Journalizm

Former People's Court analyst Harvey Levin stopped by Columbia Journalism School to tell the students how proud he was that dying newspapers credited his website, TMZ.com, with being the first to report singer Michael Jackson had died and then thanked Britany Spears and her many breakdowns for making the future of journalism profitable. He let the students show their appreciation by handing him copies of their resumes.

TMZ's not so awesome scoop

TMZ got a lot of attention for being the first to report Michael Jackson had died, but I still waited for the Los Angeles Times to post something before I was completely sure of the story. Why? From yesterday's LA Observed:

TMZ threw its supposed standards out the window and mistakenly "confirmed" the death of mixed martial arts fighter Kim "Kimo" Leopoldo — based on web chatter. He's alive and well.

A couple other outlets posted the bad information, but TMZ seems to have simply covered over the mistake by redirecting the link that went to the false story.

Anti-pop news break

Despite what it looks like on television and news websites right now, the world is full of other newsworthy happenings. Iran, for instance. Listen to Borzou Daragahi, Reza Aslan, Juan Cole and Dion Nissenbaum discuss the growing political and religious divide inside Iran and world reaction on today's "To The Point."

Pop goes the news

Iran led the media coverage last week, according to a study done by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, but the death of Michael Jackson came in a fast second - and almost certainly will take the top spot for this week:

For the week, the protests in Iran ended up being the biggest story, totaling 19% of the newshole studied during June 22-28 by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Though he died Thursday night, Michael Jackson’s death was nearly as big, filling 18%, and Governor Sanford’s story, which fully broke on Wednesday, was third at 11%.

Cable television went nuts with the Jackson story and ignored almost everything else:

All media sectors covered Jackson heavily, but it was cable news channels that led the way. Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop. On the front pages of Friday morning newspapers, 37% of their coverage was Jackson-related compared to 55% of the leading online coverage.

The social networks were all atwitter with Jackson as well:

So many Google users searched for information about the dead singer that the popular search engine mistook the interest as a potential malware attack. For a short period of time, Google users were greeted with a message that read, “We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.”

The popular communication site Twitter crashed, and Wikipedia experienced more than 500 edits to Jackson’s profile in less than 24 hours. AOL’s popular instant messenger service went down for approximately 40 minutes and the company released a statement that read, “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

Four today

1. The head of Wikipedia agreed to suppress information about the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde by Taliban mercenaries. NYT

2. In the old days, non-staffers hired on an interim basis to produce news stories were called freelancers. Now we call them "citizen" journalists so that we can pay them even less. Live Citizen is the latest to get into the act. The start-up is advertising for freelancers, er, citizens to produce do-it-yourself newscasts - up to five a week - for the site. Live Citizen will pay a fee per story on rotating three-month contracts. The only requirement is that stories be "relevant and intriguing." Berkeley's J-Jobs

3. The sluggish performance of some online news shortly after news of Michael Jackson's death has some scratching their heads about whether the Internet can handle the traffic when big, breaking stories hit (whether you consider Jackson's death big, breaking news is another debate). A new study says third-party advertising on websites, not internal content, may be to blame. Data Center Knowledge

4. YouTube is teaching people how to be reporters. YouTube Reporters' Center

Four in the evening

1. Russia and Nigeria launch what is perhaps the most poorly named business venture in history. BBC (via TPM)

2. Jill Stewart launches another volley at Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey in response to his critical column about the LA Weekly editor. Once again, she cites awards at the LA Press Club as evidence that she's on the right track. LAT

3. Ann Arbor is about to lose its only daily newspaper. Poynter

4. Scott Martelle on Michael Jackson, Marshal McLuhan and the evolution of new media. Scott Martelle

Jackson's death and the LA Times*, **

The Los Angles Times website must have seen a spike in traffic like never before as people from around the world search online for news of Michael Jackson's sudden death this afternoon. At one point, I clicked on the home page and found that the top story had reverted back to news that Jackson was hospitalized, even though the paper had already put up a story confirming that he had died. Right now I'm only getting error pages when I try to log onto the site.

*Updated: Deleted my cache and cookies and now the page seems to be loading correctly.

**Updated, 6/26: LA Observed has the memo from executive editor Meredith Artley laying out the numbers. Looks like 12 million page views yesterday.