Mediagazer: Culture and Control: Murong Xuecun, Chinese Novelist, Pushes Censorship Limits (Edward Wong/New York Times)

2:00 AM ET, November 8, 2011

Top News:

Nick Davies / Guardian:

News of the World hired investigators to spy on hacking victims' lawyers — Exclusive: Investigators followed and filmed lawyers of hacking victims in apparent attempt to gather material on private lives — The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance …

Discussion: The Lede, Adweek, BBC, @dansabbagh, @dansabbagh, Digital Spy, The Huffington Post, paidContent:UK, Jon Slattery and The Raw Story

Ryan Chittum / CJR:
Dirty Business (As Usual) at News Corporation

Discussion: Guardian

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Martin Nisenholtz, Senior VP of Digital, leaving New York Times — Martin Nisenholtz, one of the most respected executives in the online media world, is leaving the New York Times, where he has been senior vice president of digital operations for quite awhile and has helped oversee …

Discussion: paidContent, @rafat, @jeffjarvis, The Huffington Post, NetNewsCheck Latest, Mixed Media, AdAge, Business Insider, BtoB Magazine, FishbowlNY, The New York Observer, Future of Journalism, New York Times, Poynter and The Wrap

Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Martin leaves the Times

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent: NYT Digital Head Martin Nisenholtz Retiring; Won't Be Replaced

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:

NY Times sues Huffington Post over parenting blog — The New York Times Co has sued AOL Inc to force its Huffington Post online news website to rename a parenting blog with a similar name to its own. — In a lawsuit filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ...

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

News organizations can finally create Google+ pages — Google+ has launched brand pages for businesses, finally enabling news organizations and other businesses, institutions or products to engage with people on the social network. NBC News, Good Morning America, Fox News and The New York Times …

Discussion: Business Insider, YouTube Blog, The Official Google Blog, TechCrunch, NewscastStudio Blog, Search Engine Land, mUmBRELLA and FishbowlNY, more at Techmeme »

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Now, Breathe: Demand Media Beats Wall Street Expectation in Q3 — Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations in the third quarter, posting a loss of five cents a share. Investors had expected it to lose from four to six cents. — Revenue was up 25 percent to $85.1 million, compared to $65.4 million in the same period a year ago.

Discussion: Forbes, Investor Relations and CNBC

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD: What Answers Will Investors Be Demand-ing in the Q3 Call Today?

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Barnes & Noble Officially Unveils The 7-Inch Nook Tablet — In late September, Amazon unveiled a $199 tablet called the Kindle Fire. Obviously this left a massive divide in the market between the much pricier iPad 2 and the new Kindle Fire, which Barnes & Noble has this morning responded to.

Gayle Feldman / The Bookseller:
Barnes & Noble plans international Nook launch

Discussion: paidContent

Tommy Christopher / Mediaite:

Howard Kurtz Grills Politico's Jonathan Martin On Herman Cain Alleged Sexual Harassment Reporting - Update — On CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday morning, host Howard Kurtz gave Politico reporter Jonathan Martin a grilling worthy of Bobby Flay over whether the online paper had enough to publish …

Discussion: The Caucus, The Politico, Erik Wemple, RADAR, FishbowlDC, Gawker and mediabistro.com

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

If WikiLeaks is dying, then the NYT is partly to blame — In a New York Times piece on the weekend, media writer David Carr argues that WikiLeaks is dying — or at least on life support — for a number of reasons, including founder Julian Assange's court case and a funding crisis that has caused …

Discussion: Future Journalism Project, Scripting News and New York Times

Claire Cain Miller / Bits:

Head of Google's Public Policy Operations Resigns — As Google faces stepped-up interrogations from regulators and policy makers, Alan Davidson, who runs its public policy operations for North and South America, announced Monday that he would leave the company this month.

Discussion: Hillicon Valley, more at Techmeme »

Paul Bond / Hollywood Reporter:

TumTiki Becomes Newest Destination for TV Shows and Movies on the Internet … Another online premium video site with an odd name launches today. This one, called TumTiki, has 700,000 movies and TV episodes to choose from, courtesy of relationships with Hulu, Amazon.com and a slew of other outlets.

David Carr / New York Times:

Delicate Dance of Daytime — I had a dream about Anderson Cooper the other night. He was in a vast, cavernous studio and was hanging from the ceiling in a harness, far above the stage. — There was an audience of mostly women and they were clapping wildly as he spread his arms, all but flying above them.

Discussion: Erik Wemple, Chickaboomer, TVNewser and The New York Observer

Elizabeth Jensen / New York Times:

At PBS's NewsHour, Departures, Questions and Complaints — It's never good when a news organization loses its political editor just a year before a presidential election. But in the next two weeks, “The PBS NewsHour” will say goodbye not only to its political editor, David Chalian …

Discussion: Poynter, Future of Journalism and Free Press

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

At Sony Music, a Plan to Dominate the Industry — A huge self-portrait of Bono hangs in the Madison Avenue office of Doug Morris, the new chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, and on a nearby table sit his snapshots, arm-in-arm with Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.

Edward Wong / New York Times:

Culture and Control: Murong Xuecun, Chinese Novelist, Pushes Censorship Limits — BEIJING — When the novelist Murong Xuecun showed up at a ceremony here late last year to collect his first literary prize, he clutched a sheet of paper with some of the most incendiary words he had ever written.

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Gannett local newspapers earning high ad rates from online video — Gannett's local sales staff is getting a $40 to $50 CPM for preroll ads attached to online videos in several of its smaller market newspapers, Senior Vice President for Video Kate Walters tells Beet.TV.

Discussion: Gannett Blog and Beet.TV

Brian M. Rosenthal / Seattle Times:

Proposed Seattle school-newspaper policy raises censorship concerns — A proposal being considered by the Seattle School Board could have a chilling impact on free speech in the city's high schools, First Amendment activists say. — The proposed policy would give principals the authority …

Discussion: The Daily Weekly, The News About The News and Poynter

Nancy Miller / Fast Company:

Andy Rooney: Voice Of The Internet — The late Andy Rooney was a vicious critic who despised sloppy grammar and loathed Justin Bieber. Sound familiar, Internet? Let's give the curmudgeonly commentator his due as the OG Hater of the pre-Internet age. Andy Rooney: The Godfather of Troll.

Discussion: Media Nation

New York Times:

NBC Struggles for Its Footing — Coming into a new television season, about the only solace for the new management regime at NBC was that the network's prime-time fortunes had been so bad for so long, things could not get much worse. — Oh yes they could — and they have.

Discussion: Media Decoder, TVbytheNumbers and Chickaboomer