Mediagazer: The BBC confronts an Internet troll on national TV (Brad McCarty/The Next Web)

8:55 PM ET, February 7, 2012

Top News:

U.S. authorities looking into Murdoch foreign payments — (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are stepping up investigations, including an FBI criminal inquiry, into possible violations by employees of Rupert Murdoch's media empire of a U.S. law banning corrupt payments to foreign officials such as police …

Discussion: Guardian, @henrycp, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk:

Times admits and apologises for NightJack email hacking — Editor James Harding says he was not told about how 2009 story revealing identity of police officer had been obtained — James Harding: reporting was highly intrusive — The Times has apologised for hacking into a police officer's email account …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Guardian, Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk

Bloomberg: Times Editor Apologizes for Misleading U.K. Court

Stephen Hull / The Huffington Post - UK: Dominic Mohan, Sun Editor, Says Page 3 Girls Are ‘Healthy Role Models’

BBC:
Phone hacking: Met police failed to warn victims

Discussion: content.met.police.uk, PC Magazine, @rosschawkins, @byameliahill and @byameliahill

BBC: Leveson Inquiry: Press watchdog ‘made a scapegoat’

Gordon Rayner / Telegraph: Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to be recalled to Leveson Inquiry

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Sky News clamps down on Twitter use — Reporters banned from reposting non-company tweets and told to check with the news desk before breaking news stories — Sky News has told its journalists not to repost information from any Twitter users who are not an employee of the broadcaster.

Discussion: Forbes, Poynter, Inside, GigaOM, Anthony De Rosa, Charlie Beckett, The Atlantic Wire, @antderosa, @lheron, @rosschawkins, @dansabbagh, @robertmackey, @wyredavies, @joshhalliday, @justinnxt and The Next Web

Fleet Street Blues: Sky News opts for old-fashioned content creation over curation with Twitter clampdown

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

In latest report, circulation is up for ‘New York,’ ‘New Yorker’ — During a six month period in which the magazine industry continued to see decreases in subscriptions and newsstand sales, New York's hometown glossies still eked out small circulation gains.

Discussion: Capital New York, Adweek, Canadian Magazines, Media Decoder, The Huffington Post and NewsBulletin Connection

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Magazine Newsstand Sales Still In Freefall — Did you forget to stop by the newsstand a few times last year? Don't worry; so did a lot of your fellow Americans. The ongoing decline in magazine single-copy sales accelerated in the second half of 2011, with the losses falling just short of double-digits …

Discussion: Folio, Latest from Crain's …, Globe and Mail and NewsBulletin Connection

Kevin Lincoln / Business Insider:

New York Observer Publisher Jared Kushner Might Buy The Dodgers — Jared Kushner — owner and publisher of the New York Observer, son-in-law of Donald Trump — is in the running to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Times reports. — If his bid went through, he would become the youngest owner in the MLB.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, LAist, FishbowlLA, Forbes, New York Post, FishbowlNY and New York Magazine

Elizabeth Spiers / spiers.tumblr.com: The New York Observer, One Year In

Felix Salmon:
Elizabeth Spiers and the reinvented New York Observer

Discussion: bookforum.com, @espiers, The Corsair and Fimoculous.com

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

GOP Primary Show: Non-Stop News And Noise In The Age Of Twitter — Last week, Jon Ralston, a veteran Las Vegas Sun columnist, dared reporters to ignore Donald Trump's unveiling of his presidential endorsement — with low expectations about how that might play out.

Discussion: Poynter

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Pew: Cable tops local TV news as source of campaign, election information — New research from the Pew Center for the People & the Press shows fewer Americans are closely following the 2012 election than in 2008, with significant drops in the percent of people — especially older adults …

Discussion: Pew Research Center …, Media Decoder, The Huffington Post, TVNewser, Inside Cable News, The FJP, Hillicon Valley, ReadWriteWeb, Washington Post and Multichannel

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Why a Univision-ABC Partnership Might Make Sense — A long-brewing business plan between Univision and the Walt Disney Company's ABC News division to start an English-language cable news channel has been made public. Though no announcement appears to be imminent, the television-news industry is now abuzz over the possibilities.

Discussion: paidContent, Broadcasting & Cable, Company Town, Media Money …, TVWeek.com, Chickaboomer and Inside Cable News

Dylan Byers / Politico:
The ABC News-Univision game change

Discussion: Company Town, rbr.com, AdAge and Wall Street Journal

Lucy Battersby / Sydney Morning Herald:

Video easy: HBO takes a $10m investment in Quickflix — THE US television company HBO is investing $10 million in the Australian entertainment market, taking out a 16 per cent stake in the video subscription service Quickflix. HBO will receive 83.3 million preference shares at 12¢ …

Discussion: Crikey and VentureBeat

Technology Review:

How to Predict The Spread of News on Twitter — Computer scientists have discovered the four factors that make news stories popular on Twitter — Twitter has revolutionised the way millions of people receive news and the type of news they get. So it's no surprise that there is huge interest …

Discussion: The FJP

Erik Wemple:

Four reasons why Ross Douthat's media-bias argument is bunk — In his piece in the New York Times's Sunday Review, op-ed columnist Ross Douthat is careful to establish his credibility in citing liberal media bias: … But not in this case! proclaims Douthat.

Discussion: The New York Observer, Journalism.org, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, The Daily Dish, Forbes, LifeNews.com, New York Times and Bloomberg

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:
Media Research Center blasts networks for not covering Obama's ‘attack on religious freedom’

Discussion: mediabistro.com

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

2.1 Million Streamed the Super Bowl, NBC Says — More than 2.1 million people turned on the live Internet stream of Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday night, NBC said on Tuesday, citing data from two measurement firms, Omniture and mDialog. — NBC said in a news release that the live stream represented the …

Discussion: Forbes and Forbes

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:
No Ads, No Madonna But NBC Calls Live Stream A Success

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel, Forbes, InvestorPlace, Streaming Media, Digital Spy, Washington Post, Techdirt, mUmBRELLA, Media News and WWD

Jim Romenesko:

Editorial cartoonists insulted by NYT solicitation — Hello - — The Sunday Review section is bringing back editorial cartoons! Each week a single-panel cartoon will run on page 2, facing our weekly comics by Brian McFadden. — Please email your submissions to sundayreviewcartoons@nytimes.com

Discussion: CJR and Gawker

Kerry Lauerman / Open Salon:

Hit Record — There's a terrible stereotype about Web editors, that we just care about traffic. Page views, unique visitors, clicks, hits, eyeballs, drivebys, furtive peeks, longing glances and everything in between. — And it's true! — Except I'm here to tell you that there's no easy trick …

Discussion: @alexismadrigal

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

McClatchy Beats Earnings Forecasts, Touts Digital Investments — McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) Company's fourth quarter operating earnings beat analysts' predictions, while the newspaper chain also reported an overall boost from investments in online properties like Cars.com and Apartments.com.

Discussion: Poynter, MediaPost and The McClatchy Company