Mediagazer: Meet Nilesh Prasad, Sarah Phillips's Scamming Partner And Supposed “Puppetmaster” (John Koblin/Deadspin)

1:45 PM ET, May 3, 2012

Top News:

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson to face Leveson inquiry — Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former spin doctor, is to appear at the Leveson inquiry next week along with Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International. Coulson is appearing on Thursday, along …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Tom Watson accuses Louise Mensch of tabling pro-Murdoch amendments — Labour MP Tom Watson has accused Conservative select committee colleague Louise Mensch of tabling amendments that would have “exonerated” James Murdoch in its controversial phone hacking report following a personal intervention …

Discussion: @luciawalker5

Tom Harper / London Evening Standard:
Ex-Yard officer arrested in dawn raid over News International bribery claim

Discussion: Guardian

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
News Corporation was given private select committee details, suggests Tom Watson

Discussion: @lisaocarroll

David Carr / Media Decoder: Deconstructing Parliament's Loquacious Condemnation of News Corporation

Ryan Chittum / CJR:
The coverup culture of News Corp.

Discussion: Press Gazette, New York Times, Media Decoder, Media Week, Company Town, Capital New York, The Wrap and The Daily Beast

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:
News Corp. Says It Has ‘Full Confidence’ In Rupert Murdoch

Discussion: Guardian and @jwpetersnyt

Josh Smith / Tech Daily Dose:
Rockefeller Asks For News Corp. Scandal Details

Discussion: The Huffington Post, National Updates and Adweek

John Koblin / Deadspin:

Meet Nilesh Prasad, Sarah Phillips's Scamming Partner And Supposed “Puppetmaster” — Here, at last, are some photos of former ESPN columnist Sarah Phillips and her partner, Nilesh Prasad, the low-rent Bonnie and Clyde of social-media ripoffs. The reader who sent the one above said it was taken in April 2010 during a trip to Cancun.

Chris Greenberg / The Huffington Post:

Sarah Phillips Scandal: Ex-ESPN Columnist's Story Could Have Wide Ramifications — When Deadspin broke a story about ESPN contributor Sarah Phillips allegedly being involved in Internet scams and perhaps even using a false identity, it sent shockwaves through much of the sports media world, and Phillips lost her job soon after.

John Koblin / Deadspin:
Another Sarah Phillips Scam: “I'm A Writer For ESPN And I Plan To Take Over The World”

Discussion: Forbes, BuzzFeed and PC Magazine

John Koblin / Deadspin:
Sources: Sarah Phillips And Nilesh Prasad Picked Games Together, Scammed People Together …

Discussion: WebProNews, Awful Announcing and Daily Mail

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Romney Woos Conservative Media In Private Meeting — NEW YORK — In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering …

Discussion: TVNewser, Slate and The Atlantic Online

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

News Orgs Balk At Romney Campaign Deciding Press Pool Membership — NEW YORK — News organizations pushed back Wednesday after Mitt Romney's campaign decided the website BuzzFeed should be excluded from a rotating press pool, a group in which one member covers an event and produces a report shared among others in the pool.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Dylan Byers / @dylanbyers: Romney campaign backs off... BuzzFeed to stay in the Romney press pool...

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

CNN Ratings Decline Stirs Worries — That is what a longtime CNN employee theorized last year, during one of the channel's predictable defeats in the Nielsen ratings. When elections and explosions happen, people tune in to CNN, the same way they hurry to a hospital when they think they are having a heart attack.

Discussion: Media Decoder, New York Magazine, mediabistro.com, Wall Street Journal, TVWeek.com, WebProNews, All Things CNN and TVNewser

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:
CNN Feels Heat on Ratings Weakness

Discussion: Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Capital New York, The Huffington Post, Poynter, @jayrosen_nyu, Real Clear Politics and BREITBART.COM

Los Angeles Times:

Billionaire Eli Broad signals interest in buying L.A. Times — Five years after his partnership lost a bid to buy Tribune Co.and the Los Angeles Times, billionaire businessman Eli Broad said he remains interested in joining with others to restore local ownership to The Times.

Discussion: LA Observed, The Wrap and The Informer

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

ProPublica's Stephen Engelberg named to Pulitzer board (after ProPublica wins two of them) — The Pulitzer Prize board has a new member. Columbia University, which administers the annual journalism awards, announced today that Stephen Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, has joined the board.

Discussion: Columbia University … and FishbowlNY

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

How Politico can fix its mistake about Obama book — If an error in your reporting gives birth to a false rumor, do you have a responsibility to knock down that rumor? — Questions like this are being pondered more than ever before in newsrooms. When do journalists have a responsibility …

Discussion: Gothamist, PAPERMAG and The Week

Erik Wemple:
Politico defends ‘New York girlfriend’ post

Discussion: The New Yorker Blog, Washington Post, WebProNews, Politico, bookforum.com and GalleyCat

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

Tablet Newspaper ‘The Daily’ Launches on iPhone — The Daily, a News Corp.-owned daily news publication that launched exclusively on the iPad 15 months ago, is continuing to expand to new platforms with the launch of an iPhone edition Thursday. — The app [iTunes link] is relatively basic …

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Nielsen Reports a Decline in Television Viewing — The number of American households with access to a television set and a TV signal is shrinking for the second year in a row. — The data, released by The Nielsen Company on Thursday morning, is sure to be pored over by television …

Discussion: LA Biz Observed, Forbes, MediaPost and Nielsen Wire

Rebecca Shapiro / The Huffington Post:

Al Qaeda To Osama Bin Laden: ‘Fox News Lacks Objectivity,’ MSNBC Not As Neutral After Firing Keith Olbermann — Materials taken from Osama bin Laden's compound following his death in May 2011, which revealed that al Qaeda has major issues with Fox News, were publicly released by the Pentagon on Thursday.

Discussion: New York Magazine and FishbowlNY