Mediagazer: BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti: We Raised A Whopping $15 Million To Build A ‘Pure Social Site’ (Kevin Lincoln/Business Insider)

11:25 PM ET, January 9, 2012

Top News:

Kelvin MacKenzie: Guardian Was Protected By ‘Broadsheet Snobbery’ Over Milly Dowler Mistake — The Sun newspaper could have been shut down if it had got the facts wrong about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone wrong in the same way the Guardian did, the tabloid's former editor has claimed.

Discussion: ITN, @benfenton, @dansabbagh, @benfenton and Guardian

Joel Gunter / Journalism.co.uk:

Mirror hacking jibe ‘purely a joke’, Mohan tells Leveson inquiry — Sun editor admits that 2002 comment in which he thanked 'Vodafone's lack of security' for the Mirror's showbusiness coverage was about hacking, but claims it was just a joke — Dominic Mohan, the editor of the Sun …

Discussion: Guardian and Journalism.co.uk

Guardian:

Kelvin MacKenzie: News International should be fined for ‘lying’ to PCC — Former Sun editor tells Leveson inquiry NoW publisher should pay ‘penalty’ for misleading watchdog over phone hacking — Kelvin MacKenzie, the former Sun editor, has told the Leveson inquiry that News International …

Discussion: Jon Slattery, Press Gazette and Guardian

Ben Popper / Betabeat:

BuzzFeed Raises $15.5 M Series C and Reunites HuffPo Dream Team — Cute, LOL, Fail...Politics? — Just a few weeks after poaching star political reporter Ben Smith from Politico and scooping CNN at the Repulican Primaries, Buzzfeed announced a big new round of funding to build out their operation.

Discussion: The Wrap, Gawker, Media Decoder, PC Magazine, Echo, VentureBeat, Adweek, FishbowlNY, AllThingsD, TechCrunch and The Awl, more at Techmeme »

Kevin Lincoln / Business Insider:

BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti: We Raised A Whopping $15 Million To Build A ‘Pure Social Site’ — Find out more out the future of disruptive technology and companies like Facebook, Google, Zynga, Disney, NBC and more at IGNITION West! — After raising a $15.5 million Series C round …

Discussion: Medacity and Soup

Bobbie Johnson / GigaOM:

Netflix is about to discover that Britain bites back — It's been a tough few months for Reed Hastings. — Since announcing an unpopular price hike in October, the Netflix (s NFLX) CEO has presided over a grim cascade of events that has seen the company's prospects plummet.

Discussion: paidContent, Sky News, Bits, Techland, Epicenter, Guardian and The Next Web

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph: Netflix launch in UK starts price war

Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Netflix officially announces UK, Ireland launch

Discussion: Crikey, The Official Netflix Blog, TechCrunch Europe and MacRumors

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

News Corporation Hires New General Counsel — News Corporation has hired a new general counsel, filling a permanent position that has been vacant since June. — Gerson Zweifach, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP with experience litigating media and first-amendment cases …

Discussion: Crikey, Company Town and Broadcasting & Cable

The Daily Beast:

NBC News and Newsweek / Daily Beast Team Up on 2012 Election Campaign Coverage — NBC News and Newsweek & The Daily Beast today announced a joint digital initiative that will focus on 2012 election campaign coverage. Under the agreement, the magazine and Web site will have access …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, NetNewsCheck Latest, TVNewser and Newsweek

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Dear WaPo: Innovating too quickly is not the problem — In a column about the launch of some recent digital projects from the Washington Post, the newspaper's ombudsman expressed concern there might be too much innovation going on at the paper, and all this change might be happening too quickly for some …

Discussion: Strange Attractor, Reportr.net, Groundswell and Washington Post

David Carr / Media Decoder:
Blackmon and Stecklow Join the Exit of Veterans From The Journal

Discussion: Maya Baratz

Eric Deggans / Tampa Bay Times:

New CBS This Morning offers brisk, substantive and businesslike debut — Is it a bad sign when your new morning anchor looks like he could use a few more hours sleep on the first day? — As the newly-retooled CBS This Morning debuted today, noting anchor Charlie Rose's seemingly red-rimmed eyes might not be entirely fair.

Discussion: TVNewser

Erin Carlson / Hollywood Reporter:
‘CBS This Morning’ Premiere Draws Mixed Reactions From Media Critics

Discussion: entertainment.time.com

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Technorati's invite to a conflict of interest — Technorati.com, which bills itself as “the leading blog search engine and directory,” wants to pay political bloggers to produce content that benefits their clients. From the email, sent by publisher Jill Asher:

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Halifax requires former NYT regional employees to sign noncompete agreements — Employees at the 16 papers now owned by Halifax Media Group have until tomorrow to decide whether to sign an agreement that allows the company to fire them anytime but prevents them from working for media companies in any other city with a Halifax property.

Steve Myers / Poynter:

NY Times offers unpaid internships after reporting on their questionable legality — After Times staff tweeted about about the upcoming deadline for its unpaid social media internship, Pamela Drew responded, “Shame on NYTimes & every deep pocket corporation looking for UNPAID interns, experience shouldn't be free labor.”

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Nielsen: One-third of mobile users downloaded news apps in past month — One-third of tablet and smartphone owners in a Nielsen survey said they had downloaded a news app within the past 30 days, and 19 percent had paid for one. The chart below shows survey results for news and other categories.

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Was NYT CEO's Golden Parachute Really That Excessive? — Janet Robinson. Image via Wikipedia — The unionized employees of The New York Times feel “profound dismay” at the thought of their company paying outgoing CEO Janet Robinson more than $15 million in severance at a time when the paper …

Jon Bruner / Datanaut:

Is the Media Out of Touch? A Look at the Numbers — This is based on a talk I gave in December at News Foo-an absolutely terrific, humbling gathering of people I admire assembled by O'Reilly Media, Google and the Knight Foundation. The talk was part of an Ignite session-a series …

Discussion: CJR