A website called WikiLeaks just published secret documents related to the United States’ war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The documents detail deals, armed conflicts, strategies, politics, intelligence operations and some casualties from 2004 and 2010, painting the most complete publicly available picture of the Afghan War yet. The event is in some ways comparable to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, a set of documents that provided... 

Allure magazine has partnered with Microsoft Tag for its annual Free Stuff issue this August, allowing readers to use their smartphones to participate in $725,000 worth of beauty product giveaways, which are awarded on a first-come, first-win basis. In years past, readers could log on to Allure’s website to enter the contests and sign up for text alert reminders. This year, however, the promotion is moving to smartphones. To take part... 

Well-known Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami is releasing his next novel, A Singing Whale , directly to iPad owners via Apple Japan’s App Store, circumventing his traditional publisher in the process. According to The Wall Street Journal , Murakami is working with a software company to release the novel alongside video content and music by Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Pending App Store approval, A Singing Whale will be... 

Twitter has a two-pronged approach to give media companies the ability to create dynamic interfaces that filter and curate tweets in new ways. One is to showcase great examples of Twitter implementations on its Twitter Media blog , and the other is to give media companies the resources to do these types of projects on their own. I spoke this week with Twitter’s …  Read More →

Last night, Reuters released their social media policy , which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter. The strict instruction makes it clear that even though news continually breaks on Twitter first — especially in disaster scenarios — Reuters journalists are to break their stories first via the wire and not on Twitter.... 

When it comes to competition, CNN president Jon Klein fears Facebook. The man at the top of the news network believes that the social network is more of a threat to his business than other broadcast media organizations. In a recent question-and-answer session with BusinessWeek, Klein specifically states , “We want to be the most trusted source,” and, “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus... 

In December Google launched the Living Stories Google Labs project (in conjunction with The New York Times and The Washington Post) to experiment with the format of online news delivery. Today, Google is open-sourcing the technology and making it available to all publishers. As it stands, Living Stories presents topic-based news, with stories bundled together in one living entity that dynamically updates as more news is published on a topic.... 

Travel website Kayak has a hidden easter egg reference to ABC’s TV drama Lost . Search Kayak for flights from Sydney’s SYD airport to Los Angeles’s LAX and you’ll see that Oceanic Flight 815 — the very one that crashed on the mysterious island in the first episode of Lost — is one of your options. That’s exciting if you’re looking to get stranded on a desert island dotted with smoke monsters, apparitions,... 

The venture that some have been calling a “ Hulu for magazines ” is now official (although it still has no name). This morning, publishers Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc announced that they’re going to “develop open standards for a new digital storefront and related technology that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media content on portable digital devices.” In layman’s terms, that means the... 

Maria Schneider left mainstream publishing behind last year to start Editor Unleashed , a site covering writing, publishing and social media. Share tips and advice for startup journalists here . Downsizing, layoffs, newspaper and magazine closings have put journalism on the most endangered careers list. But hundreds of smart journalists are realizing the opportunity and using their connections, reporting savvy and deep knowledge of their subjects... 

Although it’s yet to earn any significant revenue, Twitter is about to get a major infusion of cash. According to The Wall Street Journal , the microblogging service is about to close a deal for $100 million in new venture capital from multiple investors that will value the company at $1 billion. At the billion dollar mark, Twitter has nearly quadrupled its valuation since early this year, when it raised $35 million in capital. How did Twitter’s... 

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, the US Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in 1978. This act changed the legal ownership of official records from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) from private to public and mandated that these records be filed with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Although policies and procedures have been in place for years for preserving and archiving paper and electronic... 

Fresh off the news that Google is buying reCAPTCHA , another major acquisition rumor has emerged. According to a tweet from Mark Glaser, Executive Editor of PBS MediaShift, “Brightcove in talks with Google about buyout in $500m to $700m range.” Brightcove , for those unfamiliar, is essentially the YouTube of b2b video, powering video streaming on massive sites like AOL, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Such a deal would give... 

This news might actually sway some of the executives left who still fear the use of social media for business. Research from Penn State found that a full twenty percent of tweets mention specific brand names or products  Read More →

Leah Betancourt is the digital community manager at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, Minn.  Read More →