Mediagazer: DJs Behind the Royal Hospital Hoax Have Deleted Their Twitter Accounts; There's Speculation They've Been Fired (UPDATE) (Caity Weaver/Gawker)

5:05 PM ET, December 7, 2012

Top News:

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

Online Paywalls and the Future of Media: A Few Hard Truths — Yesterday, both The Daily Beast (or, more accurately, whatever Tina Brown can toss together after they've absorbed the corpse of Newsweek and laid a bunch of people off) and the Washington Post announced that they may be instituting …

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Magazine, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Capital New York, The Wrap, The Daily Beast and paidContent

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Pay Wall Push: Why Newspapers Are Hopping Over the Picket Fence — When The Wall Street Journal broke the news that The Washington Post was likely to start charging for online content sometime next year, it should not have come as a surprise, but it did. — The shock had something …

Discussion: CJR, CNET, Daily Download and The Verge

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
Washington Post, Daily Beast Jumping On The Paywall Bandwagon. Too Late?

Discussion: Capital New York, DCist, The Atlantic Wire and Bloomberg

Caity Weaver / Gawker:

DJs Behind the Royal Hospital Hoax Have Deleted Their Twitter Accounts; There's Speculation They've Been Fired (UPDATE) — The two DJs behind the Kate Middleton hospital prank, now being blamed as a contributing factor to her nurse's suicide, have either deleted their verified Twitter accounts, or had them removed.

Discussion: National Post, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Media Decoder, TMZ.com, Guardian, The Wrap, Yahoo! News, mUmBRELLA, Telegraph, Daily Mail, International Business Times, The Atlantic Wire, @thematthewkeys, KNXV and National Updates

Guardian:

2Day FM: Australia's shock-jock station with history of backfiring stunts — One DJ previously reprimanded for making teen girl admit she was raped, and calling a female journalist a ‘fat slag’ — The Sydney radio station that made a hoax call to the hospital treating the Duchess of Cambridge …

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

News Corp's publishing arm to focus on losses at Times and Sunday Times — More integration of titles difficult under terms that Rupert Murdoch agreed for Times Newspapers in 1981 — Slashing losses at the Times and Sunday Times, running at an estimated £1m a week …

Bloomberg:
News Corp.'s The Daily Shutdown Affects 126 Employees

Discussion: The Daily Beast

Telegraph:

Leveson Report: PM proposes third way to regulate the press — David Cameron is considering establishing a new independent press watchdog by Royal Charter - the mechanism used to set up the BBC and the Bank of England. — Watch Lord Leveson deliver his report

Discussion: Guardian and BBC

Joe Schneider / Bloomberg:
U.K. Judge Who Probed News Says Internet Can Be Tamed

Discussion: Telegraph, ABC News, Daily Mail, HeraldSun, Digital Spy, LSE Media Policy Project, theweek.co.uk, Hollywood Reporter and Guardian

Rob Fishman / BuzzFeed:

Google's Lost Social Network — Last October, while hundreds of protesters were encamped in Zuccotti Park, a handful of people occupied a glass building in downtown Washington D.C. Wearing sheepish grins and business casual attire, the ninety-nine percent they were not; one demonstrator said he worked for Grover Norquist.

Discussion: Business Insider and The Daily Beast

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Guardian News & Media plans to shed 68 editorial posts — Publisher of the Guardian, Observer and MediaGuardian says it must save £7m from the editorial budget — Guardian News & Media, the publisher of the Guardian, Observer and guardian.co.uk, has informed staff of plans …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Telegraph

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Some Second Thoughts and Reader Feedback About the Middle East and Social Media — When I wrote last Wednesday about The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, and criticism of her social media use, many readers - and some of those quoted in the blog post - responded.

David Kravets / Wired:

Hollywood's Total Piracy Awareness Program Set for January Launch — UNIVERSAL CITY, California - Beginning in a few weeks, the nation's major internet service providers will roll out an initiative — backed by Obama and pushed by Hollywood and the record labels - to disrupt …

Discussion: Plagiarism Today

Foster Kamer:

The Worst People in New York City, No. 92: Ryan Holiday — Okay, so, The New York Observer for some reason thought it'd be a good idea to put this Ryan Holiday assclown's pieces on their site. Maybe Gell was like: Hey, let's troll everyone while we decide whether or not to keep the media desk …

Discussion: ZDNet

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Why didn't NBC News apologize to George Zimmerman? — There are lots of damning allegations against NBC News in the “reckless defamation” lawsuit filed yesterday by lawyers for George Zimmerman. It charges NBC News with an effort to “create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain” …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Julie Moos / Poynter:
George Zimmerman sues NBC over editing of 911 tape after Trayvon Martin shooting

Discussion: CNN, gzvnbc.com, Washington Post, Hit & Run, Media Decoder, Radio & Television …, Chickaboomer, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, TVNewser and TMZ.com

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Vevo's YouTube Deal Expires in Three Days. But the “Hulu for Music Videos” Site Won't Go Dark. — Vevo, the digital music video service, and Google, which powers Vevo.com and distributes Vevo's videos on its YouTube site, have a distribution deal that expires on Sunday.

Discussion: WebProNews

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:

For Netflix and the SEC, a Facebook Share Should Be Public Enough — Most people worry about over-sharing on Facebook. Under-sharing? Not so much. — Except, that is, for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is considering taking action against Netflix for a Facebook post made by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Discussion: Business Week and GigaOM