Mediagazer: Oprah Winfrey bodyguards detained in India after getting into scuffle with local media (Associated Press)

12:20 AM ET, January 20, 2012

Top News:

Darrell Etherington / GigaOM:

Apple unveils iBooks Author, a Mac app for easy interactive e-book authoring — Apple's Roger Rosner, VP of productivity software, showed off Apple's new iBooks Author on Thursday at Apple's special media event in NYC. iBooks Author is a Mac app that provides tools to help anyone publish …

Discussion: Apple, AllThingsD, 9to5Mac, The Vook Blog, Epicenter, CNET, TeleRead, Gadget Lab, MacRumors, Forbes, Pocket-lint, paidContent, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Softpedia News, TechCrunch and The FJP, more at Techmeme »

Bits:

Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks — Updated — Apple wants students to stop lugging around backpacks full of heavy textbooks and to switch to the iPad instead. — On Thursday the company introduced three free pieces of software revolving around education.

Discussion: CNET, GigaOM, TechCrunch, The Awl, ZDNet, Global News, Forbes, Pocket-lint and Softpedia News, more at Techmeme »

Paul Carr / PandoDaily:

iBooks Author Is Not Going To Hurt Publishers. It Might Even Help Them — I'm a heavy reader. Right now I have three print books on the go, and about half a dozen ebooks. I'm also an author of a dozen books, before which I knew the pain of being an unpublished author.

Discussion: TeleRead, Jack Shafer and GigaOM

Dan Wineman / venomous porridge:
The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:
The day the bookshelf shook: Four lessons for news orgs from today's Apple iBooks announcements

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Business Insider, VentureBeat, The Verge and The Journalism Foundation

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Houghton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Pearson First Textbook Publishing Partners For Apple's iBooks 2

Discussion: The Huffington Post and CNET, more at Techmeme »

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

How Media Shaped Romney's ‘Inevitable’ Narrative — CHARLESTON, S.C. — Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus by eight votes over Rick Santorum, according to reports by every news organization on Jan. 4. Now two weeks later, there's a different story: Santorum is ahead of Romney by 34 votes …

Reuters:

News Corp pays out over hacking claims, said to admit coverup — (Reuters) - The British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has acknowledged to victims that executives covered up the scale of illegal activity by destroying evidence and lying to investigators, victims' lawyers said on Thursday.

Discussion: Beyond Search, The Independent, paidContent, ThinkProgress, Guardian, Future of Journalism, Deadline.com and @benfenton

Press Gazette:

37 phone-hacking settlements confirmed at High Court — Nineteen more civil damages claims brought over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal have been settled, the High Court heard today. — Actor Jude Law, former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott and Labour MP Chris Bryant …

Discussion: Adweek, Guardian, Poynter, @dansabbagh, Broadcasting & Cable, rbr.com, Media & Entertainment, Guardian, NetNewsCheck Latest and The Wire

Guardian:

How News Group hid the phone-hacking scandal — Judge criticises Murdoch empire as it agrees aggravated damages for 37 victims of News of the World — A high court judge said the Murdoch-owned company behind the News of the World had made “an admission of sorts” that it engaged …

Discussion: CJR

@tomsymonds:
Jude Law statement read out: phone hacked repeatedly - including on US soil at JFK airport #phonehacking

Discussion: New York Magazine and @tomsymonds

Erik Larson / Bloomberg: News Corp. ‘Startling’ E-Mails Trigger New U.K. Computer Search

Neville Thurlbeck:
News International's Crisis of Trust - The Staff

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Associated Press:

Indictment Charges Megaupload Site With Piracy — McLEAN, Va. — Federal prosecutors in Virginia say they have shut down one of the world's largest Internet file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, and charged its founder and others with violating piracy laws. — An indictment accuses the company …

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

The Mega empire: details of the MegaUpload indictment — The FBI moved Thursday to shut down MegUpload.com and arrest four of its executives including its founder Kim Schmitz. The feds are alleging criminal copyright infringement and racketeering, and the full indictment has already been posted online.

Discussion: Federal Bureau …, VentureBeat, Fast Company, msnbc.com, Forbes, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Guardian, Pocket-lint, Home Media Magazine and @hanezawakirika, more at Techmeme »

Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Anonymous claims DOJ and record label site takedowns in response to MegaUpload suit

Discussion: rt.com and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Jim Romenesko:

Dealing with the Fox News PR machine — “Much as I like Gabe Sherman's work, I disagree with him in this instance,” Times media editor Bruce Headlam told me Tuesday night. “Covering a person or organization doesn't mean you are carrying water for them. If it did, our homepage right …

Discussion: Gawker, Inside Cable News and TVNewser

Nikki Finke / Deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Hollywood Moguls Stopping Obama Donations Because Of President's Piracy Stand: “Not Give A Dime Anymore” — EXCLUSIVE: Internet sites on their SOPA-Strike may be conducting a blackout but Hollywood studios are conducting a boycott. I've learned that Hollywood studio chiefs individually …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, CNN, The Huffington Post, Indecision Forever, John Battelle's Search Blog, rbr.com, Techdirt, paidContent, ReadWriteWeb, CNET, The Informer, White House.gov Blog, LA Observed and Free Press

Erik Wemple:

Memo to ABC: Just run Gingrich interview! — The Drudge Report last night blasted out the story that ABC had been sitting on its allegedly explosive interview with Marianne Gingrich. Here are the specifics: … It's a curious decision regardless of how aggressively the network has been reporting on other candidates.

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Times and CNN

Al Tompkins / Poynter:
ABC to air interview tonight with Gingrich's ex-wife, but why?

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Politico, Washington Post, Media Decoder and Mediaite

Eric Savitz / Forbes:

Amazon Kindle Fire: More Profitable Than Expected? — The Amazon Kindle Fire might be a more profitable product than you think. — RBC Capital analyst Ross Sandler reached that conclusion in a research note this morning, after he assessed the results of a proprietary survey of 216 Kindle Fire owners.

Discussion: eBookNewser, Fast Company, PC Magazine, WebProNews and TeleRead, more at Techmeme »

paidContent:
Why Amazon's Plagiarism Problem Is More Than A Public Relations Issue

Discussion: Erik Wemple, TeleRead and Crikey

Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:

Online Ad Spend Projected To Soar To Nearly $40B — In a watershed moment for the Web, researchers expect domestic online advertising to finally surpass print adverting in 2012. According to eMarketer, U.S. online ad spending will grow an additional 23.3% to $39.5 billion this year.

Discussion: eMarketer, Forbes and mnilive.com

Tommy Christopher / Mediaite:

Poll Says Fox News Most Trusted News Source...And Least Trusted — Public Policy Polling has just released its 3rd Annual TV News Trust Poll, and while the poll found PBS to be the outlet that the most people trust (for the second year in a row), Fox News was the outlet that more people said they trusted most.

Discussion: The Daily Dish, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, TVNewser and Public Policy Polling

Dylan Byers / The Politico:

PolitiFact's art of interpretation — Hating on PolitiFact has become something of a sport in political media circles, especially since the fact-checking shop (a Tampa Bay Times project) selected its controversial “Lie of the Year.” But this new email exchange posted by one Tom Bruscino …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Big Journalism, Politifact.com Truth … and Mother Jones