Mediagazer: Where is TV critic Aaron Barnhart? Is it anybody's business? (Jim Romenesko)

The fight gets dirty: Sun accuses rival of using ex-MI6 men to tail civil servant — The managing editor of The Sun hit back at one of News International's chief tormentors yesterday, turning on The Guardian during an appearance at a Parliamentary committee.

Current TV to Hire Gavin Newsom, California's Lieutenant Governor — Updated Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, is getting a second job: as a talk show host on Current TV, the progressive cable television upstart. — “The Gavin Newsom Show” will be shown weekly starting in May, the channel announced on Wednesday.

Discussion: Mediaite and TVNewser

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Satirical iPad App Punch Hires Vanity Fair Veteran Jim Windolf as Editor — The Punch “shelf.” — The makers of Punch started with the idea that creating media for a brand-new medium, tablet computers, requires a whole new approach. They've certainly turned convention on its head in their hiring …

Discussion: Forbes and Fast Company

Daniel Frankel / paidContent:

NBC's London Olympics strategy: If it moves, stream it — Yes, you will be able to see men's doubles table tennis live this summer on nbcolympics.com, right after you finish watching those premiere swimming and track & field events. — Speaking to the New York Times Tuesday, Rick Cordella …

Discussion: Poynter, TVNewser, VentureBeat, NetNewsCheck Latest, the Econsultancy blog, The Verge and Techland

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

How The Tuscaloosa News' post-tornado tweeting helped bring home a Pulitzer Prize — When the Pulitzer Prize Board announced last year it would emphasize real-time reporting for the Breaking News category starting in 2012, some speculated whether we would someday see a Pulitzer Prize for tweeting.

Discussion: The FJP and LA Observed

Julie Moos / Poynter:

LA Times publishes graphic front page photo of US soldiers with Afghan corpses — The Los Angeles Times published graphic photos in print and online this morning of U.S. soldiers posing with Afghan corpses. — Eighteen such photos were provided by an anonymous soldier in the 82nd Airborne Division …

Discussion: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Mediaite, New York Magazine and Washington Post

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Mail Online is about to turn its first profit — Having quickly become the world's most-read newspaper website, Mail Online now looks like turning profitable earlier than expected. — “Last year, our revenues were £16 million. This year, Mail Online is very close to breaking …

Discussion: This Is London and Guardian

New York Times:

Pandora Courts Local Advertisers, by Offering Well-Defined Listeners — The music was pumping and the finger food laid out in abundance one recent evening in a subterranean Manhattan bar, as executives of Pandora Media, the Internet radio service, mingled with some of their most prized new advertisers.

Discussion: iMediaConnection Blog

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Physical media is dead — long live the app — Over the weekend, Hunter Walk (a friend of mine who works for YouTube) tweeted about brands offering apps built on the Spotify platform. Spotify is likely to introduce these branded apps from the likes of Intel, AT&T, Reebok and McDonalds at an Ad Age event this week.

Discussion: AllThingsD and eMedia Vitals

Brittany Darwell / Inside Facebook:

Facebook tests ‘trending articles’ feature to encourage users to try social reader apps — Facebook appears to be testing new feature to highlight social reader articles within users' News Feeds. — Some users now see a “trending articles” section of their feeds that includes headlines …

Discussion: Poynter

Jim Romenesko:

Where is TV critic Aaron Barnhart? Is it anybody's business? — Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart (@TVBarn) hasn't tweeted since early December. His last Star column was published on Christmas Day, a year-in-review piece. It appears he hasn't been on Facebook since January.

Discussion: TVNewser

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Labor Dept.'s new policies for journalists may affect market-moving data — The United States Department of Labor is changing the way journalists can prepare stories based on embargoed data, and news organizations are concerned that the new policies could keep them from filing stories with this data …

Discussion: Bloomberg and Talking Biz News

News.me:

Getting the News - Martin Nisenholtz — This week we sat down with Martin Nisenholtz, former senior vice president, digital at the New York Times. The Times was one of the first print publications to really embrace what the Internet could offer journalism, and has proven itself able …

Thanks:@jrlevine

Sarah Kendzior / The Atlantic Online:

The Day Yahoo Decided I Liked Reading About Child Murder — Algorithms are shaping how we see the world around us, with big consequences. What a machine thinks we need to know can become what we fear. — On February 8, 2012, I was on Yahoo's homepage when a headline caught my eye …