Mediagazer: Journal News Reporters Told They'll Be Shot Walking to Their Cars (Adam Martin/New York Magazine)

7:10 AM ET, January 8, 2013

Top News:

Is al-Jazeera too soft on Qatar and its allies? — ABU DHABI — Qatar's al-Jazeera television station provided a great ringside seat for the “day of rage” in Cairo almost two years ago that offered the first clear sign of the threat to the rule of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Scotland Yard Officer Defends Herself as Phone Hacking-Related Trial Starts — The detective is accused of looking to sell confidential information to the shuttered “News of the World” tabloid of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. — LONDON - A Scotland Yard detective here has defended herself …

Emad Mekay / CJR:

The Muhammad movie: look who fanned the flames — Despite what Western media reported it was not Islamist outlets that stirred things up — Back on September 11, protestors gathered outside the US embassy near downtown Cairo, furious over reports of a video said to portray Islam and its prophet, Muhammad, in a brutally negative way.

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Politico Layoffs Begin Amid Restructuring — NEW YORK — Since its 2007 debut, Politico has expanded its newsroom quickly while some legacy media outlets, like the Washington Post, have scaled back. But Politico isn't immune from having to restructure in the face of industry demands, and in recent days, it has laid off some staffers.

Discussion: Mediaite and @michaelroston

New York Times:

Faceoff in Chinese City Over Censorship of Newspaper — GUANGZHOU, China - Protests over censorship at one of China's most liberal newspapers descended into ideological confrontation on Tuesday, pitting advocates of free speech against supporters of Communist Party control who wielded red flags and portraits of Mao Zedong.

Discussion: Telegraph, BBC, Channel 4, Quartz, Guardian and Business Week

Deadline.com:

Shane Smith Calls ‘Vice’ Style Of Journalism “Immersionism”: TCA — Ray Richmond is contributing to Deadline's TCA coverage. — HBO isn't in the habit of doing traditional newsmagazine shows, and its new magazine Vice (premiering April 5) is like no series of its ilk that mainstream TV has ever seen.

Mark Johnson / Journal Sentinel:

Online comments hurt science understanding, study finds — By Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel — A new obstacle to scientific literacy may be emerging, according to a paper in the journal Science by two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. — The new study reports …

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

NYT: Journal News story was a hasty production — After publishing its super-controversial story and map identifying gun permit holders in two New York counties, the Journal News hunkered down. It issued a statement or two about its activities and rebuffed interview request after interview request.

Discussion: Committee to Protect … and FishbowlNY

Adam Martin / New York Magazine:
Journal News Reporters Told They'll Be Shot Walking to Their Cars

Discussion: Politico, Politico, Business Insider, Poynter, Gothamist, The Newspaper Guild and The Huffington Post

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Absolutely, Positively Not a Netflix-Killer: AT&T Launches Its Own Video Subscription Service — Does the world need another streaming video subscription service? It is getting one, regardless: Here comes U-Verse Screen Pack, a $5-a-month offer from AT&T.

Discussion: /Film, Cable Television News, TechCrunch, Home Media Magazine and CNET

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Samsung will sponsor AP tweets during CES — Electronics giant Samsung will provide content for tweets sent through AP's account during the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show electronics show in Las Vegas, the press cooperative says in a press release.

Discussion: ap.org, @ap, Dave Winer, TechCrunch, NYT Bits, VatorNews, paidContent, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Financial Times, Fast Company, Slate, The Verge and NetNewsCheck Latest

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Linking: Scraping vs. Copyright — Irish newspapers created quite a stir when they demanded a fee for incoming links to their content. Actually, this is a mere prelude to a much more crucial debate on copyrights, robotic scraping and subsequent synthetic content re-creation from scraps.

Discussion: McGarr Solicitors and Common Sense Journalism

Jim Romenesko:

Post-Gazette editor protests police department's news release with reporters' questions — The Pittsburgh Police Department on Sunday put out a press release that included two Post-Gazette reporters' email to the department with several questions for story they were working on. — Diane Richard

Discussion: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Newspaper Guild

Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:

Sony and BMG Are Said to Team Up on Bid for EMI — Sony and BMG, onetime partners in one of the music world's biggest mergers, are teaming up again on a bid to buy — and then divide between themselves — some of the recorded music assets of EMI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks between the companies.

Discussion: DealBook and Financial Times