Mediagazer: Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube revolutionize television? (John Seabrook/New Yorker)

4:40 AM ET, January 10, 2012

Top News:

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

Discussion: Jon Slattery, Press Gazette and Guardian

Ned Simons / The Huffington Post UK:
Kelvin MacKenzie: Guardian Was Protected By ‘Broadsheet Snobbery’ Over Milly Dowler Mistake

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

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

Ben Popper / Betabeat:
BuzzFeed Raises $15.5 M Series C and Reunites HuffPo Dream Team

Discussion: Media Decoder, PC Magazine, Gawker, Echo, Adweek, VentureBeat, FishbowlNY, AllThingsD, The Awl and TechCrunch

Kevin Lincoln / Business Insider:

THE RAID ON AOL: How Vox Pillaged Engadget And Founded An Empire — Engadget seemed healthy. — Back at the beginning of February, AOL's marquee technology blog was coming off its most trafficked month in site history. It had survived the reorganization that gutted many of AOL's other verticals …

more at Techmeme »

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: Media News, paidContent, Sky News, Bits, Techland, Epicenter, The Official Netflix Blog and Guardian

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

Discussion: Engadget

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:

Discussion: Gawker

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: Groundswell, Strange Attractor, Melville House Books and Reportr.net

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

Discussion: Maya Baratz

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

How People Watch TV Online And Off — At this point, video is just a regular part of the web. But how is it gaining on regular TV watching. Just in terms of audience reach, Nielsen estimates that almost 145 million people watch video online in the U.S., compared to about 290 million who watch traditional TV.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, PC Magazine, VentureBeat and VatorNews

Meghan Kelly / VentureBeat:

Fox News has a new digital look for 2012 (exclusive) — With the new year come new resolutions, and Fox News has one of its own: It's adopting a new digital strategy that takes the mobile world into special account. — “The starting point for all [these changes] is there are more devices …

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, Inside Cable News and TVNewser

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.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Is Dish Punching the Networks With Its Supersized DVR? — Yup. It's a ginormous DVR. — Per earlier reports, Dish Networks's big rollout at the Consumer Electronics Show today is focused on “The Hopper,” a supersized video recorder that lets users store two terabytes of data.

Discussion: Yahoo! Finance, Multichannel, MediaFile and Media Decoder

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: Company Town, Crikey and Broadcasting & Cable

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 …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It's Going to Sell You Web TV — Lots of folks are waiting for Google, or Apple, or Verizon or someone to offer a Web video subscription service that would rival cable TV. — None of those guys have announced their plans for that, yet.

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, Company Town, Multichannel, Lost Remote and CNET, more at Techmeme »

John Seabrook / New Yorker:

Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube revolutionize television?

Discussion: Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Fast Company and Forbes

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.

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

A test for AOL's Patch proposition in primary states, as hyperlocal network dispatches little green truck — MANCHESTER, N.H.—Residents of New Hampshire are by now accustomed to all the giant buses and satellite vans bearing the big, splashy logos of the bigger cable and broadcast news brands trawling through their streets.

Discussion: Nashua, NH Patch

Alysia Santo / CJR:

Spying on Journalists is Easy — Lax computer security creates easy targets — When promising anonymity, discreetly stashed notes and a tight lip are the precautions of journalism's past. Reporters have gone to jail rather than share the information they've gathered for a court proceeding …

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