How should TV reporters handle breaking news on social media? Cory Bergman poses this question in light of the recent restrictions Sky News and BBC both placed on their reporters.The new policies are meant to ensure that "reporters and editors alert the newsroom before breaking news on Twitter." Bergman, who has worked as a TV assignment editor, says these rules "make a lot of sense," but he also discusses some exceptions.

Last May, Rupert Murdoch held a fateful dinner party -- one where he discussed with News Corp. principals and "legal heavyweights" how to "handle the phone-hacking scandal that had been hanging over the company for months and was suddenly spinning out of control," writes Greg Farrell.  Murdoch was deciding that night whether to have New York headquarters do a separate investigation, or to stick with the London office's "effort to quarantine the scandal," writes Farrell. Murdoch chose the lattter approach, which led to a "slew of allegations, arrests, and public outrage." Farrell was able to reconstruct the events of that …

All but four of the top 25 U.S magazines suffered declines in newsstand sales in the second half of 2011, for a total of almost 10% overall, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Biggest loser: O, The Oprah Magazine, which tracked a 32% decrease in newsstand sales for that period from the year before. Its publisher, Hearst, looked to Oprah's retirement from broadcast TV in May 2011 as a big reason for the decline. Celebrity magazines were also hard hit. And even "People, the Time Inc. flagship that still ranks as the country’s most profitable magazine, saw the newsstand …

The Washington Post announced it would be offering a voluntary buyout to some of its newsroom employees -- the fifth round of such actions since 2004. Only certain departments will be affected, and "there will be caps on the number of people who can participate, in order to moderate the impact and preserve our competitiveness in core coverage areas," according to a company memo. "Core journalism" departments such as national politics, op-ed foreign and style and sports columnists won't be affected, says Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton. Among those departments that will have cuts: business, photo, style, sports and metro.

For NBC, which had a lot riding on its post-Super-Bowl programming Monday night, Nielsen returns painted a positive picture. For one, while the new, incredibly hyped "Smash" was hardly that, it did pretty well --  "better than any episode of any 10 p.m. drama on any network this season, period," writes Josef Adalian. "Smash" did lose about 40% of the audience from its giant lead-in, though -- the premiere of "The Voice." But here's where the really good news came: "The Voice" tracked numbers that were well above its 2011 averages, "on a par with what American Idol has been …

Condé Nast's dearly beloved, defunct design pub Domino will be reincarnated with newsstand-only special spring and fall editions, helmed by a different editorial team than in its first iteration. The spring version, Quick Fixes, reportedly will feature "some of Domino’s 'best home decorating stories,'" wording we find unclear: Does this mean previous pages will be repurposed? We're big fans and are hoping for a good bit of original content.

How do magazines covers “whore themselves to the newsstand” as one editor puts it colorfully in this short piece on the difference between subscriber and newsstand covers? We're not sure the examples shown really back up the whore analogy -- especially when you consider that it's subscribers to Harper's Bazaar who get that striking image of Gywneth's bared pubic bone we discussed the other day, not newwstand folks.

Controlled-circulation style and society monthly Scene will make its first appearance March 1. Headed by an editorial and ad team previously at similar pub Avenue, Scene will share offices with the New York Observer, whose publisher, Jared Kusher,  owns a majority stake in the new mag. Among the features in the first issue, to be distributed to "high-income apartment buildings around Manahattan":  "an investigative piece on John Galliano post-Dior," and "a dissection of Manhattan’s newest hot spot, Le Baron," writes David Lipke.

Roughly 100 employees at publisher Ziff-Davis Enterprise (out of a workforce about 120) will lose their jobs in the wake of the company's sale to online marketing and lead-gen company QuinStreet on Friday, according to anonymous sources. Reportedly about 30 people are already gone, with the rest of the laid-off group to help with the transition  and then depart. "Given the size of the cuts, it's hard to see what QuinStreet has in mind for ZDE's brands, because content-based operations require content creators," writes Bill Mickey.

Walt Disney Co. and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision are reportedly in talks to create a 24-hour English-language news cable channel where they would share production and news-gathering costs. Disney's ABC News would thus join the competition for cable news viewers, while Univision would position the channel to reach English-speaking Latinos.  But so far this deal has been reported only through an anonymous source; neither camp would comment on the record.