After a false rumour spread on Twitter about Piers Morgan having been suspended from CNN because of phone-hacking connections, many commentators weighed in on whether reporters should tweet unconfirmed rumours. Reuter's Felix Salmon thought that individual journalists should be allowed to treat Twitter as a virtual newsroom, and to share rumours with their contacts; American Journalism Review disagreed.

The Economist launched an iPhone app version of its World in Figures book series. MinOnline reviewed the app, saying that its interface succeeded in providing different ways of accessing the trove of information about 190 countries. However, the app's search function could be more flexible, it said.

GigaOm reported on a new study that, among other topics, looked into at what time of the day people use mobile apps. The most popular times are the late afternoon (4pm to 6pm) and the evening (9pm to 11pm), according to the study. However, users are most engaged with ads within apps in the morning, from 8am to 11am.

Sports Illustrated has dared to tread where few other publications would; as part of its all-access subscription strategy, it has decided to design multiple digital editions of its magazine for various different tablet computers every week, reports Mashable.com.

This, as any digital editor will tell you, is a true design feat.

Why are they bothering? The editor of Sports Illustrated explained to Mashable: "We're placing bets across the table, because we don't know where we're going to be in 18 months. But [other tablet platforms] are going to grow".

It seems that Sports Illustrated has attempted to spread-bet the tablet market, whereas other major publishers have chosen to do otherwise. Will the extra hard work pay off? Only time will tell.

Source: Mashable.com

This year the Knight-Batten prize for innovation in journalism went to Storify. Editors Weblog has been keeping a close eye on the rise of such multimedia story telling tools and watching Storify develop as a storytelling medium in action.

Quoting judge Amy Webb in the official press release, The Knight Foundation blog today reported "In Storify, we see a journalism tool that truly solves a newsroom problem and also inspires others to challenge the way they've been telling stories."

The regional not-for-profit Texas Tribune received a special distinction, along with West Africa Democracy radio which provides news and current affairs for 13 African nations, online community organizer Andy Carvin, and the website Bloomberg Government.

Notably, The Guardian Data Store was one of the only projects by a major print-published National Newspaper to receive any credit, coming away with an honorable mention.

Every journalist knows that language is the key their craft. However, it is so often too easy to get caught in the inertia of producing story after story and forget that sometimes it is necessary to go back to basics and examine the building blocks of any story: words.

Editor and Publisher reported that The New York Times has offended the families of some murder victims through injudicious use of language which they feel degrades their departed relatives.

A suspected serial killer recently murdered a series of women in the state of New York. The murderer's modus operandi involved finding women who advertised as escorts on the website Craigslist and then taking their lives.

There is an increasing number of new news outfits that depend greatly on the support of their communities. It is thus not surprising that many are turning into ways of engaging with their audience directly through community events. Such happenings aren't only a way to create closer ties with readers - they can also serve as an additional revenue source.

Nieman Journalism Lab reported on such efforts at The Texas Tribune. The Tribune has already hosted over 60 events, and in September it will put on a festival, presenting "debate, discussion and dialogue" on subjects that affect people in Texas. Evan Smith, The Tribune's chief editor and executive, said that such events are not only about journalism - although that is an important aspect of them as well - but they are also a way to produce revenue, from sold tickets and sponsorships.

News & Tech reported on The Honolulu Star-Advertiser's recent decision to start charging for its website's content. As from 3rd August, the newspaper will charge $19,95 a month for both digital and print access, and it has yet to decide the price of digital subscription. The paper will also launch a new digital edition for the iPad, iPhone and ereaders.

Flipboard, an app that turns Twitter and Facebook feeds into an app-like reading experience, is introducing advertising: the company is launching a partnership with publishers such as Conde Nast to push their ads into the Flipboard app, GigaOm reported. Selected brands will appear in full-page ads as part of publishers' content.

According to paidContent's calculations, the revenue of Mail Online, the second most visited newspaper site in the world, are growing, but not as fast as its audience numbers are. Mail Online and Metro.co.uk are making 51 percent more revenue than last year, but over the same period, Mail Online's monthly unique users went up 82 percent.

When BBC reporter Laura Kuenssberg changed jobs from chief political correspondent for the BBC to the business editor of ITV, she changed her Twitter account to match her new job title. The change would have been a routine usage of social media, if it had not been for one thing - she took her 60,000 followers to the new account.

The situation poses interesting questions about content ownership, social media, and brand journalism. On a professional account, content must conform to the organisation's social media policy. However, Poynter explained that the question of what to do with an account after the journalist leaves has not yet been directly addressed in these guides.

In an industry without many top women editors, the news that Georgina Henry will be taking over digital operations at the Guardian may be a small sign of a changing newspaper culture.

According to The Guardian, Henry will be responsible for all aspects of the Guardian.co.uk except news. She is no stranger to the publication, as she is coming from her spot as the head of culture at The Guardian and Observer. In 2008, she helped revamp the "Comment is Free" section of the website.

Her predecessor, Janine Gibson, will be moving to head the Guardian's digital operation in the U.S. She will lead a team based in New York. Earlier estimates stated that the newspaper hoped to have the U.S. site up and running by September.

Reporting a tragedy of any magnitude is a test of any journalist or news organisation. Unfortunately, recent days have produced a string of grievous events which pose great challenges to journalists who are traditionally tasked with informing the public.

However, as everyone knows, the dynamic in the newsroom has changed. The audience can now inform journalists, who then distribute information more widely, informing a wider audience in their turn. This process of audience participation in generating news widely occurs through social media. The death of singer Amy Winehouse and the recent bombings and shooting in Norway have both been the subject of vast discussion via social media.

How should journalists respond to this mass of information and turn it into a story? As previously reported, the website Storify is one method via which journalists can collate and create a narrative, gathering information from several sources. In essence, this website provides a means of editing, or rather curating, information gathered from sites like Facebook, Flickr and particularly, from Twitter. This kind of collection of participatory social media is often referred to as 'crowd sourcing'.

The storm around News Corp. shows no signs of subsiding. After Tuesday's parliamentary hearing, James Murdoch has been accused of misleading MPs, The Guardian reported. If true, this greatly undermines the corporation's assurances of transparency, the paper noted. Moreover, the corporation could soon be in crisis in America as well, as the US Justice Department is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into the corporation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In Ecuador, three executives and a former columnist of El Universo were sentenced to three years in prison for libelling President Rafael Correa. They were also fined a total of $30 million, and the newspaper was given an additional $10 million fine. According to the BBC, press freedom groups have criticised the case as part of an effort to muzzle the Ecuadorean media.

The New York Times Company, the publisher of the New York Times, released its results for the second quarter of 2011 yesterday. It announced overall operating losses of $114.1 million in the quarter, compared with operating profit of $60.8 in the same period of 2010. The company blamed "deprecation, amortization, severance" and other special items without which it would have posted an operating profit of $82.9 million.

As the Times launched its digital subscriptions in March, the announcement's details relating to the newspaper's paywall were particularly interesting. The Times ended the second quarter with 281,000 digital subscribers. Of those, 224,000 were subscribers to the newspaper's digital subscription packages, the remaining 57,000 being paid digital subscribers to e-readers and replica editions.

Overall, the company's revenues went down 2.2 percent. Advertising revenues declined 4.0 percent, but digital advertising revenues actually rose 2.6 percent, partially offsetting a 6.4 percent decrease in print advertising.