Mediagazer: Ars Technica's OS X Lion review made $15,000+ in 24 hours on the Kindle (Courtney Boyd Myers/The Next Web)

4:05 PM ET, July 26, 2011

Top News:

Murdoch Veterans Portray an Engaged Boss — LONDON — It was the political scoop of the year, a damning, serialized exposé in The Daily Telegraph about how British politicians were abusing their parliamentary expense accounts to pay for things like moat-cleaning and wisteria-trimming.

Discussion: Time, paidContent, Media News, Advertising … and Free Press

Damien McCrystal / Guardian:

Phone hacking: the case for the defence — Celebrities encourage intrusion, and we have a right to know about anything that affects politicians' ability to do their jobs — The most extraordinary thing about the News International crisis is the way in which it has caused the British national media …

Discussion: MediaShift, Jon Slattery and themediablog.typepad.com

Paul McNamara / New York Times:
News of the World's Desperate Final Hours

Discussion: Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Future of Journalism and Financial Times

Bloomberg: BSkyB Directors Facing $4.2 Billion Payout Quandary After Murdoch Scandal

Julie Bosman / Media Decoder:
British Journalist Sells Book on Hacking Scandal

Discussion: Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Journalism.org, Adweek, The Wire, The Wrap, The New York Observer, GalleyCat, Jacket Copy, CJR and New Yorker

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Designing a big news site is about more than beauty — It appears to be Pick On News Web Designers Day today. This comic — poking at news sites' unwillingness to link, misuse of thumbnails, and addictions to share buttons, among other things — made the rounds of Twitter, to the point of crashing cartoonist Brad Colbow's site.

Discussion: The Wall Blog

Martin Belam / currybetdotnet:

4 key pieces of audience engagement missing from Andy Rutledge's news redux — Andy Rutledge published a fascinating blog post last week looking at the design of digital news, and to illustrate his points he did a redux of the New York Times design. — This post isn't going to make much …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, 10,000 Words and The Business Insider

The Daily Beast:

ABC Bans Paying News Subjects — After the embarrassment of giving Casey Anthony a huge payday, the network is effectively ending the practice. Howard Kurtz on why ABC is breaking from the pack. — ABC News has quietly decided to get out of the business of paying news subjects in connection with exclusive interviews.

Discussion: Adweek, TVNewser, The Huffington Post, TVWeek.com, City Room, The New York Observer, WWD Media Headlines, Erik Wemple, Future of Journalism, Mediaite, The New Yorker Blog, Gothamist, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Kirk LaPointe's …, Gawker, Metropolis and The First Post

Felix Salmon:

The NYT paywall is working — Back in April, I was very skeptical that the NYT would achieve its leaked goal of getting 300,000 paying digital subscribers, and I put my money where my mouth was, entering into a bet with John Gapper. John wouldn't bet me that the NYT would get to 300,000 within a year …

Mark Joyella / Mediaite:

Erin Burnett Debuts On CNN, Immediately Breaks News, Sends Twitter Aflutter — The former CNBC anchor Erin Burnett made her debut on CNN last night, appearing with Wolf Blitzer in the hour leading up to President Obama's speech to the nation on the debt ceiling impasse.

Discussion: The Wire, On Media's Blog, CNN and TVNewser

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

NYTimes, TV stations among ‘most social’ companies — The New York Times is the most social company in the U.S., and local TV is the top industry on Twitter, finds a report by NetProspex (.pdf). The report measures the number of employees with social media accounts (using a company email address) …

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Steve Rubel

Los Angeles Times:

Hollywood awaits how Peter Chernin will fare with new venture — The upcoming ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ film and ‘Terra Nova’ TV series form the foundation of the former News Corp. president and longtime Hollywood power broker's media company, Chernin Entertainment.

Discussion: Company Town

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Report: We are a YouTube nation — Further evidence that we are all YouTube addicts comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project this morning: 71 percent of U.S. adults used video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo in May, according to a new Pew report, compared to 66 percent a year earlier.

Discussion: AllThingsD and Pew Internet, more at Techmeme », Thanks:beet_tv

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

Crunch Time at Thomson Reuters — CEO Glocer Is Under Pressure After Restructuring Backed by Controlling Family — The family that controls Thomson Reuters Corp. has grown impatient with the company's performance and pressed for a recent shake-up, putting pressure on Chief Executive Tom Glocer …

Joe Flint / Company Town:

Plan to move cancelled ABC soaps to Web looks for union label — Moving television shows from the TV screen to the computer screen is not easy, as the folks who want to give new life to soap operas “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” are learning. — Prospect Park, a company headed …

Discussion: Media Decoder, TVLine, Online Video News and AOL TV

Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:

Ars Technica's OS X Lion review made $15,000+ in 24 hours on the Kindle — Will people pay for quality digital content? It's an argument that has been on the table for quite some time, with naysayers pointing towards downloads of discographies instead of paying attention to concrete purchasing decisions.

Media Buyer Planner:

Nielsen, Kantar Target Local TV Metrics | Taking Sides on FCC Broadband Plan — Nielsen has made a multi-year deal with Kantar Media for its consumer viewing data from DirecTV set top boxes, a move that is expected to improve insights into local TV products and make a break away from diary-based measurement, writes Media Daily News.

Discussion: Adweek, MediaPost, Business Wire and Broadcasting & Cable