Mediagazer: House members demand ‘Obama memos’ from White House (Dylan Byers/The Politico)

11:30 PM ET, January 25, 2012

Top News:

Next The Biggest Newspaper In The World Is ... The Daily Mail!? — The Daily Mail, an omniverous middle-market British tabloid, has quietly unseated the New York Times to become the newspaper with the biggest online reach in the world, according to figures from the online tracking service comScore.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @buzzfeedben, PandoDaily, The Next Web, Guardian and NetNewsCheck Latest

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Latest numbers indicate New York Times traffic is flat since paywall — BuzzFeed reports that the U.K.'s Daily Mail has passed The New York Times as the largest online newspaper property in the world. A spokeswoman for the Times says this doesn't mean that the Daily Mail …

Adam Clark Estes / The Atlantic Wire: The Future of BuzzFeed Looks Like a Newsier Facebook News Feed

Erik Wemple: How to generate Web traffic: Don't link

Paul Harris / @paulxharris: What is remarkable about Daily Mail as biggest paper online is having no links. Ever. Goes against advice of all new media experts

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:

Occupy Wall Street Journalist Arrests Cost U.S. Dearly In Latest Press Freedom Index — The targeting of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement has caused the United States to drop precipitously in a leading survey of press freedom. Reporters Without Borders' latest Press Freedom Index …

Discussion: Jcstearns, @jackshafer, @brianstelter and New York Magazine

Dylan Byers / Politico:
How fair is RSF's Press Freedom Index?

Discussion: The Politico

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Netflix Bounces Back With a Q4 Beat, but Says Amazon Is Coming — First look at Netflix Q4 earnings: Earnings of $0.73 per share and revenue of $876 million. Wall Street was expecting around $0.54 a share and $857 million. — But at least as important are the company's subscriber numbers and guidance …

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Netflix streaming users now outnumber DVD subscribers 2:1 — Netflix may be getting out of the DVD business sooner that previously predicted, if Wednesday's fourth quarter financial results are any indicator. The company now has close to twice as many streaming subscribers as DVD subscribers in the U.S. …

Discussion: Multichannel, Company Town, The Next Web and Media Money …

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / WatchMojo:

Is YouTube Spending $100 Million or North of $200 Million on Video Content? — Recently I moderated a panel at Streaming Media West. Panelists included Michael Schwalb (Tremor Media), Mark Suster (VC at GRP), Eric Anderson, (VP, Content and Product Solutions, Samsung Electronics America) and AJ McGowan (CTO at Unicorn Media).

Discussion: @msuster

Jim Rainey / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Is Facebook ‘Subscribe’ for real? Booming new traffic explained — As their Facebook “subscriber” lists have spiraled upward — into the thousands and tens of thousands in recent weeks — many journalists have looked on in awe and wonder. — Executives at the social media behemoth say the …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New Facebook data: Be topical, ask questions, and tell jokes to win audience — Write about current affairs. Add in a little commentary (or a question). And, for the love of all that is holy, include a link. — Those are three of the takeaways from some new data that Facebook just released …

Discussion: paidContent, Facebook, VentureBeat, ZDNet, JIMROMENESKO.COM, GigaOM, TechCrunch and Poynter, more at Techmeme »

Guardian:

BBC sexism allegations: Ed Vaizey to broker meeting with director general — Broadcasting minister to set up meeting with Mark Thompson to discuss under-representation of women both on and off air — The broadcasting minister, Ed Vaizey, has undertaken to set up a meeting between Nadine Dorries …

Discussion: Company Town and Guardian

Press Association: MP slams BBC ‘culture of sexism’

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian: Lord Patten's BBC director general ‘succession plan’ is a curious move

Steve Myers / Poynter:

NAA Foundation to merge with American Press Institute — The boards of directors for the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the American Press Institute have agreed to “merge to create a dynamic new organization focused on meeting newspapers' crucial multimedia training and development needs.”

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, JIMROMENESKO.COM and NetNewsCheck Latest

Dylan Byers / The Politico:

House members demand ‘Obama memos’ from White House — Four members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have written a letter to the White House demanding that the administration provide them with internal documents that were leaked to New Yorker staff writer Ryan Lizza.

Discussion: ProPublica, The New Yorker and The New Yorker Blog

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

‘Fake sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood: Bribe allegation ‘completely untrue’ — Former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood tells the Leveson inquiry allegations he attempted to bribe staff to alter copy when he previously worked for the Sunday Times are ‘completely untrue’

Discussion: Guardian, Press Gazette and Guardian

Press Gazette:
Jefferies calls for inquiry over ‘police leaks’ to reporters

Discussion: Guardian

Andrew Pugh / Press Gazette: The Times faces Leveson scrutiny over NightJack

Miriam Elder / paidContent:

New Partner For Wikileaks' Assange: Russia's State-Run TV — It's the television channel that has given voice to a thousand anti-western conspiracy theories, while avoiding criticism of the hand that feeds it. Now state-run Russia Today, the Kremlin's English-language propaganda arm …

Discussion: Media Decoder, rt.com, Forbes, New York Magazine, TVNewser and Future of Journalism

Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:

Murdoch-backed music startup bankrupt before launch — (Reuters) - Beyond Oblivion, a digital music startup backed by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and investment bank Allen & Co Director Stanley Shuman has filed for bankruptcy protection after spending millions of dollars building a service that never saw the light of day.

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Future's Newsstand Transformation: 75,000 New Subscribers — UK magazine publisher Future made $1 million in new tablet magazine revenue within a month of debuting 65 of its titles on iTunes' Newsstand. — 104 days after Future debuted the titles with Newsstand's September 12 launch …

blog.news.me:

Getting the News - Zach Seward — (This post is part of News.me's ongoing series, “Getting the News.” In our efforts to understand everything about social news, we're reaching out to writers and thinkers we like to ask them how they get their daily news. Read the first post here.