Mediagazer: Huffington Post Twitter Account Hacked-Homophobic and Racist Tweets Ensue (Steve Huff/The New York Observer)

10:20 AM ET, January 16, 2012

Top News:

Leveson inquiry: Sly Bailey, Richard Wallace, Tina Weaver - live — Full coverage as the Trinity Mirror chief executive and Daily and Sunday Mirror editors appear at the media standards inquiry — 10.09am: Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: … 10.09am: David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, is doing the questioning this morning.

BBC:

Leveson Inquiry: Mirror phone hacking possibly hidden - editor — The Daily Mirror's editor has told a media ethics inquiry that phone hacking “might well have been” taking place when he was the paper's showbiz editor. — Richard Wallace told the Leveson Inquiry he had no knowledge …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk, @dansabbagh, Tangerine, @keirsimmonsitv, @skymarkwhite, @benfenton, @dansabbagh, @lisaocarroll, @benfenton and Associated Press

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Google calls Murdoch's piracy allegations ‘nonsense’ — News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is talking nonsense, according to Google. — Google cofounder Sergey Brin. — Murdoch, a Twitter user for only the past several weeks, used the service to fire a barrage of accusations Saturday night …

Discussion: VentureBeat, ZDNet, AllThingsD, Crikey, paidContent, Forbes, eMedia Vitals and Media Decoder, more at Techmeme »

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?”.

Macon Phillips / White House.gov Blog:
Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy

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

Discussion: Marketing Land, Future of Journalism, Hillicon Valley, TorrentFreak, WebProNews and Ars Technica

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Fox and Twitter Join Forces for Republican Debate — At the next Republican presidential primary debate on Monday night, Fox News will be measuring viewers' reactions to each answer on Twitter, the social Web site that acts as an online water cooler during big television events.

Discussion: WebProNews, Twitter Blog and TVNewser

Steve Huff / The New York Observer:

Huffington Post Twitter Account Hacked-Homophobic and Racist Tweets Ensue — The Huffington Post's Twitter account was hacked Sunday afternoon and it wasn't even fun, just offensive. In a rapid-fire series of tweets containing grandiloquent soliloquies like “hello gay boys” and …

Discussion: @huffingtonpost, BuzzFeed, CNET, Mediaite, Gothamist, The Next Web, Runnin' Scared and Digital Spy

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

News exec John Paton is out to stop the presses — Digital First Media CEO says his company's moniker is its mandate, and he's pushing past newspapers' print era at warp speed. — John Paton, chief executive officer of Digital First Media, the Journal Register Company and Media News.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and JIMROMENESKO.COM

BBC:

Associated Press news agency opens North Korea bureau — The Associated Press news agency has formally opened a news bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. It is the first major Western news organisation to do so, although agencies such as China's Xinhua also have a presence there.

Discussion: Guardian

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Enquirer Designs an App for Gossip — American Media Inc. is hoping that enquiring minds will embrace a digital version of its 70-year-old supermarket tabloid, The National Enquirer. — Next month, the magazine company will introduce an iPad app of The National Enquirer that it expects to “reinvent gossip.”

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Lovefilm Adding ABC TV Show Archive In UK Netflix Fight — In its war with Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Amazon's Lovefilm has licensed U.S. TV shows from ABC (NYSE: DIS) Studios through Disney UK under the “ABC TV On-Demand” VOD brand. — That service will be available for no extra charge …

Discussion: Pocket-lint, London Calling Blog and SlashGear, more at Techmeme »

Robert Teitelman / The Huffington Post:

Starkman on the Decline of Business Journalism — The Audit's Dean Starkman, writing the cover story in the most recent Columbia Journalism Review, has produced a longish essay that attempts to advance a critique he's been making for awhile now. Starkman several years ago argued that business journalism …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Dean Starkman / CJR: A Narrowed Gaze — How the business press forgot the rest of us

Andy Fixmer / Bloomberg:

Hulu Plans to Raise Money to Fund Expansion Into Original Shows — Hulu LLC, the online TV service owned by ABC, NBC and Fox, is ratcheting up competition with Netflix Inc. (NFLX) with plans to raise money for an expansion into original programs. — Hulu will release “Battleground,” …