Mediagazer: UK police arrest Murdoch tabloid staff (Tim Castle/Reuters)

5:50 PM ET, January 28, 2012

Top News:

Letter to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey urging him not to cooperate with censors — Reporters Without Borders has written to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey voicing deep concern about yesterday's announcement that Twitter will introduce geolocated censorship …

Discussion: Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Huffington Post, Gawker, msnbc.com, Forbes, Future of Journalism, VatorNews, PC Magazine, Marketing Pilgrim, The Next Web, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Engadget, China Real Time Report and BetaNews, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

How much should we trust our new information overlords? — So much is possible with the digital tools we have today: Google provides information from billions of sources instantly; Facebook lets us stay in touch with friends around the globe; and Twitter allows anyone to broadcast their thoughts wherever they are.

Discussion: Forbes, Ars Technica, Future of Journalism, The Lede, Softpedia News, Mediaite, Boing Boing, ReadWriteWeb, NetNewsCheck Latest and Marketing Land

Nancy Messieh / The Next Web:

Twitter isn't censoring you. Your government is. — It's barely been a day since Twitter made the announcement that, going forward, tweets could be censored based on the local laws that govern a user's location, and the rumour mill is hard at work trying to figure out the reasons behind the decision.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Forbes, WebProNews and Digits

Zeynep Tufekci / technosociology:
Why Twitter's new policy is helpful for free-speech advocates

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Huffington Post, Scripting News, Mashable!, Threat Level, Washington Post, Guardian, Anthony De Rosa, The Week, PopWatch, Reuters, Techdirt, Mixed Media, J-School and Gov 2.0

Tim Castle / Reuters:

UK police arrest Murdoch tabloid staff — (Reuters) - Police arrested four current and former staff of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling Sun tabloid and a policeman on Saturday in a probe into suspected payments by journalists to officers for information, police and the newspaper's publisher said.

Discussion: Reuters, New York Times, Gawker, BBC, Guardian, Guardian, @dansabbagh, @joshhalliday, The New York Observer, @timescrime and The Huffington Post

Jeremy W. Peters / The Caucus:

NBC News Asks Romney Campaign to Remove Ad — 4:29 p.m. | Updated TAMPA, Fla. - NBC News is asking that the Romney campaign remove from its ads any references to material from the network in response to a new commercial that consists almost entirely of old footage of its former news anchor …

Discussion: CNN and The Huffington Post

Erika Fry / CJR:

Voters to Press: Tell Us Where the Candidates Stand — In South Carolina, readers look to local papers for the basics — One of the main media frames for the 2012 presidential campaign is the way in which media frames are changing. And they are, too—but not all of them.

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Bloomberg Executive Is Said to Be in Talks to Lead Dow Jones — News Corporation is said to be in advanced talks to hire Lex Fenwick as the chief executive of Dow Jones, filling a six-month vacancy created when the publisher's top executive resigned amid the phone-hacking scandal in Britain.

Discussion: Moneycontrol, Thanks:@beet_tv

Cotton Delo / AdAge:

Twitter to Roll Out More Brand Pages for Advertisers Who've Committed $25K — New Pages Next Week Restricted to Those Buying Promoted Tweets, Trends — Twitter will start rolling out more brand pages next week for some brands and partners who have already committed to spending at least $25,000 …

Discussion: The Verge, Business Insider, VatorNews, The Next Web and WebProNews

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon, Users Fear Lost Books — Book-centered social networking site Goodreads, which allows users to keep records of the books they read and share the information with others, has long sourced most of its basic book data from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).

Discussion: Future of Journalism and TeleRead

David Skok / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Aggregation is deep in journalism's DNA — Below are a few quotes. Can you guess when each was written, and to what they refer? … Sounds a bit like an online aggregator, doesn't it, pulling a few salient points from much longer work? One more:

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Time, Thanks:@dskok

Guardian:

Who next for BBC director general role? — Mark Thompson has signalled that he is ready to step down, but who will take over from him? We look at the main contenders — Peter Fincham, ITV director of TV — Has led a creative revival at ITV, with hits such as Downton Abbey, since joining the commercial broadcaster in 2008.

Discussion: Guardian and blogs.telegraph.co.uk

Paul Miller / The Verge:

Debate rages as Spotify, MOG, and Rdio kill / save the music industry — For the conscience-laden music consumer, streaming music services present an interesting quandary. By separating the concept of “legal access to music” from the age-old paradigm of “paying the artist for an entire song or album …