Mediagazer: With Viacom deal, Amazon looks like a real competitor to Netflix (Ryan Lawler/Gigaom)

11:35 AM ET, February 8, 2012

Top News:

Sunday Mirror chief authorised hacking, says blogger Guido Fawkes — Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver personally authorised hacking and blagging, political blogger Paul Staines told the inquiry into press standards today. Mr Staines, who blogs as Guido Fawkes, told the Leveson Inquiry he had heard the claims from two journalists.

Martin Beckford / Telegraph:

News International scandal: police paid £100,000 under false names — Police officers were paid more than £100,000 by News International journalists who hid their true identities in company records, it is claimed. — Contacts are alleged to have been paid under £1,000 …

Brian Farmer / The Independent:

More phone-hacking claims settled — More high-profile figures have settled their phone-hacking damages claims, the High Court heard today. Ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne, comedian Steve Coogan, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes and football agent Sky Andrew are among …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Anna Heim / The Next Web:

Amazon Prime subscribers will get access to Viacom TV shows — Amazon has closed a deal with the media conglomerate Viacom that will let its Prime subscribers stream new TV shows, the company announced today. — This announcement doesn't come as a surprise, and confirms recent rumors …

Discussion: Reuters, Epicenter, 9to5Google, CNET and Home Media Magazine

Ryan Lawler / Gigaom:

With Viacom deal, Amazon looks like a real competitor to Netflix — Amazon continues to ramp up the amount of video content it offers for free to its Amazon Prime subscribers. On Wednesday it announced a deal with Viacom that will bring the number of titles available as part …

Discussion: Amazon, Home Media Magazine, TechCrunch, paidContent, Future of Journalism, The Wrap and Pocket-lint, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Nice Guy, Finishing Last: How Don Graham Fumbled the Washington Post Co. — In the next few months Facebook will go public at a rumored valuation of up to $100 billion, one of the most keenly anticipated business events ever. The instant that trading opens, Mark Zuckerberg and a handful …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, mediabistro.com, Politico, FishbowlNY, NetNewsCheck Latest and Poynter

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

Washington Post Will Further Reduce Staff — 9:44 a.m. | Updated The Washington Post announced a new round of buyouts on Wednesday, the latest in a series of staff reductions that have decreased the size of its newsroom by more than 200 people over the last three years.

Discussion: Forbes

Peter Lauria / Reuters:

AOL hires chief content officer for troubled Patch — (Reuters) - AOL Inc, which has been investing heavily in content to make up for declining revenue from dial-up Internet access, has hired an executive for the newly created position of chief content officer at its struggling Patch hyperlocal news network.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Future of Journalism and Business Insider

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.

Ben Fenton / blogs.ft.com: Sky's the limit on retweets

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

Discussion: BBC, The Wall Blog and The Next Web

John Koblin / WWD:

BuzzFeed Taps Amy Odell — CUT TO THE BUZZ: BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith has poached Amy Odell from New York Magazine's The Cut blog. — Odell will start at BuzzFeed at the end of the month and run a vertical geared toward women. Smith, Odell and BuzzFeed executive editor Doree Shafrir …

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Greg Kelly ‘thankful’ to be cleared of rape charges, will return to ‘Good Day’ soon — Fox 5 anchor Greg Kelly issued a statement through his publicist Tuesday night following news reports that the Manhattan D.A. will not charge him with rape. — “I am thankful that the investigation established …

Discussion: NY Daily News, rbr.com, Capital New York, New York Magazine and FishbowlNY

Daily Mail:
BREAKING NEWS: TV anchor Greg Kelly ‘will NOT be charged with rape’

Discussion: New York Times and Gawker

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Cable TV and Movie Divisions Help Lift Time Warner Revenue — An uptick in advertising revenue at its cable television networks and a solid performance at the box office for its Warner Brothers movie studio contributed to a 5 percent increase in quarterly revenue at Time Warner.

Discussion: Home Media Magazine

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Spokesman Mark Block says he asked Philly.com to remove sale story from website — A Philadelphia Daily News reporter's blog post about a potential buyer for his paper was removed from the company's news site Tuesday because it was misleading, according to the spokesman who requested it be taken down.

Discussion: Philly.com, CBS Philly, @davidfolkenflik, Off Mic and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Peter Lewis / The Bay Citizen:

Bay Citizen, Center for Investigative Reporting Announce Intent to Merge — The Bay Citizen and the Center for Investigative Reporting have signed a formal letter of intent to merge the two award-winning Bay Area nonprofit news organizations, the directors of both companies announced Tuesday afternoon.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and California Watch

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Le Huffington Post Québec Launches — Le Huffington Post Quebec, the second French language version of HuffPost, is live. HuffPost France launched in late January, with Anne Sinclair editing. Since you already know what to expect out of the 15,457th HuffPost vertical, we'll just tell you the nuts and bolts of the launch.

Discussion: The New York Observer and WebProNews

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Mail Online Income Quickening After U.S. Expansion — Mail Online's annual revenue growth rate has accelerated to a high of 70 percent following its big push in to the U.S., its publisher DMGT reported in Wednesday's interim disclosure for its October-to-January earnings.

Discussion: Press Gazette, production.investis.com and Guardian

Patrick Thornton / Poynter:

How Siri, if opened up to third-party apps, could enhance news consumption — Apple's Siri voice technology is one of the must-have features of the iPhone 4S, and has become one of the phone's biggest selling points. — Voice technology is not new. What makes Siri and similar technologies different …

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, TVWeek.com, WebProNews, Media Buyer Planner, Forbes and SlashGear

Erik Sass / MediaPost:

McClatchy Revenues Dip Nearly 8% — Major newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. reported that total revenues decreased 5% to $351.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. The decline was attributed to weak print advertising demand, as total advertising revenues fell 5.7% to $270.9 million …

Discussion: MediaPost, The McClatchy Company and paidContent

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 …