Mariotti Quits Sun-Times, Newspaper Biz

Ink-and-paper set, losing touch with their cities and teams, jump for electronic havens

(NEWSER) - Sports columnists are leaving behind their local teams and newspaper readership in droves for the greener pastures of the online and television worlds, and it's "something to be lamented," writes Robert Weintraub in the Columbia Journalism Review. “The gifted sports columnists often delivered the best writing in the entire paper,” serving as an insightful cheerleader or investigative instrument of a city’s frustration. More»

Sarah Phillips' real identity was questioned

(NEWSER) - ESPN has fired a writer who went from being a poster on the message boards at gambling site Covers.com to being a star columnist at ESPN.com without anybody checking her real identity. Sarah Phillips was sacked soon after Deadspin ran a lengthy expose questioning her identity and accusing her of involvement in a fraud and extortion scheme involving social media. Phillips, who said she was a 22-year-old West Coast university student and a hardcore gambler, never met anybody at ESPN in person and used photographs of several different people to accompany her writings at Covers. More»

Newspaper lays groundwork for reinstituting paywall

(NEWSER) - Two-plus years after making its entire website free, the New York Times is about to roll out a plan that will charge readers for online access. The announcement may come within 2 weeks, but the pay wall won't be in force for several months, New York magazine reports. Rather than charging for everything or for predetermined categories of content, the paper will use a "metered" system similar to the one the Financial Times employs, allowing free access to a certain number of articles before requiring payment. More»

Corporate interests, internet advertising crippling industry

(NEWSER) - The media's troubles mean that "this country is in trouble," writes Dan Rather, and no academic study or think-tank report is going to save the industry. We need no less than a “nonpartisan, blue-ribbon” presidential commission “to address the perilous state of America’s news media,” and make recommendations as to how to fix it, he suggests in a Washington Post op-ed. More»

(NEWSER) - Ben Stein has been booted from his job as a New York Times columnist for shilling for an online credit report service, Gawker reports. Stein touts the value of FreeScore.com in television commercials, but the Times’ ethics policy states “it is an inherent conflict for a journalist to perform public relations work, paid or unpaid.” More»