Mediagazer: Amazon's Hit Man (Brad Stone/Business Week)

9:00 AM ET, January 29, 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, CNET, MediaFile, The Huffington Post, Future of Journalism, msnbc.com, VatorNews, PC Magazine, The Next Web, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Pocket-lint, The Wrap, The Realtime Report, New Media Age and Mediaite, more at Techmeme »

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Twitter uncloaks a year's worth of DMCA takedown notices, 4,410 in all — On almost any given day, Twitter receives a handful of requests to delete tweets that link to pirated versions of copyrighted content—and quickly complies by erasing the offending tweets from its site.

Discussion: TPM Idea Lab, VentureBeat, paidContent, Gawker and Boing Boing

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, The Daily Dish, Future of Journalism, Threat Level, Washington Post, Guardian, The Lede, China Real Time Report, BetaNews, 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, Technobabble and WebProNews

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

Discussion: TPM Idea Lab, Digital Spy, The Huffington Post, Future of Journalism, Scripting News, Mashable!, Forbes, PC Magazine, The Week, Anthony De Rosa, Marketing Pilgrim, Guardian, PopWatch, Reuters, Mixed Media and J-School

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: The Huffington Post, CNN, Chickaboomer, @jayrosen_nyu and @dangillmor

Brad Stone / Business Week:

Amazon's Hit Man — Larry Kirshbaum was the ultimate book industry insider—until Amazon called — Larry Kirshbaum, Vice-President and Publisher, Amazon Publishing — In November 1997, on a night of pounding rain in midtown Manhattan, Rupert Murdoch threw a party for Jane Friedman …

Discussion: The Verge, O'Reilly Radar, TeleRead, GeekWire and bookforum.com

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

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

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

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, more at Techmeme »

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

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