Mediagazer: John Paton's Big Bet (Lauren Kirchner/CJR)

5:00 PM ET, July 15, 2011

Top News:

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton Stepping Down — Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton is leaving the company in the wake of the PhoneGate hacking scandal. Hinton is the second high-ranking News Corp. executive to step down today, and the first major figure from the company's American operations.

Discussion: Mixed Media, Adweek, New York Magazine, Reuters, AdAge, Media Decoder, The Wire, Media Week, Forbes.com, Wall Street Journal, Company Town, FoxBusiness.com, @davecbenoit and @drosetimes

Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:

Rebekah Brooks Quits as News International Chief in Phone-Hacking Scandal — Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive officer of News Corp. (NWS)'s News International U.K. publishing unit, has stepped down amid a phone-hacking scandal that resulted in the closure of the News of the World tabloid she once edited.

Guardian:

Rebekah Brooks's resignation letter — How News International's chief executive informed staff she was stepping down — Rebekah Brooks resigns over phone-hacking scandal — At News International we pride ourselves on setting the news agenda for the right reasons. Today we are leading the news for the wrong ones.

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Dow Jones CEO Hinton to Resign — Les Hinton, who headed News Corp.'s News International unit when the phone-hacking allegations roiling the media empire first arose, on Friday will resign his post as chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., according to a person familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Guardian, TheStreet.com, NPR and The Raw Story

The Daily Beast:

Murdoch Scandal Roils WSJ — Faced with sleazy corporate cousins, reporters at the august Wall Street Journal are grappling with how to cover their boss's scandal—and their own survival. By Nick Summers. — On Tuesday, July 5, bureau chiefs and editors at The Wall Street Journal dialed …

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter, Future of Journalism, http://www.Stinkyjournalism …, Hillicon Valley, Company Town and Erik Wemple

Telegraph:

Phone hacking: Rebekah Brooks resignation statement — Rebekah Brooks has resigned as chief executive of News International following the phone hacking scandal. Here is the internal memo that was sent to NI staff: — Rebekah Brooks resigns in wake of NOTW phone-hacking scandal

Discussion: Washington Post, Poynter, Epicenter, AllThingsD and ShortFormBlog

Jane Martinson / Guardian:

Tom Mockridge: profile of News International's new chief executive — Rebekah Brooks's replacement started as a print journalist down under before moving to run pay-TV channel Sky Italia — Tom Mockridge started his career as a national newspaper journalist working for the chief rival to Rupert Murdoch's interests in Australia.

Discussion: Forbes.com, mediabistro.com, Adweek and Broadcasting & Cable

Wall Street / @wsj: Breaking: Les Hinton, chief executive of News Corp.'s Dow Jones & Co. unit, is to resign today. http://wsj.com

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:
Down with Murdoch: Rebekah Brooks is gone, but now it's Parliament that's in trouble

Discussion: Adweek, Media Week and Guardian

Martin Wolf / Financial Times:
Seize the chance for media reform

Discussion: blogs.ft.com

Sam Marsden / The Independent:
Murdoch to apologise in national newspapers

Discussion: Financial Times and Associated Press

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:
For Murdoch Loyalist, Another Stint in the Spotlight

Discussion: Guardian and On Media's Blog

Brian Braiker / Adweek:
The Murdoch Maelstrom Comes West

Discussion: Guardian and Ben Smith's Blog

Natasha Mohanty / Google News Blog:

Shareable Google News badges for your favorite topics — (Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog) — On Google News, the average reader of political news has read 20 articles about politics in the last six months. Where do you stand? — Starting today, in the U.S. edition of Google News …

D.M. Levine / Adweek:

CNN Keeping Mum About Piers Morgan Hacking Allegations — CNN hasn't been shy about covering the phone hacking related woes of News Corp., parent of rival news network Fox News. It's devoted more than 100 segments to the scandal, according to liberal press watchdog Media Matters.

Discussion: Mediaite, Media Matters for America, The Wire, The Wrap, On Media's Blog, TVNewser, Guy Fawkes' blog, Inside Cable News and The Huffington Post

Alex Seitz-Wald / ThinkProgress:

Fox And Friends Defends News Corp's Hacking Scandal: ‘We Should Move On’ — Fox News finally addressed their parent company's hacking scandal head on this morning, with Fox and Friends launching a comically sycophantic and pathetically inaccurate defense of News Corp. Host Steve Doocy …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Gawker, The Daily Dish, The Daily What, The Wire, On Media's Blog and Erik Wemple

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Facebook Is Getting Into the News Business — If you're a leading news brand, this guy wants to be your friend. Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife — Facebook has a war on its hands, and Mark Zuckerberg knows it. Practically overnight, Google+ has gone from a rumor to a thriving community with over 10 million members.

Discussion: Poynter and MarketingVox News & Trends, more at Techmeme »

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Andrew Ross Sorkin Joins CNBC as Co-Anchor of ‘Squawk Box’ — First on TVNewser: CNBC has hired New York Times scribe and DealBook founder Andrew Ross Sorkin to be the new co-anchor of the signature morning program “Squawk Box,” TVNewser has learned. — Sorkin, who has been a contributor on CNBC …

Discussion: Adweek, The Wire, Media Decoder, Multichannel, MediaPost, The Wrap, Broadcasting & Cable, @andrewrsorkin and The Big Picture

Lauren Kirchner / CJR:

John Paton's Big Bet — Will “Digital First” bring home the bacon? … e're no good at this," John Paton says, sitting in a midtown Manhattan conference room on a gray, rainy spring day. “ We” is the news business, and “this” is designing a viable future for it. “ We have to figure it out.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Poynter and NetNewsCheck Latest

Rafe Needleman / CNET News:

Is Reddit the new Twitter? ‘Redditor’ reports live from apt. complex turned crime scene — A standoff between New Jersey police and a man who reportedly shot another man with a rifle is being reported live on the Web. But not on Twitter, from which previous real-time incidents …

Discussion: The Trentonian and NYConvergence.com

Steve Green / VEGAS INC:

Judge: Righthaven masquerading as a company — A judge today fined newspaper copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas $5,000 for misleading a federal court about its lawsuits. — A Righthaven attorney, Shawn Mangano, said after a hearing before U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt …