Mediagazer: Leveson inquiry: Hunt's permanent secretary to appear on Friday (Josh Halliday/Guardian)

10:45 AM ET, May 23, 2012

Top News:

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Andy Coulson voicemails allegedly hacked — Voicemails left by Andy Coulson for the aide to former Labour home secretary Charles Clarke are believed to be among those allegedly hacked while he was editor of the News of the World. Coulson is one of a number of journalists whose messages …

Media Monkey / Guardian:

Michel expected to hold nerve at Leveson — Frédéric Michel, the sophisticate brought in to professionalise lobbying at News Corporation, is coolly preparing to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Thursday. Those who have seen him this week say he shows surprisingly few signs of nerves …

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Leveson inquiry: Hunt's permanent secretary to appear on Friday — Jeremy Hunt's most senior civil servant, Jonathan Stephens, is to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Friday about the culture secretary's handling of News Corporation's £8bn bid for BSkyB.

Michael Rundle / Huffington Post UK:

Leveson Inquiry: Jeremy Paxman Says Piers Morgan Told Him How To Hack Phones — Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has told the Leveson inquiry into press standards that Piers Morgan told him how to hack phones at a dinner in 2002. Paxman said the former Daily Mirror editor was present at a dinner he attended at Canary Wharf.

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Huffington Post Gets Its First Publisher Amid Broader AOL Changes — Janet Balis Takes Post While AOL Chief Revenue Officer Ned Brody Also Gets New Role — In his company's most recent earnings call, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said he wanted to restructure the company in a way that made …

Discussion: AllThingsD, FishbowlNY and MediaPost

Michael Wolff / Technology Review:

The Facebook Fallacy: For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web. — For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web.

Discussion: Guardian, @ckrewson, @jayrosen_nyu, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog and New York Magazine

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

If Video Sites Could Act Like Cable Companies — BOSTON — Most consumers have no idea what an M.V.P.D. is, but they mail a check to one every month. What they call Comcast or Time Warner Cable or DirecTV, the government calls a “multichannel video programming distributor,” or M.V.P.D. for short.

Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:

For AOL, a Costly Gamble On Local News Draws Trouble — Patch.com, a network of small-town news sites owned by AOL Inc., has emerged at the center of a tug of war over the Internet company's future. — The high cost of running the local-news sites has fueled a campaign …

Discussion: Street Fight, Gannett Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, Washington Post, JIMROMENESKO.COM and Poynter

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
AOL's Patch Gets a Haircut in Push For Profitability

Discussion: Street Fight

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:
Patch Cuts 20 Managers, Restructures

Discussion: TVNewser

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Pentagon, CIA, White House opened up to Hollywood on bin Laden raid — Just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned publicly of the dangers posed by leaks about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies and at the White House granted …

Voice of San Diego:

Knight Grant Fuels New VOSD On-Demand Mag — Exciting news here at VOSD: We're going beyond our online site to publish a print and digital monthly magazine. — Voice of San Diego Monthly is part of our new membership program, which aims to build a community of readers (you!) to help support us into the future.

Discussion: FishbowlLA and Knight Foundation

Owen Bowcott / Guardian:

Julian Assange extradition verdict due next week — The supreme court will deliver its verdict next Wednesday on whether or not the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, should be deported to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. The short judgment on 30 May will include …

Jay Greene / CNET:

How Amazon is changing the rules for books and movies — Amazon Studios is crowdsourcing movie-making, creating test movies, that fans can review, with storyboard art in the place of video, like this image from a possible upcoming release called “Touching Blue.”

Joseph Menn / Reuters:

Yahoo under Levinsohn seen shifting to content, advertising — (Reuters) - With two of its most distracting conflicts resolved in the past week and a half, Yahoo Inc hopes its new interim chief executive can focus on the biggest challenge of all: turning the company into an entertainment …

Saul Daniels / Northridge-Chatsworth Patch:

Tribune Restructures to Spin Off the Los Angeles Times — Tribune Co., the corporate parent of the Los Angeles Times, is streamlining its corporate structure for the possible sale of newspaper and broadcast units, according to ChicagoBusiness.com. For years the company operated …