Mediagazer: 350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple's iBooks in Three Days (John Paczkowski/AllThingsD)

3:00 PM ET, January 23, 2012

Top News:

David Leigh / Guardian:

Phone hacking: News of the World journalists lied to Milly Dowler police — Surrey police report released by MPs reveals reporters interfered with investigation as well as hacking missing girl's phone — Read the Surrey police report on the Milly Dowler investigation

Discussion: Press Gazette, Associated Press, Hacking inquiry and Journalism.co.uk

Shane Croucher / International Business Times:
Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Sun Set for April Launch

Discussion: @tom_watson

@skynewsbreak: Media Committee chair John Whittingdale MP says “several NOTW reporters appeared to have hacked Milly Dowler's phone”

Joel Gunter / Journalism.co.uk:
Tom Watson calls on Met to investigate Times email hacking

Discussion: Guardian, New Statesman and Journalism.co.uk

Press Gazette:
BBC spent £310,000 on private detectives in six years

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Guardian, Sky News and Journalism.co.uk

Fusible:

Facebook registers ‘newsroom’ domains, is a social news website on the way? — Facebook has had a busy week with domain names. — On January 18, the company registered a slew of domains with “FB Origin” in the name. It followed up those purchases with “timeline movie maker” domains.

Discussion: Fast Company, Future of Journalism and Journalism.org

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Tom Curley, Associated Press President And CEO, To Retire — NEW YORK — Tom Curley, the top executive at the Associated Press, told staff Monday that the “moment has come for AP to begin a transition to a new leader.” Curley, who holds the titles of president and CEO …

Discussion: mediabistro.com and paidContent

Jeremy Greenfield / Digital Book World:

NBCUniversal Launches Book Publishing Arm, NBC Publishing — By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid — NBCUniversal is launching a book publishing arm to capitalize on growth in e-reader and tablet adoption, the decreasing cost of e-book production and a backlog …

Discussion: The Next Web, eBookNewser and Editors Weblog, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / The Atlantic Online:

Nearly a Third of Americans Now Own an E-Reader or Tablet — A new Pew study sees a sales surge in digital reading devices. Here's why we should be wary. — Pew has a report out this morning examining the sales performance of tablets and e-readers over the holidays.

Discussion: paidContent, Pew Internet and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Julie Bosman / Media Decoder:
Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar

Discussion: Forbes, NetNewsCheck Latest, MediaPost, AllThingsD, VentureBeat and eMedia Vitals

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple's iBooks in Three Days — Though nascent and unproven, Apple's new textbook initiative appears to be gaining lots of momentum — and quickly, too. Within days of its debut, Apple's iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads.

Discussion: Mercury News, ZDNet, Pocket-lint, GigaOM, eBookNewser, Mashable!, Fast Company, CNET, WebProNews, Garcia Media, The Next Web, Softpedia News and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD: Publisher Terry McGraw on Steve Jobs and Digital Textbooks: “This Was His Vision”

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

Tumblr Blows Past 15 Billion Pageviews Per Month, Thumbing Nose At Old Media Thinking As It Goes — The latest social-media phenomenon, Tumblr, continues to post astounding traffic metrics. — Founder and CEO David Karp spoke at the DLD conference in Munich this morning, where he reiterated some of the company's recent milestones:

Discussion: The Next Web

Felix Salmon / Reuters:
How sharing disrupts media

Discussion: The Next Web, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, SocialTimes.com, AllThingsD and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme »

Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:

Exclusive: YouTube hits 4 billion daily video views — (Reuters) - YouTube, Google Inc's video website, is streaming 4 billion online videos every day, a 25 percent increase in the past eight months, according to the company. — The jump in video views comes as Google pushes YouTube beyond …

Discussion: CNET, Home Media Magazine, VentureBeat, YouTube Blog, Mashable!, The Verge, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Hillicon Valley, hypebot, Electronista and Engadget, more at Techmeme »

JTA News:

Atlanta Jewish Times publisher resigns over Obama assassination column — (JTA) — The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times has resigned and is seeking a buyer in the wake of a column he wrote speculating that Israel would consider assassinating President Obama.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Public Petitions The White House To Investigate Chris Dodd & The MPAA For Possible Bribery — Late on Friday, we posted a story about how Chris Dodd at the MPAA appeared to be directly threatening politicians who had taken money from Hollywood, but refused to pass SOPA/PIPA.

Discussion: TorrentFreak

Joe Flint / LA Times:

Fox and RCN team up on Spanish-language broadcast network — News Corp.'s Fox International Channels and RCN Television Group, a Colombian broadcaster, are teaming up to launch a Latino broadcast network in the United States. — The new channel, dubbed MundoFox, will launch in the fall of this year.

Discussion: Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, rbr.com and The Wrap

Elaine Sciolino / New York Times:

Editor Is the Story as French Huffington Post Debuts — PARIS — Anne Sinclair smiled big for the cameras, not as the betrayed wife standing by her man, but as the star journalist she once was and hopes to be again. — The wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Ms. Sinclair returned to public life …

Daniel Victor / ProPublica:

False Joe Paterno Death Report Relied on Faulty Sourcing — This story was co-published with Poynter. — The Onward State tweet that erroneously reported Joe Paterno's death Saturday night and led to an avalanche of false reports in other outlets was based on the work of two student reporters …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Times and Erik Wemple

Jim Romenesko:
Devon Edwards will remain on Onward State staff

Discussion: Onward State and Poynter

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Brisbane: ‘I ended up as a pinata on this one’ — Public Editor Arthur Brisbane is following up the controversy over his previous statements about fact-checking with an appearance on “Reliable Sources.” “Of course the Times should check facts and claims about politics,” Brisbane told Howard Kurtz.