Mediagazer: Scandal and Scrutiny Hem In Murdoch's Empire (Amy Chozick/New York Times)

2:55 PM ET, April 30, 2012

Top News:

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Woodward rejects new Watergate claims — Bob Woodward is strongly disputing a new report in which it is revealed that his mentor, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, once expressed “fear in my soul” that Woodward had embellished for dramatic effect certain key details of his reporting on the Watergate scandal.

Discussion: New York Magazine and Guardian

Jeff Himmelman / New York Magazine:

The Red Flag in the Flowerpot — Four decades after Watergate, there's something that still nags at Ben Bradlee about Deep Throat. — One day in early 2007, Bob Woodward poked his head into my office. He and his wife, Elsa, had been out for dinner the night before with Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn.

Discussion: Washington Post, ABCNEWS, Politico, @benfenton, Poynter and The New York Observer

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Himmelman, NY Mag defend Woodward-Watergate story — Reporter Jeff Himmelman and the editors at New York Magazine are standing by a new article that casts doubts on some aspects of Bob Woodward's Watergate reporting, despite the deliberate omission of a 2010 interview that — Woodward says — undermines the entire premise of the piece.

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Mike Allen / Politico:

Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn defend Bob Woodward — Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn made strong statements of support for Bob Woodward and his Watergate reporting on Monday, moving to defuse damaging questions raised by a new article and biography that includes musing by Bradlee about whether some details had been embellished.

David Carr / New York Times:

Navigating a Tightrope With Amazon — Last Tuesday, Buzz Bissinger hopped the Amtrak train to Philadelphia from New York, where he had done a bit of publicity for “After Friday Night Lights,” a 12,000-word e-book that had been performing nicely since its release.

Discussion: GalleyCat, DealBook, paidContent, Poynter, Digital Book World, Fortune, Media Decoder, Wired and Melville House Books

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Microsoft Makes $300M Investment In New Barnes & Noble Subsidiary To Battle With Amazon And Apple In E-books — Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the heating up market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them …

Discussion: Betabeat, Yahoo! News, Barnes & Noble, Inc., Forbes, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD, GigaOM, Wired, Media & Entertainment, The Wrap, VentureBeat, CNET, @ingridlunden, Engadget, Pocket-lint, Softpedia News and paidContent

Om Malik / GigaOM:
At $1.7 billion, Nook is worth more than Barnes & Noble itself

Discussion: paidContent

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Scandal and Scrutiny Hem In Murdoch's Empire — In the months after a phone-hacking scandal erupted in Britain last summer, Rupert Murdoch told people within News Corporation that he wanted to revisit his media company's discontinued $12 billion bid for the pay television service British Sky Broadcasting.

Discussion: Capital New York, Media Decoder and Free Press

Lucy Manning / ITV News:

Exclusive: Three former News International executives misled Parliament — The long-awaited and potentially explosive report on phone hacking from the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is due tomorrow morning. MPs had their last meeting this morning to sign off the report and ITV News can reveal some of the findings.

John Plunkett / Guardian: News Corp's Sky stake a ‘problem’ for broadcaster, says shadow minister

David Milliken / Reuters:
Cameron denies “grand deal” to help Murdoch

Discussion: Reuters, Associated Press, Telegraph, Guardian and Guardian

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

‘The American Prospect’ Magazine May Close In May — The American Prospect, an influential liberal politics and policy magazine, could shut its doors at the end of May unless the nonprofit publication raises a half million dollars to fill a current funding gap.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and FishbowlDC

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Columbia to distribute $2 million in grant money to find ‘best practices’ in digital media — Three months after receiving an unprecedented $18 million endowment from Helen Gurley Brown to create a “media innovation” institute, Columbia's journalism school is celebrating yet another significant cash infusion.

Discussion: Poynter, CyberJournalist.net and Columbia University …

Alex Pareene / Salon:

Tucker Carlson's downward spiral — Once a promising young magazine writer, the bow-tied Daily Caller pundit has come to epitomize right-wing hackdom … In many ways Tucker Carlson's a better symbol of the pathetic state of what passes for conservative journalism than even Glenn Beck …

John Del Signore / Gothamist:

City Official Got TIME To Yank Photo Of Councilmember's OWS Arrest, Lawsuit Alleges — Four New York City Councilmembers and a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters announced the filing of a big federal civil rights lawsuit (read it in full below) against the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg.