Mediagazer: Goodbye Erick, Hello Eric (TechCrunch)

7:20 PM ET, February 27, 2012

Top News:

Leveson: inquiry remains ‘committed to free press’ — Lord Justice Leveson responds to critics, saying inquiry ‘is doing no more than doing its mandated terms of reference’ — Lord Justice Leveson has responded to critics of his wide-ranging inquiry into press standards and insists he remains committed …

Discussion: Guardian

Vikram Dodd / Guardian:
Brooks and Coulson ‘warned in 2006’

Discussion: Deadline.com, Guardian and Media Law Prof Blog

David Leigh / Guardian:
Sun had ‘culture of illegal payments to sources’

Discussion: Guardian, The Huffington Post, Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk, Reuters, @arusbridger, Press Association, Press Association, Sky News and The Independent

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:
News Corp: threat of US legal action raised in light of ‘illegal payment’ claim

Discussion: Press Gazette

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Charlotte Church settles NoW phone-hacking claim for £600,000

Discussion: Reuters, Journalism.co.uk, Guardian, Associated Press, Press Gazette, Telegraph and TVWeek.com

TechCrunch:

Goodbye Erick, Hello Eric — TechCrunch has been through a lot lately, and we need to focus on what truly matters: covering startups and innovation. So, this post is going to be short. — But here is what's going on: Erick Schonfeld is leaving and Eric Eldon is replacing him as editor.

Discussion: Betabeat, PandoDaily, AOL Corp, AllThingsD and Business Insider

Sonya Hubbard / footnoted.com:

Details about the Gray Lady's $25,000-per-hour consultant... When the New York Times' (NYT) and its president and former chief executive, Janet L. Robinson, announced a few months ago that Robinson would step down at the end of the year - even though no successor had been identified - the news caught many off guard.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and Business Insider

Quinn Norton / Wired:

Wikileaks Pairs with Anonymous to Publish Intelligence Firm's Dirty Laundry — In an unprecedented collaboration between Anonymous and WikiLeaks, the secret spilling site began leaking Sunday night portions of a massive trove of e-mails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor …

Discussion: Foreign Policy, paidContent, Guardian, TPM Idea Lab, Charlie Beckett, GigaOM, This Just In, WikiLeaks, WebProNews, Mashable!, The Corsair, PC Magazine, Gawker, ITProPortal, New York Magazine, New York Times, Softpedia News and Boing Boing

Steve Huff / Betabeat:
[UPDATED] Anonymous Teams With Wikileaks To Publish Confidential Stratfor Emails in ‘The Global Intelligence Files’

Discussion: Jack Shafer, The Atlantic Online, The Yes Men Blog, VentureBeat, The Firewall, Forbes, Guardian, ZDNet, Journalism.co.uk, Techland, The New York Observer, The FJP, ReadWriteWeb, CNET, The Huffington Post and Gizmodo

Anna Heim / The Next Web:
WikiLeaks starts publishing ‘The Global Intelligence Files’, with 25 media partners on board

Discussion: PR Newswire, Politico, Mother Jones, thenation.com/blogs/180, Huffington Post Canada, WebProNews, Reuters, Reuters, WebProNews, Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, @jeffjarvis, Business Insider, The Raw Story and Forbes

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

FT Digital Subscriptions Surpass Print In U.S. As Sign-Ups Slow — The Financial Times is still signing up new digital subscribers, but at the slowest rate since iPad lit up its business model in mid-2010. — {data_set="29"} — It attracted 17,000 new digital subscribers in the final three months …

Discussion: NewsCred Blog, Talking Biz News and Press Gazette

David Carr / New York Times:

White House Uses Espionage Act to Pursue Leak Cases — Last Wednesday in the White House briefing room, the administration's press secretary, Jay Carney, opened on a somber note, citing the deaths of Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, two reporters who had died “in order to bring truth” while reporting in Syria.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Prof Chris Daly's Blog

Felix Salmon:

Why journalists need to link — Jonathan Stray has a great essay up at Nieman Lab entitled “Why link out? Four journalistic purposes of the noble hyperlink”. I basically agree with all of it; links are wonderful things, and the more of them that we see in news stories …

Discussion: The Buttry Diary, Mother Jones, Guardian, One Man & His Blog and GigaOM

Inti Landauro / Wall Street Journal:

France Working on Plan to Evacuate Reporters in Syria — PARIS—French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that “the beginning of a solution” was in sight to evacuate injured reporters from the besieged city of Homs in Syria, though he declined to give details while the process is continuing.

Discussion: Washington Post

David Blair / Telegraph:
Syria: second bid to evacuate journalists fails

Discussion: Committee to Protect … and Sky News

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk:

Murdoch claims three million sale for Sun on Sunday launch — Sunday title launches with ‘decency’ vow to readers - as media commentators describe first edition as ‘bland’ — News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has claimed a launch day circulation of more than three million for the first edition of the Sun on Sunday.

Discussion: @rupertmurdoch, Media Week, @rupertmurdoch, Press Gazette, Bloomberg, Poynter, The Sun, Business Insider, FishbowlNY, The Independent, Sands Media Services, Editor's Blog, Guardian, Guardian and Wall Street Journal

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

With Book, Buchanan Set His Fate — As the conservative polemicist Pat Buchanan prepared last fall for the release of his book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” some friends who worked with him at MSNBC were worried. The book, they told him, would provoke controversy and threaten his professional well-being.

Discussion: TVNewser, Politico and Inside Cable News

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Washington Post steps into paid content with iPad app for politics news — The new WP Politics iPad app, which launches Monday, marks The Washington Post's most significant attempt yet to charge readers for digital content. — The Post's website and most everything else it does digitally is free (ad-supported).

Discussion: Mixed Media, Washington Post, FishbowlDC, MediaPost, Daily Download and Mashable!

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Pearson Sees Digital Income Beating Print Publishing In 2012 — Pearson's digital revenue grew 18 percent to £2 ($3.17) billion (a third of the total) through 2011, as its book publisher Penguin's e-book sales rose 106 percent and the group reached 43 million students through digital learning services.

Discussion: Media Week and Pearson

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

PolitiFact walks back second ruling in a month, this time on Rubio claim — PolitiFact has revised its piece from Feb. 14, which found U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio's contention that “the majority of Americans are conservatives” to be “Mostly True.” It's now “Half True.”

Discussion: Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Politico and @jayrosen_nyu

BuzzFeed:

Michael Hastings Joins BuzzFeed To Cover Obama Campaign — Social news leader BuzzFeed has hired Michael Hastings to cover President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. Hastings, a bestselling author and writer whose coverage of the war in Afghanistan has shaken the political and military establishment …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Politico, FishbowlNY, @antderosa and Capital New York

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Women's Magazines — Pinterest hasn't just become a significant source of referral traffic for retailers; it's also becoming a top traffic driver for women's lifestyle, home decor and cooking magazines, some of which are seeing bigger referral numbers …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and Business Insider