Mediagazer: Phone, Internet, TV ... And Gas? (Michael Kanellos/Epicenter)

6:45 AM ET, January 31, 2011

Top 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: The Firewall, kateoplis, TechCrunch, The Nation, The Huffington Post and New York Times, more at Techmeme »

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

WikiLeaks: The Guardian's role in the biggest leak in the history of the world — In an extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's war on secrecy, the Guardian's editor-in-chief explains why Assange remains such an important figure - and why the story is destined to run and run

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, SAI, TeleRead and parislemon, more at Techmeme »

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: The Huffington Post, Online Journalism Review and Boing Boing

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Anonymous on TV, Al Jazeera reporters still tweeting — The Egyptian government closed Al Jazeera's Cairo bureau early Sunday, pulled its reporters credentials and blocked the network's TV signal in Egypt, the network said. “Our staff has packed up our entire office in the downtown bureau and has relocated …

Discussion: Multichannel and Aljazeera

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

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

Nicholas Jackson / The Atlantic Online:

Is Gawker Planning to Force You to Watch Embedded Advertisements? — I was playing around on Gawker's beta test site just now and came across something a little jarring. (Yes, this is how I spend my Sunday evenings when there isn't a football game to tune in to.)

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 …

Michael Kanellos / Epicenter:

Phone, Internet, TV ... And Gas? — In Australia and a few other locations, some communications carriers have begun to experiment with bundling utility services into their cellular and cable TV packages. — The idea is both simple and radical at the same time.

David Carr / New York Times:

A Mistake to Write Off the Weinsteins — Remember the benevolent Bruce Willis character in “The Sixth Sense” who wandered through the whole movie not knowing he was dead? That was Harvey Weinstein, except for the benevolent part. — Since forming the Weinstein Company with his brother …

Discussion: Thompson on Hollywood

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.

Jennifer Preston / New York Times:

Pepsi Bets on Local Grants, Not the Super Bowl — What's better than reaching more than 100 million viewers during last year's Super Bowl? For Pepsi, it could be 6,000 football fans during a high school game on Friday night in central Texas. Or a group of parents who wanted a new playground in their Las Vegas neighborhood.