Mediagazer: Can a big bet on tech help USA Today escape its paper past? (Jeff John Roberts/paidContent)

1:20 PM ET, November 20, 2012

Top News:

Former Murdoch Aides to Be Charged With Bribery — LONDON — In a dramatic new turn in the scandals swirling around Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper outpost, prosecutors said on Tuesday that two former top executives — Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks — will be charged with making corrupt payments …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, ProPublica, Chickaboomer and Vanity Fair

Kate Holton / Reuters:
Ex-Cameron aide charged over royal family details

Discussion: BBC, Guardian, AllThingsD, Metro.co.uk, New Statesman, Telegraph, Sky News, The Independent and Channel 4

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian: Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson charges set new context for Leveson

Bloomberg:

News Corp. to Acquire 49% of YES Network at $3 Billion Value — News Corp. (NWSA), the media company led by Rupert Murdoch, agreed to buy 49 percent of the YES Network, the cable channel that carries New York Yankees baseball games, in a deal that values the pay-TV outlet at about $3 billion.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
BSkyB Raises $800 Million, Analysts See Potential for Acquisitions

Discussion: Fox Business

Amy Chozick / New York Times:
Emerging From Scandal, News Corporation Looks at Potential Acquisitions

Discussion: Media Decoder, Bloomberg, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Poynter and CNN

Greg Mitchell / The Nation:

MSNBC's Disgrace: In Five Hours of Primetime, Fifteen Minutes on Israel-Gaza — Early yesterday, I made this prediction: Based on past performance, none of MSNBC's five primetime, liberal, hosts last night or their guests would utter a single word critical of Israel in the current conflict with Gaza.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, New York Times, The New Yorker Blog and Pressing Issues

Allison Hoffman / Tablet Mag:

The ‘Kids’ Behind IDF's Media — After the first night of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, now almost a week ago, a photograph began circulating around Twitter of a grinning 11-month-old who had been killed by an Israeli missile that landed on his house. Within hours, Avital Leibovich …

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Yahoo Is Among Those Mulling a TVGuide.com Bid for About $20 Million — According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is among the companies taking a serious gander at TVGuide.com, the online entertainment listings, video and news site and mobile app. — Earlier today …

Discussion: CNET, Betabeat, C21Media and Business Insider

David Lieberman / Deadline.com: Lionsgate In Advanced Negotiations To Sell TVGuide.com

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

@NYTOnIt author Benjamin Kabak ‘zero percent interested in picking a fight’ with NYT — New York lawyer Benjamin Kabak's @NYTOnIt Twitter account was reinstated Tuesday morning after a complaint from The New York Times took it offline overnight. — “I'm zero percent interested in picking …

Discussion: Guardian

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:
Twitter Restores @NYTOnIt Parody Account

Discussion: @juliemmoos, New York Magazine, Betabeat, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, @bkabak and Gothamist

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Pot calls kettle black in New York Times piece on Washington Post business troubles — I am a huge David Carr fan. Great writer, great eye for news-about-news, a shoe-leather reporter when he needs to be (as when driving the frat boys from the Tribune Co. executive suite).

Discussion: CNET and Media Decoder

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Social Curation Site Storify Gets A Search- And Media-Centric Redesign — Storify is launching a redesigned website, one that puts search front and center. — The site — which allows you to create stories out of online content from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram …

Katherine Fung / The Huffington Post:

Joe Scarborough Faces Nate Silver On ‘Morning Joe’ After Election Bet — Joe Scarborough and Nate Silver finally faced each other on Tuesday's “Morning Joe,” two weeks after Scarborough lost their election bet. Silver drew a fair amount of scorn from Scarborough and other pundits who doubted his polling predictions for the election.

Discussion: Poynter

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Tolkien estate sues Warner Brothers over Lord of the Rings digital rights — J.R.R. Tolkien's estate and publisher HarperCollins are suing Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema and the Saul Zaentz Company for infringing copyright on Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Guardian, mediabistro.com, BBC and Media Law Prof Blog

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Can a big bet on tech help USA Today escape its paper past? — Is there a future for a media brand best known for dropping free newspapers at America's hotels? The brass at USA Today seems to think so and today launched a “next generation” iPad app to carry the brand into the digital future.

Discussion: Street Fight

Jim Romenesko:

Newspaper owner tells critic: No reviews of films featuring strong women — Michael Calleri wrote film reviews for the Niagara Falls Reporter for seven years — “a wonderful experience,” he says, until the weekly paper was sold earlier this year and then “veered so far off the cliff that it collided with itself.”

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Twitter Cofounders Hire ‘Publishing Prodigy’ Kate Lee To Help Your (Good) Stories Get Read — A few months ago, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams created Obvious Corporation and launched a new blogging platform called Medium. — Medium is currently in closed beta …

Discussion: Medium, CNET and TechCrunch