Mediagazer: Silence of the Lambs: The Missing Voice of Authors in the SOPA Debate (Lisa Alter/AllThingsD)

1:25 PM ET, February 3, 2012

Top News:

I'm more than a Twitter Monkey — So can I level with you guys? I'm relieved that I'm not going to be doing this same social media jam forever. — Not because I don't like it - actually, I still really love it. I live to send out a tweet and see a flood of reaction come in as mentions and retweets.

Discussion: @mathewi, @jeffsonderman and Poynter

Mark Thompson / BBC:

The harassment of BBC Persian journalists — For those working for the BBC Persian service, interference and harassment from the Iranian authorities has become a challenging fact of life. — I am hugely proud of how they deal with that relentless pressure, and their unswerving commitment …

Discussion: @brianstelter

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Reuters staff vote for first strike in 25 years — NUJ members ‘overwhelmingly’ back action over below-inflation pay offer of 1.75% — Journalists at Thomson Reuters have voted to strike - for the first time at the news agency in more than 25 years - over a below-inflation pay offer.

Discussion: Editors Weblog and Press Gazette

NPR:

How Online Paywalls Are Changing Journalism … Read Clay Shirky's column “Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users” — Online media advocate Clay Shirky has long been a skeptic of newspaper paywalls. He now thinks 2012 could be the year that a critical mass of readers will be willing to pay for news online.

Discussion: @timmcguire

Wall Street Journal:

Advertisers' Free Ride May End On Facebook — For advertisers on Facebook Inc., the free ride may be coming to an end. — When the social network filed for its initial public offering on Wednesday, the spotlight shifted from the site's exponential user growth to a metric that may have more bearing on its market value: ad sales.

Discussion: WebProNews and Marketing Pilgrim, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Watch Out, TV: AOL and HuffPo Jump Into Live Video — AOL and The Huffington Post are readying a live video network that will have twelve hours of programming every weekday when it starts this summer. — The network, which is currently named The Huffington Post Streaming Network …

Discussion: GigaOM, Mixed Media, The Huffington Post, Media News, WWD Media Headlines, NewsLab, AdAge, FishbowlNY and Adweek

Lisa Alter / AllThingsD:

Silence of the Lambs: The Missing Voice of Authors in the SOPA Debate — The recent media frenzy surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act is perhaps most notable for the voice that is absent in the mainstream media debate: The voice of the individual creator of intellectual property.

Discussion: Media Matters for America and TeleRead

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

A Crowdfunded Approach To Setting E-Books Free — What do To Kill A Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time and Little House on the Prairie series have in common, besides being beloved? None of them are available legally as e-books. A new site aims to make these and other e-books available to the public …

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the next New York Times CEO — Talk about a plum job: chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. — The Times is one of the most respected brands on the planet. It is a pinnacle of the news trade. It generated revenues of $2.32 billion in 2011 …

Discussion: The Awl, CJR, Mother Jones and Poynter

Jeff Roberts / paidContent: New York Times Co To Expand Health Coverage Online

Malavika Sharma / Bloomberg:

Amazon Starts India Shopping Service as Internet Market Grows — Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), the world's largest Internet retailer, started an online shopping service in India to profit from the world's second most populous nation as it waits for the country's retail regulations to loosen.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, ZDNet, Reuters, BBC, Associated Press, The Next Web, memeburn, MediaNama and BGR India, more at Techmeme »

John Plunkett / Guardian:

Max Clifford: press too cautious after phone hacking and Leveson inquiry — PR veteran says newspapers would not uncover stories such as the MPs' expenses scandal in the current climate — PR veteran Max Clifford has said the MPs' expenses scandal would not have been uncovered by a newspaper in the post phone-hacking climate.

Foster Kamer / The New York Observer:

10 Questions with Chris Mohney, Editor-in-Chief of Tumblr's New Editorial Project — Yesterday, the New York Times broke news of blogging platform and social media network Tumblr's new editorial project. The project was characterized as something that will be “documenting the Tumblr service and marketing it to users.”

Discussion: newsplexer, PSFK, Anthony De Rosa, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com and New York Times

Dan Frommer / ReadWriteWeb:

Hollywood Isn't Ruining DVD Rentals On Its Own: Netflix is Happy to Help — It's easy to slam Hollywood for not understanding how technology works, or for putting its legacy business models ahead of user experience. Especially when big media companies do things like restrict digital access to movies and then cry about piracy.