Mediagazer: Associated Press news agency opens North Korea bureau (BBC)

7:55 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: Associated Press

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 — 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 …

Greg Sandoval / CNET:
Google calls Murdoch's piracy allegations ‘nonsense’

Discussion: paidContent:UK, AllThingsD, Crikey, Forbes and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme »

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

Discussion: Future of Journalism, TorrentFreak, Hillicon Valley, WebProNews, Ars Technica, CNET and VentureBeat

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, Mediaite, CNET, The Next Web, Runnin' Scared and Digital Spy

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 and Future of Journalism

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: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Dean Starkman / CJR:

A Narrowed Gaze — How the business press forgot the rest of us — Steve Lipin didn't fit the profile of a transformative media figure when he took over the mergers-and-acquisitions beat for The Wall Street Journal in 1995. His look was studious, his manner remarkably affable and low key, given the stress of his new job.

Robert Teitelman / The Huffington Post:
Starkman on the Decline of Business Journalism

Discussion: Talking Biz News

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,” …

Discussion: Reuters, Hollywood Reporter, Company Town, AdAge, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Associated Press, Medacity, Tubefilter and SocialTimes.com, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the long goodbye: Kodak's, Sears', and newspapers' — No old-world icon is safe. Just in recent weeks, both Kodak and Sears have percolated back into the news, offering headline writers a dilemma borrowed from the classic Saturday Night Live Weekend Update line …

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.”

Markcuban / blog maverick:

The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger ! — Back in my broadcast.com days we had a saying that “bits are bits”. That once content becomes digital, it is naturally going to become available on any and all digital devices. Based on this, we always made the point to be platform and device agnostic.