Mediagazer: Let's break up this information cartel (Heather Brooke/Guardian)

11:05 AM ET, July 16, 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.

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: On Media's Blog, Guardian, Salon, USA Today, TheStreet.com, The Raw Story, NPR, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post and Bloomberg

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: Gawker, Mediaite, Future of Journalism, Company Town, The Daily Dish, The Daily What, Media Matters for America, The Huffington Post, The Nation, Adweek, On Media's Blog and Erik Wemple

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

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

Discussion: Financial Times, New York Post and Associated Press

The Daily Beast:
Murdoch Scandal Roils WSJ

Discussion: paidContent, Forbes.com, Guardian, Economist, Gothamist, AdAge, Poynter and Hillicon Valley

Jane Martinson / Guardian:
Tom Mockridge: profile of News International's new chief executive

Discussion: Forbes.com, The First Post, mediabistro.com and New York Times

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

What media companies can learn from the book industry — We've written a lot at GigaOM about the evolution of — and disruption of — the book-publishing industry, from the rise of self-publishing phenomenons like Amanda Hocking to the launch of new e-book ventures like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's new Pottermore site.

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

Heather Brooke / Guardian:

Let's break up this information cartel — Britain's cosy, corrupt power elite has been fostered by a black-market trade in data — Nick Clegg was right to acknowledge on Wednesday that phone hacking is the symptom of a wider problem: the cosy, corrupt relationship between the power elites.

Nosheen Iqbal / The Independent:

The long-form resurrection: Will snappy websites kill off lengthy magazine reads? — A new set of online curators that collect the best non-fiction suggests otherwise. — Last summer, the editor-in-chief of technology magazine Wired wrote and ran a cover story declaring, “The Web is Dead”.

Ilya Vedrashko / Advertising Lab:

Will Daily Deals Turn Newspapers Around? — “Groupon is Hastening the Demise of the Newspaper Industry,” wrote a daily deals trade pub in April. — It could be the other way around. — The technological barriers to the deals space are pretty low; Shoutback and Nimble Commerce …

Discussion: PSFK

hosted2.ap.org:

Belgian newspapers: Google blocking us on searches … BRUSSELS (AP) — Google blocked several Belgian newspapers from its search listings Friday in what the papers alleged was retaliation by the internet giant over a court case dealing with copyright infringement.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

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: CNET News, Poynter, Softpedia News, Digital Trends, All Facebook, Inside Facebook, VentureBeat, Future of Journalism, @mathewi, MarketingVox News & Trends and The Business Insider, 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, @andrewrsorkin, The Big Picture, MediaPost and The Wrap

Michael / Petrelis Files:

Bay Citizen, NYT Partner in SF, — Evasive on $17M Fiscal Transparency — As a news junkie, I have followed the creation of the Bay Citizen, a regional online news service that twice-weekly provides content to the New York Times' print and online Bay Area section.

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: NYConvergence.com and The Trentonian

E.B. Boyd / Fast Company:

Facebook Sponsored Stories Performing 2 Times Better Than Standard Ads — When Facebook launched a new form of advertising called “Sponsored Stories” earlier this year, some folks weren't buying the plot. The new ad unit, which takes content generated by Facebook users and turns it into ads, seemed to be crossing some kind of line.