Rolling Stone gathers few comments

New media hawks have noted that Rolling Stone magazine failed to garner the attention it deserves on its website commensurate with the media attention it received for publishing Michael Hastings's profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal - you know, the article that apparently got the hand-picked commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan fired by the man who hand-picked him.
Here's how Nieman Journalism Lab saw it:

After the piece ran, it started picking up incoming links, presumably driving tremendous traffic to the site. I checked in on the story today, exactly 24 hours later, to find that, despite the story completely dominating the news cycle — TV, blogosphere, Twitter, newspapers — only 16 comments had been posted to the story (not counting a couple dozen comments responding to those comments). When you try to view all 16, you get a 404 error message. No users had “shared” or “liked” it, according to the story’s social media meter. (Although that’s probably an error — I tried liking it and it still says zero.) In any event, that’s rough — the vast majority of the conversation is happening elsewhere.

Does the lack of comments mean the story or the publisher failed in some way? Or does it show that most readers no longer worry about checking original sources for information, choosing instead to digest the fast-food version of complex and important news reports?

Media in the media

Stephens Media, which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, suspends its 401k matches. E&P

Alan Mutter says MediaNews Group and Morris Publishing have a 72.9% chance of defaulting on their debts. Reflections of a Newsosaur

Mark Potts looks at the better online news sites. Recovering Journalist

Five Los Angeles Daily News copy editors reportedly took buyouts rather than transfer to West Covina. LA Observed

One more:

The Economist asks whether newspapers will find a home on the Kindle. Economist

Carr reads my blog

Well, no he doesn't, but he sums up more eloquently than I do the media angst of the week.

A blog, or not a blog?

Is Huffington Post a blog? Simon Owens argues that it's not, and in doing so indirectly raises a larger issue: The need to hack through the euphemisms that pretend to describe rather ordinary activities as something extraordinary because it happens on the Web.

I suggest we start by dropping the "new media" mantle when referring to our Internet-savvy hired guns and start describing more precisely what they actually do. Some things news organizations are doing online are new - and many things aren't. Defining which is which will not only save money by making us more efficient, it will save jobs.

The Fox and the Fowler

So, does what Fox did in broadcasting the Rev. Jesse Jackson's candid, if intemperate, remarks about Barack Obama put the media powerhouse in the vanguard of the new media revolution?