, Talking Points Memo and Yahoo! News.

"We encourage all online news organizations to participate in future ASNE diversity surveys to provide a more comprehensive picture of diversity in our rapidly changing industry. It's an issue of accuracy and credibility. Commitment to reflecting the total community has to be as much of our industry's standard of excellence as First Amendment principles and quality journalism," said Karen Magnuson, co-chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee and editor and vice president/News of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle.

The census packets were sent June 16 to 73 sites identified as online-only news sites. Editors who did not respond to this mailing were contacted three more times before the reporting period ended this week. During the survey ASNE discovered that 14 of the 73 originally contacted were sites run by volunteers or by schools of journalism and therefore had no full-time paid journalists. This is a defining criterion for journalists included in the ASNE surveys, which use confidential employer-provided figures to report minority percentages.

The American Society of News Editors is a membership organization for leaders of multimedia news organizations and deans and endowed chairs at accredited journalism schools. ASNE focuses on open government and the First Amendment, journalism education, leadership and diversity.

Center for Investigative Reporting/California Watch, Berkeley, Calif.
35.7% minority percentage

Crosscut Public Media, Seattle

0.0%

Factcheck.org/Annenberg Public Policy Center, Washington
16.7%

GablesHomePage, Coral Gables, Fla.
50.0%

GlobalPost, Boston
0.0%

Gotham Gazette, New York City
25.0%

Investigate West, Edmonds, Wash.
25.0%

KyPost.com, Cincinnati
0.0%

Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, Hallowell, Maine
0.0%

Mission Loc@l, San Francisco
75.0%

New West, Missoula, Mont.
0.0%

NJ (Montclair) Spotlight
0.0%

ProPublica, New York
13.3%

SeattlePI.com
27.8%

St. Louis Beacon
15.4%

Texas Watchdog, Houston
16.7%

The Bay Citizen, San Francisco
15.8%

The Center for Public Integrity, Washington
20.0%

The New Haven (Conn.) Independent
0.0%

The News Mexico Independent, Albuquerque
0.0%

The Root, Washington
100.0%

The Sacramento (Calif.) Press
60.0%

The Texas Tribune, Austin
18.2%

The Washington Independent
0.0%

Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen
0.0%

Voice of San Diego
20.0%

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Madison
0.0%

Online news organizations we did not hear from:
Annarbor.com, Dearborn, Mich.
AOL, New York
DNAinfo, New York
INDenverTimes, Denver
Investigative Voice, Baltimore
MinnPost.com, Minneapolis
NEast Philly, Philadelphia
New Jersey Newsroom, Montclair
New River Voice, Radford, Va.
Open Media Boston, Boston
Salon.com, San Francisco
San Francisco Appeal, San Francisco
SF Public Press, San Francisco
Talking Points Memo (TPM Media LLC), New York
The Big Money, New York
The B-Town Blog, Burien, Wash.
The Capital Times, Madison, Wis.
The Colorado Independent
The Connecticut Mirror, Hartford
The Daily Beast, New York
The Fayetteville (Ark.) Flyer
The Florida Independent
The Grand Avenue News, Coral Gables, Fla.
The Huffington Post, Los Angeles
The Iowa Independent, Ames
The Lens, New Orleans
The Michigan Messenger
The Minnesota Independent, Minneapolis
TucsonSentinel.com, Tucson, Ariz.
Wyofile, Lander, Wyo.
Yahoo!, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Time.com
"Some think children are so used to seeing violence in the media that the image will have little effect," writes editor Rick Stengel, "but others believe that children will find it very scary and distressing -- that they will see it ... as 'a symbol of bad things that can happen to people.'" The editor says: "I thought long and hard about whether to put this image on the cover of Time."

Chicago Reader
The music website has a no "professional cameras, no detachable lenses" rule at its festivals, but Ben Joravsky and Sam Adams note there's a sign at the entrance gate warning concertgoers that "by entering here, you consent to the use of your image in filmed reproductions of this event." Joravsky and Adams write: "In other words: we can make money off pictures of you, but you can't take pictures of us with a decent camera."

Village Voice
"Rupert Murdoch was so enthralled with the story when it ran, that he called Post editor-in-chief Col Allan to personally congratulate him on it," writes Foster Kamer. "Logic would follow, then, that Murdoch called Allan to personally deliver his rage and desire to see an axe drop."
> Hospital says NY Post wrong about suspect's new liver

Washington Post
Seven Post reporters spent Wednesday listening to people at coffeehouses and gathering information for their stories. The pieces have been posted and readers are invited to pick their favorite. The one with the most votes runs on Friday. || Earlier: The Coffeehouse Experiment explained.

Slate | Daily Beast | Democracy Now
"Leave the reader wanting more and then deliver the next day," writes Jack Shafer. "By pouring out [WikiLeaks'] material so quickly, the press caused a flash flood that has already cleared." || Daily Beast: WikiLeaks founder calls NYT "pusillanimous" and "unprofessional." || Listen to him.

NPR.org
Alicia Shepard says a Wall Street Journal reporter's story about Toyota and driver errors -- aired on "All Things Considered" -- shows why NPR should reconsider using "two-ways." "I am not a fan of using journalists from other news organizations to tell stories," she writes.

Fox Business News | Washington Post
Dunstan Prial says a provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Lawyers say given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency. || Zach Goldfarb: "It may not be time to take up arms over the latest charge by Fox Business News."

Voice of Orange County
"The Bell spectacle is what happens to communities without their own old-fashioned diligent news coverage by veteran newspaper reporters," writes Terry Francke. "The result need not be on paper, but it must be done with the community memory and professional savvy almost unique to newspaper-trained journalists with experience watching small-town politics."
> Shrunken LAT still had the resources to uncover this, but...

Poynter Online | Forbes | Neon Tommy | WSJ
It's an information broker that collects secrets and negotiates how they will be revealed. Steve Myers writes: "WikiLeaks has shifted power away from the monoliths that once determined what is news and toward the people who, before the Web, would have been stopped in the newspaper lobby before they could see a reporter." || WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (left) talks to Dirk Smillie. || He'll be chatting, too. || Related interviews with Jay Rosen and Floyd Abrams.
> The story behind the publication of WikiLeaks' war logs