Mediagazer: SOPA Delayed; Cantor Promises It Won't Be Brought To The Floor Until ‘Issues Are Addressed’ (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

3:30 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: Hillicon Valley, TorrentFreak, CNET, WebProNews, Ars Technica and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

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, Guardian, contentious.com and GigaOM

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

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: eMedia Vitals

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.

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”

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

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

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Piers Morgan's 2012 Resolution: Be More Like Bill O'Reilly — One nice thing about success is the way it shuts up critics. One year ago, Larry King had ended his 25-year run as CNN's marquee interviewer, and Piers Morgan was gearing up to replace him. How could Morgan, a former gossip reporter …

Discussion: Inside Cable News and TVNewser

Adam Penenberg / Fast Company:

Amazon's Plagiarism Problem — Amazon's erotica section isn't just rife with tales of lust, incest, violence, and straight-up kink. It's also a hotbed of masked merchants profiting from copyright infringement. And even with anti-piracy legislation looming, Amazon doesn't appear too eager …

Discussion: WebProNews, Fortune, The FJP and Betabeat