On Thursday, conservative undercover journalist James O’Keefe released the second installment of his “To Catch A Journalist” series, a takeoff on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” sting aimed at discrediting mainstream journalists. His first swing, at Sam Stein, missed badly, and his second attempt, aimed at NYU Prof. Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky, brings the count to 2 and 0. Prof. Rosen, however, responded to O’Keefe’s attack with some revealing information about O’Keefe’s “investigation.”

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front. No one doesn’t have an opinion on things they know something about. I may have no opinion on who the best NASCAR driver is (and I don’t) but that would certainly change if I started paying attention to the sport. Coming in to last month, [...]

As the controversy over Dave Weigel’s resignation from the Washington Post unfolds, the people at the center of the Weigel storm are Betsy Rothstein and Matt Dornic, two media bloggers for Mediabistro’s FishbowlDC who launched the beginning of Weigel’s end.

Traditionally, trust in the news media was established through good work – work that was also right. But distrust in the press grows when traditional journalistic values are forgotten. Right now, people mistrust the press a whole lot – but fact-checking might be the way to win that trust back.

Earlier this month, Gothamist founder Jake Dobkin went nuclear on the New York Times for its lack of innovation and abominable failure in the Metro space, calling Cityroom “a fairly lazy and sleep-inducing ripoff of Gothamist.”

How ironic, then, that just yesterday, the Times announced that it has partnered with NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to create The Local: East Village, a hyperlocal blog that will be produced by NYU and published on the Times’ site. It’s like they could tell the future!

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies. The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. See the full list after the jump:

David Carr’s latest New York Times column, “Reality TV’s Glare Hits High Office,” has more zingers than Obama has photo ops, as he suggests the president scale back on the “oversharing.” The White House-crashing Salahis are after reality TV fame, but the Obamas have it locked down. But in his criticism of the “Celebrity in Chief,” isn’t he forgetting an important player — namely the press club he’s a valuable member of?

I use Twitter a lot, but I was not among the very first to see the new Lists feature. I can now, though. And what I find much more interesting than actually using the feature myself is the fact that I woke up this morning to find that I was on dozens of other people’s [...]

Yesterday afternoon, Talking Points Memo ran a story about the White House’s reaction to discussion of an opt-out clause in the Senate’s health care bill. But Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab noticed that TPM was taking an unusual amount of criticism for the story’s use of anonymous sources.

The Huffington Post, which currently profits off of the blood, sweat, and tears of its many hapless unpaid contributors (j/k), has hit upon a new way to involve its readers in the creative process: crowdsourcing headlines through Twitter.

Who: Maegan Carberry, Jon Fine, Matt Romanoski, Jay Rosen, Rachel Sklar What: MediaBistro’s “Finding a Business Model for News & Online Media,” at Comix When: July 16, 2009 Thumbs: Up

Who: Jay Rosen, Stephen Shepard, C.W. Anderson What: Gelf Magazine Media Circus “What’s Next For J-School?” Where: JLA Studios Art Gallery When: July 9, 2009 Thumbs: Down