When Perez Hilton Talks Music, People Listen (Newsweek)
Perez praise is valuable. Scottish singer Paolo Nutini's CD "These Streets" spiked on the iTunes chart after a post in January. "The thing just started moving. I mean, jumping up the chart," says Gregg Nadel, senior director of marketing and A&R at Nutini's label. "You sit around and think of all these different things to try to introduce an artist, and then Perez does this one post and, boom, it lights a fire."

Yahoo May Buy Social Networking Site Bebo (Telegraph)
Yahoo is rumoured to be working on an attempted takeover of Bebo, Britain's most popular social networking site, which could turn its British-born founder into the next internet billionaire. The Web giant is thought to be willing to pay as much as $1 billion for the site, according to Silicon Valley gossip.

Deposed Media Moguls Take Stock (NYT)
While it is a blow to the psyche of executives in any field who are pushed out the door, the nature of the entertainment industry, where the appearance of power is as important as the reality, means that a fall from grace can be especially head-spinning. As the movie business goes through a generational shift, many ex-titans of the media (Eisner, Freston, and Levin among them) are searching for meaning.

Google Reaches Content Deal With UK News Orgs (Sunday Herald)
Google is understood to have reached deals with several large UK news groups over carrying their content on Google News. The deals are reputedly being kept strictly secret for fear that Google will end up having to pay for similar licences with all of the 4500 news services it carries on its aggregator. It seems Google has accepted it has lost the argument over carrying stories without paying for them.

Thomson-Reuters Won't Roll Over Bloomberg (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: Thomson Corp. and Reuters Group, two of the most prestigious names in the news and information-gathering business, are planning to join forces. Naturally, there is lots of talk about synergies and cost savings. But I suspect that mainly they want to crush Bloomberg. I don't see it happening, though.

Disgraced Media Mogul Conrad Black Hearts Disgraced President Richard Nixon (Guardian)
Conrad Black: His achievements had been great. He had stolen nothing, physically threatened no one, obeyed the law after some hesitation, gone quietly from office, loved his country, and been singled out unjustly as a uniquely opprobrious president, which, in fact, he was not. It's not clear that Nixon had any criminal intent.

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