Mediagazer: Murdoch rant claims are untrue, says Brown (Lisa O'Carroll/Guardian)

1:15 PM ET, January 16, 2012

Top News:

Wikipedia founder @jimmy_wales says the site will go offline for 24 hours on Wednesday to protest #SOPA the anti piracy bill

Discussion: @jimmy_wales, more at Techmeme »

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: Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk, @benfenton, @hackinginquiry, @dansabbagh, @lisaocarroll, @dansabbagh, @skymarkwhite, @dansabbagh, @lisaocarroll, @keirsimmonsitv, Tangerine, @benfenton and @benfenton

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Murdoch rant claims are untrue, says Brown — Former PM denies allegation at Leveson inquiry that he said he would destroy mogul after he switched papers' support to Tories — Gordon Brown has made a dramatic intervention in the Leveson inquiry into press ethics, categorically denying …

Discussion: Press Gazette and Guardian

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk: Trinity Mirror's Sly Bailey: ‘No evidence our journalists hacked phones’

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Sarah Lacy Debuts New Tech Site, PandoDaily — $2M+ in Funding and Guess Who's Working for Her? (Video) — As has been widely reported, well-known TechCrunch columnist and Silicon Valley journalist Sarah Lacy has a new gig: Running her own new tech news site that debuts today.

Discussion: GigaOM, VentureBeat, AdAge and WebProNews

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
Why I Started PandoDaily — Several months ago I became obsessed …

Discussion: Uncrunched, Business Insider and Talking Biz News, more at Techmeme »

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: Twitter Blog, WebProNews and TVNewser

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, Business Insider, Digital Spy, ZDNet, Crikey, paidContent:UK, Forbes, eMedia Vitals, AllThingsD and Hillicon Valley, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Pirates! Rupert Murdoch Rails About Obama, Google, and Silicon Valley

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

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

Pat Maio / North County Times:

New owners of San Diego Union-Tribune look to build media centre — San Diego developer Doug Manchester and radio executive John Lynch, who bought The San Diego Union-Tribune for $110 million a month ago, said they could pursue other newspapers or “video and audio” enterprises to wrap …

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Associated Press Opens North Korea Bureau — When Associated Press executives and journalists attempted to open a North Korean bureau last month, they arrived in Pyongyang just hours after the death of Kim Jong Il. AP journalists hit the ground running and provided text and photos …

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: Home Media Magazine, Pocket-lint, @robertandrews, 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