Mediagazer: Meet SOPA author Lamar Smith, Hollywood's favorite Republican (Declan McCullagh/CNET News)

2:50 PM ET, December 15, 2011

Top News:

Judgement Day for Piers Morgan — It's now been confirmed that Piers Morgan will be before Leveson's show trial next week. Some weekend reading for Mr Jay...The former Mirror and News of the World editor will be under oath.

Discussion: Guy Fawkes' blog

Adam Clark Estes / The Atlantic Wire:

Piers Morgan Will Testify on Phone Hacking — Nearly six months after his alleged involvement in News Corp.'s phone hacking habit, former News of the World editor, current CNN host and now former America's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan will “explain himself” to the Leveson Inquiry next week.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

BBC:

Leveson Inquiry: Myler accepted ‘rogue reporter’ view — Mr Myler was News of the World editor from 2007 until its closure earlier this year — Ex-News of the World editor Colin Myler has said he feared “bombs under the newsroom floor” in the form of possible widespread wrongdoing in the past.

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian and @journalismnews

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:
McCann diary reporter: ‘I thought we had permission’

Discussion: Guardian

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Tons Of Amendments Proposed For SOPA — The “markup” process for SOPA is going to begin shortly (at 10am ET/7am PT), and it's going to be quite a circus. This is when various amendments can be proposed and debated. You can watch it stream live, if they can keep the stream up (they had trouble during the SOPA hearings).

Discussion: paidContent, Hillicon Valley and Lamar Smith, more at Techmeme »

Declan McCullagh / CNET News:

Meet SOPA author Lamar Smith, Hollywood's favorite Republican — Rep. Lamar Smith, whose congressional district in Texas encompasses the cropland and grazing land stretching between Austin and San Antonio, might seem like an unlikely ally for Hollywood on Internet piracy.

Discussion: Technology Liberation Front, Fortune and New York Times

Elizabeth Flock / Washington Post:
SOPA denounced by newspaper journalists, too

Discussion: TechCrunch, MediaFile, VentureBeat and Felix Salmon, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / The Caucus:

MSNBC Apologizes to Romney Campaign for Klan Report — Blaming its own staff for an “appalling lack of judgment,” MSNBC apologized on Wednesday for reporting that a phrase used by Mitt Romney on the campaign stump was used in the past by the Ku Klux Klan. — The brief report during the 11 …

Discussion: New York Magazine, US Politics, NY Daily News and Chickaboomer

John Aravosis / Americablog:
MSNBC apologizes to Romney campaign for mentioning our post about Romney using old KKK slogan

Discussion: Mediaite, US Politics, The Huffington Post and theGrio

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Nick Davies: Dowler story had ‘very significant’ error — Guardian journalist Nick Davies said on Newsnight that there was a “very significant” error in his first 5 July story about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone by the News of the World. — But he said it was a “distortion of the truth” …

Discussion: Guardian

Jon Slattery:
Newsnight: Public say press regulation has failed

Discussion: BBC

Alex Peake / The Sun: Guardian dodges TV clash with The Sun

Lucy Carne / Herald Sun: Guardian accused of running ‘false accusations’ about Milly Dowler's voicemails to sink News of the World

Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:

Amazon Shares Some Kindle Sales Numbers — Sort Of — Amazon has been oh-so-reluctant to talk about how many Kindle e-readers the company has sold. — But today it shed some light on the subject. — It said that its Kindle lineup of devices have continued to sell more than one million a week for the third straight week.

Discussion: Amazon.com, TechCrunch, paidContent, Bits, Techland, ZDNet, Business Insider, GigaOM and GeekWire, more at Techmeme »

Julie Moos / Poynter:

‘The Elements of Style’ reinvented as rap video by Columbia J-school students — Jake Heller decided a few months ago to “do for journalism nerds what the Keynes vs. Hayek video did for econ nerds, by transforming ‘The Elements of Style’ into a rap video.” He told me about the process by email (below), but first here's the result:

Discussion: Editors Weblog and The Blue Sky Blog

Jennifer Preston / New York Times:

Occupy Movement Shows Potential of Live Online Video — Brad Hunstable started Ustream, an online video platform, with a fellow West Point graduate back in 2007 to help American troops overseas communicate with multiple friends and family members at the same time.

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Drew Grant / The New York Observer:
Harassed New York Times Journalist Robert Stolarik Speaks On NYPD's Continued Barring of Credentialed Press

Discussion: Media Decoder

Associated Press:

Newspaper trade group spends $245K on 3Q lobbying … NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. newspaper industry's largest trade group spent $245,241 during the third quarter to lobby the federal government on a range of issues involving journalism and the newspaper business, according to a quarterly disclosure report.

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Former NoW journalist arrested over alleged payments to police — Lucy Panton, the former crime editor of the News of the World, is believed to have been arrested on Thursday morning as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged payments to police officers.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Tom Watson MP: John Yates on Lucy Panton

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CBS Is Reviving ‘Person to Person,’ Made Famous by Murrow — In its latest back-to-the-future programming move, CBS News is reviving “Person to Person,” a 1950s series hosted by Edward R. Murrow that visited celebrities, politicians and other stars in their homes.

Discussion: rbr.com, The Wrap and TVNewser

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Project Orion: Say Media's Plan To Tailor TypePad Into Its CMS And Become The Conde Nast Of The Web — I finally caught up with Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez today, after his acquisition of tech blog ReadWriteWeb. He wouldn't confirm the $5 million price (he didn't deny it either) …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Daring Fireball and Betabeat

Dan Frommer / SplatF:
My new job at ReadWriteWeb, and what it means for SplatF

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, the Econsultancy blog and Future of Journalism

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Titans of social networking and left politics unite to form media start-up — Facebook co-founder joins MoveOn president and former Onion editor to create viral network devoted to progressive causes — Three of America's leading entrepreneurs involved in the fusion of politics …

Discussion: Betabeat and The Huffington Post

Dennis Romero / The Informer:

Newspapers Dead Within Five Years, USC Predicts — As if the ink-stained wretches of the newspaper world need anymore bad news, the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future says the print product some of you like to pick up of your driveway every morning will go the way of the dinosaur within five years.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, rbr.com, Media, disrupted, Gannett Blog, Poynter and USC Annenberg School …