The New York Times will drop its paywall tonight to provide unlimited, free access as readers seek information about the massive winter storm hitting New York and the northeast.

"We're planning to drop the meter at 6 tonight & re-evaluate the situation tomorrow evening," said Vice President of Corporate Communications Eileen Murphy by email.

The Wall Street Journal is dropping its paywall as well, it says in an email:

Due to anticipated delivery disruptions because of the winter storm, The Wall Street Journal will be dropping its paywall beginning tonight at midnight through the weekend.

The Times plans to reinstate its paywall at 6 p.m. Saturday, Murphy said by email.

The WSJ and Times dropped their paywalls during Hurricane Sandy too. The Times remained free for five days due to the storm. (more...)

University of Northern Iowa | PolitiFact | The Huffington Post
Peter Dreier and Christopher R. Martin's study about the term "job killer" takes the news media to task for letting a partisan talking point slip by un-fact-checked:

The cavalier nature in which the “job killer” allegations are reported suggests that term is used loosely by those who oppose government regulations, and they can get away with it because news organizations fail to ask—or at least report – whether they have any evidence for the claims they make, and also fail to seek opposing views to counter the “job killer” claims.

Dreier and Martin write an engaging, thorough history of the term, from 1922 until its enshrinement in a Republican "framing strategy" in 1993. Since then, the academics write, it's been smooth sailing for the term, which they find has little correlation with actual unemployment. They studied its use in four news organizations -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press -- since 1984.

Some interesting tidbits emerge: The term's almost always used toward policies, usually those favored by the Democratic Party, and rarely toward individuals. Democrats and labor union officials, they note, each accounted for about 5 percent of its uses. And the term's use is higher during Democratic administrations. "In fact, the year 2011 was the biggest year yet for 'job killer' allegations," they write. "Given that Republicans and business organizations were the leading sources of 'job killer' allegations, this political explanation makes sense."

Between 1984 and 2011, the phrase “job killer” appeared in 381 stories from the four news organizations studied. "Associated Press news service had 115 stories, the New York Times 55 stories, the Wall Street Journal 151 stories, and the Washington Post 60 stories" using the phrase, according to the research.

(more...)

The Wall Street Journal
"Unfriended: The Facebook IPO Debacle" a nearly 10-minute-long video directed by indie filmmaker Naftali Beane Rutter, "marks the beginning of an effort to produce longer, more in-depth videos" at The Wall Street Journal, writes Journal deputy managing editor Alan Murray in a memo to staff. The video, set to frenetic, brassy music (some of which was also composed by Naftali Beane Rutter), tells the story of Facebook's star-crossed initial public offering through interviews with WSJ staffers like Francesco Guerrera and Chris Ling, a retail investor whose account was zeroed out after his order for Facebook stock got botched.

The Journal is expanding its video offerings, Murray writes, including a weekly political show, and its WSJ Live service is coming to Xbox. Last September, analyst Ken Doctor wrote about WSJ Live, a high-CPM, "internal aggregation," free product. "If you run a broadcast company, WSJ Live should send a chill down your spine," Doctor wrote. "How did these print guys do moving pictures better than us?"

The New York Times, another newspaper serving New York City, recently placed its videos on Hulu, a potential second home for its long-form videos. And the Huffington Post is planning a live-streaming television network, HuffPost Live, which will reportedly launch in July. Murray's memo and the Facebook video appear after the jump. (more...)

Forbes
Jeff Bercovici uses WikiLeaks' announcement that it has halted operations until it can raise some cash to check in on efforts to create anonymous document submission systems at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both are "stuck in neutral," he writes. Journal reporters, meanwhile, "are skeptical that anonymous file submissions will ever reliably yield the kind of rich information that comes from carefully cultivated sources. 'Whether the Journal was ever going to get a cache of WikiLeaks-type documents — I don’t know whether that was ever going to happen,' says one." || Earlier: The Journal launches its SafeHouse system, but it's criticized for security flaws

The New York Times
Jeremy Peters reports on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and infighting between News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and his son James, whose succession is much less certain after the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Peters writes that James Murdoch wasn't viewed as the child most likely to take over his father's media empire and that he's butted heads with his father as he has risen through the company. "Their disagreements, which were described in detail by more than half a dozen former and current company officials and others close to the Murdochs, stemmed in large part from the clashing visions of a young technocratic student of modern management and a traditionalist who rules by instinct and conviction." || Related: Along with former Dow Jones & Co. CEO Les Hinton, current Dow Jones CEO Todd Larsen was notified last year about a plan to inflate The Wall Street Journal Europe's circulation, according to the former circulation manager who notified management. (Bloomberg News) | This company is different: If this were any other company, the board would have called for the CEO to resign, but this isn't any company, and this isn't any CEO. (NPR) | Critic becomes stakeholder: Tom Watson, a U.K. member of Parliament, has bought shares of News Corp. and will try to speak at Friday's annual meeting

Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulations
Responding to one of our posts about The Wall Street Journal Europe's use of bulk sales to, well, bulk up its circulation, a commenter questioned whether The Wall Street Journal Asia employs a similar strategy. Apparently so. Heavily discounted copies account for about the same share of circulation for both editions of the Journal. For the first half of 2011, The Wall Street Journal Asia reported an average circulation of 69,932, of which 43,585 — or 62 percent — was bulk sales. For the Europe edition, that figure is about 61 percent. The circulation reports indicate that the Asia Journal has increased its bulk sales as its overall circulation has fallen in the past couple of years. And when I say "heavily discounted," I mean heavily discounted: About 40 percent of the bulk sales of the Asian edition cost less than 5 percent of the cover price. So if the cover price were $2.30 US, as it was in 2010, then half of the bulk sales would have been for a price of 12 cents per issue. || Related: Frédéric Filloux says the "ecosystem of cheating" in print circulation has its counterpart on the Web | Three UK papers "are still hooked on the bulk sales drug," including The Independent: about 43 percent of its total circulation is bulk sales (paidContent.org) || Earlier: Like WSJ Europe, some US papers rely on deeply-discounted circulation (Poynter.org)