Mediagazer: Pepsi Bets on Local Grants, Not the Super Bowl (Jennifer Preston/New York Times)

9:55 AM ET, January 31, 2011

Top News:

Al Jazeera camera equipment seized — Camera equipment remains seized after release of six Al Jazeera jounralist who were briefly detained in Cairo. — Six Al Jazeera English journalists, who were briefly detained in Egypt, have been released, however; their camera equipment remains confiscated by the military.

Discussion: TVNewser, Poynter, The Awl, Guardian, @nolanjazeera, @aymanm, Boing Boing, Broadcasting & Cable, Felix Salmon, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Cable companies: Add Al Jazeera English *now* — What the Gulf War was to CNN, the people's revolutions of the Middle East are to Al Jazeera English. But in the U.S., in a sad vestige of the era of Freedom Fries, hardly anyone can watch the channel on cable TV. — Cable companies: Add Al Jazeera English NOW!

Discussion: Doc Searls Weblog, Aljazeera, The Huffington Post, Inside Cable News, Online Journalism Review, Boing Boing and The Wire

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Nick Kristof turns to Facebook to report from Egypt — Yesterday afternoon, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof added an update to his Facebook page: … Five hours ago, he added another update: … He's since added two more updates to the page, describing the “giddy” mood at Tahrir Square …

Discussion: TechCrunch and The Huffington Post

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:
Anonymous on TV, Al Jazeera reporters still tweeting

Discussion: Yahoo! News, The Wire, Journalism.co.uk and Aljazeera

CBS News:

Julian Assange, The Man Behind WikiLeaks — Talks To Steve Kroft About The U.S. Attempt To Indict Him And The Criticism Aimed At Him For Publishing Classified Documents — (CBS) Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a Web site called WikiLeaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange.

Discussion: SAI, The Firewall, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, TechCrunch, The Nation, kateoplis, New York Times and The Huffington Post, more at Techmeme »

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:
WikiLeaks: The Guardian's role in the biggest leak in the history of the world

via:sdkstl

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:

Why I was wrong about Quora as a blogging service ... I must apologize to Dave Winer. He warned me about supporting services that aren't the open web and I wasn't willing to listen to him a month ago, because I was infatuated with a cool new service that lots of insiders were supporting.

Discussion: The Quora Review, TechCrunch, parislemon and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Exclusive: Ex-Gawker Guy Snyder to Head Atlantic Wire, New Manhattan Staff — Former Gawker editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder has been tapped to run The Atlantic Wire and build up a news aggregation staff in New York, as the 154-year-old magazine continues to carve out a home on the web.

Discussion: Poynter

Nick Summers / @nicksumm:
Gabriel Snyder, ex-Gawker EIC, will be the next editor of theatlanticwire.com — and hire up 15 news aggregators for new NYC staff.

Discussion: @gabrielsnyder and @annaholmes

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

iPad Mags Need A New Blueprint — Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they've just been stumbling over themselves. — They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay …

Discussion: TeleRead and VentureBeat

Bloomberg:

Sienna Miller Hack Attack May ‘Poison’ News Corp.'s BSkyB Deal — Sienna Miller's phone-hacking claims against Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid threaten to tarnish News Corp.'s reputation just as it seeks government approval for the purchase of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc.

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Ongo... where? — Ongo is an ambitious digital kiosk. Launched last week, it was founded last year by Alex Kazim, a high-tech executive who worked at Ebay, Skype and PayPal. Kazim lined up an impressive group of investors: Gannett, The New York Times, The Washington Post …

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: KIT digital Acquires KickApps, Kewego AND Kyte For $77.2 Million — TechCrunch exclusive - If you'd never heard about KIT digital before, you will after today. — The provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions has acquired not one, not two but three social software and video companies.

Discussion: paidContent, Broadcasting & Cable, MediaMemo, @rafat and GigaOM

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Political Blogs Are Ready to Flood Campaign Trail — MANCHESTER, N.H. — Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who is flirting with a bid for president, has none of the usual campaign accoutrements. No tour bus, campaign manager or yard signs. Few Americans, in fact, even know his name.

Discussion: Crikey

Evan Rudowski / paidContent:UK:

A News Corp. Digital History Lesson For The Daily — Evan Rudowski is co-founder of SubHub, a paid content platform. He was previously an online manager at Newsday and business development director at News Corp.'s iGuide. — As I watch the coverage of Rupert Murdoch's upcoming iPad publication …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

A Wolf in the Kitchen — There's not a print publisher out there who isn't grappling with the question of how digital media can save their ailing business. Not the least is Condé Nast, which has very publicly recognized that it needs to shift its business away from an overwhelming reliance on print advertising revenue.

Discussion: @rafat and @brooke

Bill Carter / New York Times:

For Leno and NBC, All's Right Again — A year after NBC upended its late-night world, order has quietly been restored: Jay Leno is back on “The Tonight Show” and topping the ratings virtually every week. — Conan O'Brien, who was displaced as host of the show, has moved to cable television …