wikinypost

The Lookout has a good run-down of recent coverage of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. But Assange also offered his own thoughts on the media during an interview with Time managing editor Rick Stengel.

As Assange recounts, WikiLeaks worked with major news outlets for this year's three "megaleaks" — Afghanistan, Iraq, and State Dept cables — and received lots of coverage as a result. However, Assange said that he once expected bloggers and social-media users to follow up on the documents his organization put online before opting for the current media strategy. From the Time interview transcript:

patersonmedai

South Carolina political reporter John O'Connor had a smart idea last year: File a Freedom of Information Act request for emails between reporters and press secretaries and see how TV bookings and exclusive interviews actually happen. O'Connor's request  brought in a trove of emails showing big-time journalists and producers jostling for a chance to interview Governor Mark Sanford after he returned from Argentina (a.k.a. The Appalacian Trail).

Other reporters have done the same. Both Gawker's John Cook and Columbia Journalism Review's Clinton Hendler have long been fighting to get emails between press staffers of former Governor David Paterson and reporters, and they were finally successful on Friday.  There may not be a bombshell in the latest trove, but the Paterson emails published Wednesday by Gawker and CJR do offer an inside look at the push-and-pull between flacks and hacks when a scandalous story is expected to break.

(Photo of David Paterson and reporters in June 2010: AP/

AP070118021644What would a discussion with top New York Times executives be without at least one underhanded swipe at Rupert Murdoch's publishing ventures?

A reporter at Reuters' 2010 Global Media Summit Tuesday asked Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson whether her news organization might consider launching a newspaper for tablets, similar to the one Murdoch's News Corp is preparing to debut, The Daily.

"We have a superior daily," Robinson sniffed. "We call it the New York Times."

Meanwhile, as Reuters media writer Jennifer Saba reports, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. got a bit defensive over a reference to Murdoch's Times of London, whose online readership has plummeted 90 percent since the paper introduced its paywall in May. The New York Times is scheduled to introduce a metered online pay model in January--but Times officials say it will be a blogger-friendly system that will allow readers to view a certain number of articles before the paper makes them pony up for more.

"Please don't compare