Mediagazer: The News at NBC — Ratings pinch gives Lauer power. (Gabriel Sherman/New York Magazine)

News Corp. Said to Plan U.S. Sports Network to Rival ESPN — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWSA) is taking steps to start a national U.S. sports network on cable television aimed at challenging Walt Disney Co. (DIS)'s ESPN, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, The Wrap, PBS, Deadline.com, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, @pkafka, Politico, msnbc.com, AllThingsD and Guardian

Guardian:

Daily Mail made 1,728 potentially illegal requests to private detective — Journalists at the tabloid spent about £143,000 on requests to Steve Whittamore for information between 2000 and 2003 — The Daily Mail spent an estimated £143,000 asking a private eye …

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Australian minister wants News Corp inquiry

Discussion: The Wrap and The Journalism Foundation

Lucy Manning / ITV News:
Newspaper payments for potentially illegal information revealed

Discussion: Reuters, @iburrell, Guardian, National Updates and themediablog.typepad.com

Matt Siegel / New York Times:
Murdoch's News Ltd. Rejects TV Piracy Claim in Australia

Discussion: Media Decoder, Deadline.com and Reuters

Press Gazette:
Thurlbeck: Phone-hacking was rife across Fleet Street

Discussion: Frontline

Keach Hagey / Politico:

Ex-Rocky editor offered WashPost ME job — John Temple, editor of the Honolulu-based local news site Civil Beat and former editor of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, has been offered managing editor job at the Washington Post, POLITICO has learned. — The job has been open since Raju …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Anthony Rieber / Newsday:

Jeremy Lin meets with ex-ESPN headline writer — Knicks star Jeremy Lin had lunch on Tuesday with the former ESPN employee who was fired last month for writing a headline about Lin that included a racially insensitive word. — Lin met with Anthony Federico, a 28-year-old Connecticut man, during a Knicks off-day.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Gothamist

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

The News at NBC — Ratings pinch gives Lauer power. — On March 15, NBC News hosted its annual upfront presentation, at which its executives make their pitches to ad buyers for the coming year. NBC News has won its ratings races for more than a decade, so they didn't bother with a hard sell.

Discussion: Mediaite and Gawker

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

The WaPo Ombudsman's Faulty Paywall Analysis — The NYT's meter is saving or adding more than $70 million in revenue a year already — Washington Post ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton has a flawed analysis on the logic of a possible paywall there and on the performance of the one that already exists at The New York Times.

Discussion: Poynter

Lee Gardner / Baltimore City Paper:

What Is an Alt-Weekly? — We've been trying to figure that out for 35 years — Someone asked me that question recently, and I opened my mouth and started to talk. It's a question that comes up enough that I have a couple of standard answers I can riff on.

Erik Wemple:

Why did New York Times call George Zimmerman ‘white Hispanic’? — Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg is lashing out at the New York Times for its coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. His gripe? The paper's stylebook. Let Goldberg describe his concern:

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, National Review and Mediaite

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

Lost journalists documentary hits $50k goal on Kickstarter — A documentary that will follow photojournalist Tim Page in his continued search for the stories of journalists who went missing in Cambodia in the 1970s has crowdfunded $50K — A US production company has raised an initial goal …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Subscription Manager MediaPass Raises $1.75M — It's no secret that publishers are scrambling to find ways of making money online. On the subscription/paywall side, a startup called MediaPass wants to help, and it just raised $1.75 million in Series B funding.

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:

Orwell Prize 2012 Journalism and Blog longlists announced — Guardian journalist Paul Lewis is among those on the Journalism Prize longlist after submitting one day of tweets sent during the London riots — A total of 12 journalists and 18 bloggers have been named as contenders for this year's Orwell Prize.

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Dylan Byers / Politico:

NY Times Guild members win their 35 hours — The New York Times yesterday sent “a new, comprehensive proposal” to the Newspaper Guild of New York, in which it offered — among other things — to give Guild members a one-percent raise (plus a one-percent bonus in the second year) and to drop the proposal to end the Guild medical plan.

Discussion: The FJP, The Huffington Post and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Group Plans Protest of The Village Voice — Village Voice Media, which operates Backpage.com, is coming under more fire for maintaining an adult section that allegedly has been used by people to buy and sell minors for sex. A group led by Groundswell, a social action service of the Auburn Seminary …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and The New York Observer