Mediagazer: Is al-Jazeera too soft on Qatar and its allies? (Michael Peel/Financial Times)

4:15 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.

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

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.

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, paidContent, VatorNews, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Financial Times, Slate, The Verge, BusinessJournalism.org … and NetNewsCheck Latest

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

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 …

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

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

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: Financial Times

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

Jim Romenesko:

Freelance Writer Says He Was Stiffed By The Daily — On November 26, The Daily published freelancer Robert Johnson's story, “Iran's Speed Demons.” — One week later, Rupert Murdoch & Co. announced they were pulling the plug on the iPad publication. — Johnson wonders if they also decided then to stop paying their freelancers.

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Shop for ebooks at the grocery store, with new txtr/ReaderLink partnership — In an attempt to compete with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Berlin-based ebook company txtr and U.S. print book distributor ReaderLink have partnered to sell ebooks through new outlets: grocery stores, mass merchants …

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Nancy Grace, CNN Reach Settlement In ‘Vodka Mom’ Lawsuit — HLN anchor Nancy Grace and her employers at CNN have reached a settlement with the family of Toni Modrano. — Modrano, who Grace dubbed “Vodka Mom,” on her eponymous HLN program, committed suicide by lighting herself on fire last Summer …

Discussion: The Huffington Post