Sent by a reader: "From today's Newport News (Va.) Daily Press -- a weird reference to Afghanistan's Wardak province was inserted into a local weather story by the Tribune/LA Times copy desk in Chicago."

The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's conservative version of Huffington Post, is at the center of a media controversy. And loving it.

In November, the Caller published a story based on two anonymous Dominican women claiming that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had paid them for sex.

ABC News says it received similar information at the same time, as Republican operatives organized interviews with those two women, plus a third woman the Caller did not talk to, all of whom said the senator paid them for sex. But ABC News didn't run with the story, because "none of the women could produce identity cards with their names, and they all provided the same story almost word for word, as if they had been coached."

After the Caller's story was published, things started to unravel. (more...)

The fruit slice was supposed to represent a "G":

Oh, this is just unfortunate. Regrettable layout in today's Mankato Free Press. twitpic.com/c8xlll

— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) March 5, 2013

Nate Thayer | James Bennet Editor-in-Chief James Bennet would like you to know this recent dustup -- over asking a freelancer to provide free Web content -- isn't how The Atlantic normally operates.

Freelance writer Nate Thayer posted to his blog Monday an email exchange between himself and an Atlantic editor, who wanted to see if Thayer would "repurpose" a recent article into a shorter version for the Atlantic website. For free.

Atlantic editor Olga Khazan wrote, in part: "We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month. ... I am out of freelance money right now, I enjoyed your post, and I thought you’d be willing to summarize it for posting for a wider audience without doing any additional legwork. Some journalists use our platform as a way to gain more exposure."

Thayer stridently refused: "I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts. ... Frankly, I will refrain from being insulted and am perplexed how one can expect to try to retain quality professional services without compensating for them." (more...)

Paywall software provider Press+ released new data today about the more than 400 publishers who use its service to charge for digital content. (Poynter uses Press+ to solicit donations.) Overall, publishers are gradually squeezing readers with higher digital subscription prices and fewer free articles per month. Infographics below, provided by Press+, show the trends. Earlier data from the company showed that sites producing more content made more money from digital subscriptions. (more...)

Globe and Mail
Canada's largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, is the latest to reduce costs by laying off copy editors and outsourcing their work for a fraction of the expense.

The Star will outsource page design and copy editing to Pagemasters North America, Globe and Mail media reporter Steve Ladurantaye reports. The cost savings come from efficient centralized production, but also lower pay for editors. "The top union rate for an editor at Pagemasters is $48,000," Ladurantaye reports, "while the same job at the Star comes with an annual salary closer to $85,000."

Pagemasters North America is owned by The Canadian Press news wire, of which the Star's parent company Torstar Corp. is a co-owner. News & Tech reported in 2009 that the Star was in discussions to begin a small amount of outsourcing to Pagemasters North America, but did not. Other major Canadian newspapers including The Globe and Mail, do the same. And other branches of Pagemasters serve newspapers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. (more...)