Mediagazer: Why do community news sites, once hailed as the future of journalism, so often flop? (Janet Stilson/Adweek)

Police officer found guilty of trying to sell information to News of the World — Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn offered details of phone-hacking investigation to tabloid in return for payment — A senior counter-terrorism detective has been found guilty of trying to sell information to the News of the World newspaper.

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

Why are Bob Woodward's WH sources - or Woodward himself - not on trial next to Bradley Manning? — The extremist prosecution of Manning, accused of “aiding and abetting al-Qaida”, poses a real threat to US press freedom — There are numerous travesties defining the ongoing prosecution …

Discussion: New York Times, Capital New York, Business Insider, Daily Kos, The New Yorker Blog and Pressing Issues

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Guardian

Janet Stilson / Adweek:

Why do community news sites, once hailed as the future of journalism, so often flop? — Spelunking equipment, climbing gear and snowshoes are Steve Sutorius' life. That's clear watching him as he peddles outdoor-sports merchandise in his shop, Wildernest, on this 10-mile-long jewel in Puget Sound just off the coast from Seattle.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Amazon's “AutoRip” Service Goes Live, Giving Customers Free MP3s For CDs Purchased On Amazon As Far Back As 1998 (Hands On) — Amazon is today introducing a new service called Amazon AutoRip, which automatically gives customers free MP3 versions of any CDs they've purchased from Amazon since the launch of its Music Store back in 1998.

Discussion: CNET, AllThingsD, Pocket-lint, Gizmodo, SlashGear and Lifehacker

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Digg's Users Doubled Since August, Now Has Over 10 Million User Emails On File — Digg today took to its blog to share a bit of information about its user growth and monetization plans, now that it's been at Betaworks for nearly six months. The company said that Digg's user base has doubled since …

Discussion: Digg Blog and The Next Web

Jim Hopkins / Gannett Blog:

Freedom Forum paid new CEO Duff $1.6M in 2011, documents show, amid signs of more fiscal distress — The financially troubled non-profit foundation paid CEO James Duff $1.6 million during his first four months on the job in 2011, a year when the Newseum's operator ran a $47 million deficit, newly released public documents show.

Discussion: The Newspaper Guild

Mathew Ingram / paidContent:

NYT public editor: Sometimes transparency triumphs over objectivity — Is the status of objectivity as a sacrosanct principle of the journalism industry beginning to weaken? There have been some encouraging signs lately, not the least of which are some recent blog posts …

Discussion: Boing Boing

Hamish McKenzie / PandoDaily:

I think your Tweet needs more Franzen: Paragraph Shorts brings short fiction into the social sharing age — In 2003, Ziv Navoth sat down and wrote a short story. The next day, he wrote another. And then the next. He repeated the pattern for about another 180 days …

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Next Web, Mashable! and paidContent

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Online radio will start serving ads based on your web browsing — Picture yourself sitting in Cleveland and using the internet to explore places to visit in France. Later, you pull up online radio service Pandora on your web browser to listen to Motown songs and what do you hear?

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and AdExchanger

Maggie Lu Yueyang / Reuters:

Australian pension fund pulls out of News Corp after failure to oust Murdoch — (Reuters) - An Australian pension fund said on Thursday that it would sell down its A$7 million (4.6 million pounds) stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA.O), following the failure of proposals for a more independent board at the media empire.

Discussion: Bloomberg, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC News, Hollywood Reporter, The Australian and Deadline.com

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Google's Gingras: Journalists need to focus on invention, not transformation — Richard Gingras says that at this moment in journalism, “transformation” is a four letter word. — Gingras, the head of news and social products for Google, spoke to a group of journalism professors …

Alexander Rankine / Guardian:

Oxford students to protest at Assange ‘visit’ — A row has erupted on campus over an invitation to Julian Assange to address the Oxford Union via video link — Outraged Oxford students are planning demonstrations following news that Julian Assange, the controversial Wikileaks founder …

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Aereo CEO: The Days of the $200 Cable Bundle Are Numbered — At CES, Web TV Service Announces $38M Infusion, Multicity Expansion — The most disruptive technology at CES wasn't launched here at all. But Aereo, the web TV service backed by Barry Diller, did announce some news …

Jason Boog / GalleyCat:

Publishing Projects Raised $15 Million on Kickstarter Last Year — Publishing projects raised $15,311,251 on Kickstarter last year, but only 30 percent of attempted projects succeeded. There were 5,634 publishing projects launched, but only 1,666 of those projects actually got funded.

Discussion: bookforum.com, FishbowlNY and Softpedia News

Ken Layne / The Awl:

SF Weekly, Seattle Weekly Latest Victims Of Alt-Weekly Newspaper Industry — Staffers and free-lancers at two West Coast alt-weeklies are nervously awaiting whatever unpleasant news comes with the sale of those papers to local conglomerates. Like all of the once-mighty urban weekly papers …

Discussion: The Snitch, NetNewsCheck Latest and LA Observed

Discussion: SF Appeal, The Daily Weekly, Slog, The Huffington Post, AAN and Eater National

China Real Time Report:

Face-Off in a Beijing Newsroom: An Insider's Account … Fallout from a high-profile conflict over censorship between Chinese propaganda officials and journalists at Southern Weekly, one of China's most daring newspapers, has spread to sister newspaper Beijing News, which lost a dramatic stand-off …

Discussion: Guardian

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

Business Insider Traffic Revealed — A couple of years ago, I revealed a lot of internal information about Business Insider—the sort of information that most companies paranoically guard for a litany of stated reasons. — I said that, if nothing horrible happened, I might one day do the same thing again.

Discussion: PandoDaily