Mediagazer: People using pseudonyms post the highest-quality comments, Disqus says (Jeff Sonderman/Poynter)

11:35 AM ET, January 15, 2012

Top News:

Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy — The White House has responded to two petitions about legislative approaches to combat online piracy. In their response, Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Pirates! Rupert Murdoch Rails About Obama, Google, and Silicon Valley — On Friday, Rupert Murdoch and his top executives gathered for a day-long private confab in Las Vegas to think big thoughts about digital stuff. I'm guessing there wasn't a session entitled “How Great is Google?”.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

SOPA Delayed; Cantor Promises It Won't Be Brought To The Floor Until ‘Issues Are Addressed’ — Some late breaking news here: following Lamar Smith's announcement that the new manager's amendment for SOPA will remove DNS blocking (to be added back at a later date after it's been “studied") …

Discussion: TorrentFreak, Hillicon Valley, CNET, WebProNews, Ars Technica and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

People using pseudonyms post the highest-quality comments, Disqus says — One of the most popular commenting services for news websites and blogs says its data shows that commenters using pseudonyms are “the most important contributors to online communities.”

Discussion: Future of Journalism and eMedia Vitals

Craig Newmark / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Fact-checking should be part of how news organizations earn trust — Okay, I'm not in the news business, and I'm not going to tell anyone how to do their job. However, it'd be good to have news reporting that I could trust again, and there's evidence that fact checking is an idea whose time has come.

Discussion: Erik Wemple, The Huffington Post, Free Press, craigconnects, Guardian and GigaOM

Declan Fahy / CJR:

Media Made Hawking Famous — Amid 70th birthday adoration, reporters ignored their role in the physicist's celebrity — The extensive coverage of Stephen Hawking's seventieth birthday on January 8 focused on the physicist's status as the world's most famous living scientist.

Justin Martin / Poynter:

Why Christian Science Monitor stories have too many links, wrong ones — I often don't read my own articles in The Christian Science Monitor. The volume of hyperlinks the publication drops in their copy is just too distracting. Consider this Op-Ed on volunteerism among Millennials.

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Fighting Antipiracy Measure, Activist Group Posts Personal Information of Media Executives — The online activist group known as Anonymous, which has targeted opponents of the Occupy Wall Street movement and businesses that stopped providing services to WikiLeaks, has set its sights on a new adversary: media executives.

Discussion: The Raw Story, The Snitch and Deadline.com

Meryl Gordon / CJR:

Gender Imbalance on the Campaign Trail — Voters skew female; reporters still do not — MANCHESTER, NH — The sea-green and white concrete gymnasium at Saint Anselm College was transformed this past Saturday night into a temporary state-of-the-art filing center for the GOP presidential debate …

Discussion: The Politico and Poynter

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Plagiarism may be part of ‘weeding out’ at Journal Register — Can plagiarism be a byproduct of progress? — That's the contradictory question I'm pondering after a conversation with Matt DeRienzo, group editor of Journal Register Company's publications in Connecticut.

Rebecca McPheters / AdAge:

Magazines and Newspapers Need to Build Better Apps — Viewpoint: Significant Glitches Trouble Too Many Publishers' Apps — While it is still early in the migration process, Apple's iPad and other tablets appear to be a very good thing for the publishing industry, allowing publishers …

Discussion: Future of Journalism and Poynter

Felicia Pride / FishbowlNY:

Arianna Huffington Says Media Needs More Good News, Launches Vertical — What seems to be dominating headlines these days? War. Political mudslinging. Economic distress. Prejudice diatribes. Pure foolishness. — Does media need more feel-good stories? — Arianna Huffington thinks so.

Josh Stearns / Groundswell: The Missed Opportunity of HuffPost's “Good News”

Robert Andrews / mocoNews:

The Sun Newspaper Going Premium In Mobile App For £4.99 A Month — The UK's highest-circulating newspaper may not yet be going ahead with web fees but it has introduced a subscription smartphone app, priced £4.99 ($7.65) a month. — News International's mass-market The Sun launched …

Discussion: The Next Web