Mediagazer: News Corp.'s Fox Joins Battle to Buy Dodgers (Matthew Futterman/Wall Street Journal)

11:15 AM ET, January 12, 2012

Top News:

News Corp. Tells Judge About Tabloid Editor's $1,150 Bribe to Prison Guard — News Corp. (NWSA) for the first time publicly detailed bribery by a journalist at its now-defunct News of the World, telling a court that a former editor agreed to pay a prison guard to get a story about a child killer.

Discussion: mediabistro.com and FishbowlNY

Guardian:

Leveson inquiry: Richard Desmond, Peter Hill, Hugh Whittow - live — Full coverage as the Daily Express owner, Express editor and Sunday Express editor appear at the media standards inquiry — 11.06am: Robert Jay QC raises evidence given to the inquiry by Richard Peppiatt …

Andrew Pugh / Press Gazette:

Express continued to use convicted PI Whittamore — Richard Desmond's Express Newspapers continued using convicted private investigator Steve Whittamore until as late as July 2010, the Leveson Inquiry heard this morning. — The company's legal chief Nicole Patterson was also unable …

Discussion: Press Gazette, @dansabbagh and @benfenton

Mark Hosenball / Reuters:

Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

more at Techmeme »

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Amazon Kindle Owners Are “Borrowing” Nearly 300,000 Electronic Books A Month — Amazon is releasing new data on its Kindle Lending Library, which the e-commerce site says now has over 75,000 books. The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own …

Discussion: paidContent

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:

CNN Reporter Becomes Target Of Ron Paul Supporters — A group of Ron Paul supporters are calling on CNN to remove the correspondent covering the candidate from her assignment, claiming that she is too biased against Paul. Dana Bash aroused the ire of the pro-Paul brigade on Monday …

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

New Republic owner quashes reports of liberal journal's sale — Despite reports to the contrary, the New Republic's principal owner insists the 98-year-old journal of liberal political opinion, reporting and arts criticism isn't shopping for a new owner. — “There's nothing there to the story …

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post: Will Anyone Buy Influential D.C. Magazine?

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre paid £1.7m — Salary package for Associated Newspapers editor-in-chief down more than £1m on 2010 remuneration after restructuring of incentive scheme — Paul Dacre reinforced his reputation as the best-paid editor on Fleet Street by taking home …

Matthew Futterman / Wall Street Journal:

News Corp.'s Fox Joins Battle to Buy Dodgers — News Corp.'s Fox unit joined the battle to buy the Dodgers Tuesday, signing a nondisclosure agreement with bankers handling the sale of the storied franchise, according to people with knowledge of the process — The move formally makes News Corp …

Steven Church / Businessweek: Dodgers End Bankruptcy Fight With Fox Over Media Rights

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Google uses AP results for New Hampshire election results map — After working with the Iowa Republican Party to count votes for the caucuses last week, Google produced a map of election results for the New Hampshire GOP primary on Tuesday night. In Iowa, Google provided the state GOP …

Discussion: Future of Journalism

Douglas Page / News & Tech:

Digital First? Not so fast — Shakespeare suggested we kill the lawyers and let's hope the same fate awaits the newspaper cognoscenti who see a terminal disease in every printed newspaper. — While their collective “wisdom” on print lacks any foresight, what's more disturbing is that newspaper execs …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Philadelphia Experiment: Why a media company wants to be a tech incubator — One side effect of downsizing at most newspapers: a surplus of office space. That may be a cold blooded way of seeing the empty desks that haunt newsrooms and advertising departments, but in an era where newspapers …

Discussion: Newspaper Death Watch, eMedia Vitals and Philly.com

Marianne Bouchart / Journalism.co.uk:

French landmark case: A new dawn for investigative journalism? — How a 10-year legal battle between a French journalist and a financial institution could encourage investigative journalism in France and beyond — Investigative journalist Denis Robert, who has fought a 10-year legal battle in France

Jim Romenesko:

Kent State alum pulls $1M gift after student paper asks questions — The event was called off, though, after the student newspaper's enterprise reporter dug into Cope's past. Doug Brown reported: — At first glance, it makes us question the athletic department's ethical standards.

Discussion: College Media Matters and CJR

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Gawker Media's new HD view makes a play for big monitors and a grander stage for video and photos. — Gizmodo, the popular gadget site and pageview king of Gawker Media, debuted a new look last night that they're calling HD view, and it's big. Not big in the grand scheme of things — big in the number of pixels it takes up.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Piano Media wants national paywalls all over Europe — The expansion of Bratislava-based Piano Media into Slovenia is just the beginning of the company's efforts to bring national paywalls to five European countries by year's end. — Eight Slovene media outlets have agreed to unite behind a single paywall starting Jan. 16.

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Nick Kristof on Occupy and the rise of citizen journalism — Many traditional journalists seem inherently suspicious of “citizen journalism” — that is, the idea that anyone with a cellphone camera and a Twitter account can function as a journalist given the right circumstances.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and Journalism.org

Pandora Young / FishbowlLA:

Gawker Editor: N-Word Did Not Get Blogger Fired — It's clear that using the word “nigga” in a post didn't exactly help Seth Abramovitch's career at Gawker. But A.J. Daulerio, the site's new editor, felt the need to write his own blog post explaining that was not what got Abramovitch fired.

Discussion: The Wrap and Gawker