Mediagazer: Neville Thurlbeck's letter to MPs

Civic journalism 2.0: The Guardian and NYU launch a “citizens agenda” for 2012 — Last August, Jay Rosen published a blog post arguing for “a citizens agenda in campaign coverage.” The idea, he wrote, “is to learn from voters what those voters want the campaign to be about …

Discussion: Poynter

The Citizens Agenda: making election coverage more useful — Revising the exhausted media narrative of campaign coverage to gain a clear purpose: meaningful information and access — In a few weeks, the Iowa caucuses will officially kick off the 2012 campaign for president and we'll begin …

Discussion: Pressthink

Thomas Catan / Wall Street Journal:

Justice Department Confirms E-Book Probe — WASHINGTON—The U.S. Justice Department confirmed Wednesday that it is conducting an antitrust investigation into the pricing of electronic books, the latest antitrust watchdog to probe whether there was improper collusion by publishers and Apple Inc. to prevent discounting.

Discussion: The New York Observer, Shelly Palmer Digital Living, MacRumors and Tech Trader Daily

Discussion: The Verge, CNET News and Hillicon Valley

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Verizon And RedBox Planning Major Partnership For Early 2012 Launch — Yesterday, it was reported that Verizon was planning a Netflix competitor and in talks with various content producers to provide the streams and downloads. TechCrunch has obtained additional information on this story …

Discussion: Fortune, Engadget and FT Tech Hub, more at Techmeme »

Read It Later Blog:

Who Are the ‘Most-Read’ Authors? — Saving a story for later can tell us a lot about loyalty, longevity and quality—and it changes the way we think about the most popular stories on the web — If we're to believe Woody Allen, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

Discussion: Media Decoder, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Who Are The Most-Read Authors On The Web? — Which authors online keep readers coming back for more? Read It Later delved into its data to find which articles its 4 million users saved to “Read Later” most often, which authors have the highest return rate and how long-form content performs.

Cahal Milmo / The Independent:

Brooks' links to Clifford payment cast doubt on her hacking denials — Rebekah Brooks personally negotiated a £680,000 out-of-court settlement with the publicity guru Max Clifford which led to his withdrawing a potentially explosive phone-hacking claim against the News of the World, News International (NI) revealed last night.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Guardian:

Neville Thurlbeck's letter to MPs - full text — Full text of the former News of the World chief reporter's letter to culture select committee chairman on News International's handling of the phone-hacking scandal

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

MediaShift:

Nobel Prize Winner on How New Media is Democratizing Science News — MediaShift's science journalism coverage is sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School, which offers an innovative specialized M.A. for experienced journalists who want to cover science, business, arts or politics in a sophisticated, nuanced manner.

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New York Times Election 2012 iPhone app launches — Big, rapid change can be hard to implement at any organization the size of The New York Times, so I appreciate how the talented journalists, designers, and coders within the Times use offshoot or ancillary projects to try out new features or ways of approaching the news.

Discussion: Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Los Angeles Times, Poynter and Business Insider

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:UK:

Apple TV Streaming Quietly Goes International — Back in August, we wrote about how Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had started to offer U.S.-based users of its Apple TV device the ability to stream shows purchased from iTunes via Apple's iCloud. Now it looks as if that service is becoming available internationally.

Discussion: 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog, Mac Prices Australia, GigaOM and Softpedia News, more at Techmeme »

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon Expands Kindle Owners' Lending Library To Self-Published Authors — As rumored, self-published authors who agree to make their e-books available exclusively on Kindle for 90 days are now eligible to include their books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and have the chance to make extra money.

Discussion: Business Wire, TechCrunch and TeleRead

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

James Murdoch's lawyers confirm Tom Watson was put under surveillance — News Corp lawyers say three NI staff were involved in setting up monitoring, but it is not appropriate to name them — James Murdoch's lawyers have confirmed that Labour MP Tom Watson was put under surveillance for a week in 2009 …

Discussion: The New Yorker

Tom Stites / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Taking stock of the state of web journalism — Editor's note: Tom Stites had a long career in newspapers, editing Pulitzer-winning projects and working at top newspapers like The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. In recent years, he's shifted his emphasis …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A Y Combinator for public media: PRX, Knight launch a $2.5 million accelerator — A new Public Media Accelerator, funded by $2.5 million from the Knight Foundation, will rapidly fund disruptive ideas in public media, PRX announced today. — The final details are still being worked out …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

If we are all journalists, should we all be protected? — The bloggers vs. journalists debate may seem like something that's of interest only to media-industry insiders, but it has very real implications for society when it comes to protecting freedom of information, as the case of blogger Crystal Cox has highlighted this week.

Discussion: Medacity, Media News, CNET News, The Daily Weekly, Forbes and Seattle Weekly

Melissa Bell / Washington Post:

Drone journalism? The idea could fly in the U.S. — This January, the FAA will be proposing new rules on the use of drones in American airspace — a possibility some see as positively Orwellian, but others, including some journalists, see as an opportunity.

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The AP brings a quasi-competitor into the fold — In 2008, eight Ohio newspapers, upset with what they saw as high prices charged by the Associated Press, rebelled against the wire to form their own statewide news-sharing service, the Ohio News Organization.

Discussion: Editors Weblog