Press Gazette
Among the 22 questions: Twitter went into a frenzy in September about a Sun article apparently from 1992 with an oddly named reporter predicting the internet would not catch on. What was the byline? And this one: How did football manager Harry Redknapp reveal he had stopped a News of the World reporter from producing (or reproducing) stories about his alleged tax evasion?
PaidContent.org
Whilst China's Twitter clones have flourished, as it approaches its first anniversary, Mail.ru's Futubra is to be closed. Figures for Futubra's user based are not available. East-West: "Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin had publicly conceded this past July that Futubra's audience was not meeting expectations." What is known is that Grishin and Mail.ru's largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov are hoping to add to their 39.9% stake in leading Russian social network Vkonakte (VK).
BBC
Facebook topped the English edition while an entry for adult video actresses did best in Japan. Hua Shan - a Chinese mountain featuring "the world's deadliest hiking trail" - topped the Dutch list. By contrast, cul-de-sacs were the German site's most clicked entry. The data was published by a Swedish software engineer Johan Gunnarsson as part of the Wikitrends project. His home land's most viewed article was a page dedicated to Sweden itself.
Digital Spy
The journalist and peer died following a short illness, according to his son, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Jacob told the newspaper: "It has been a mercifully short illness. He was very prepared for it." Lord Rees-Mogg joined the Financial Times after leaving Oxford University and later moved to a three-year deputy editorship at the Sunday Times. He became editor of The Times in 1967, replacing Sir William Haley, and headed the daily broadsheet through a difficult 14 years in its history.
The Independent
The commercial arm of the BBC has shut down its hugely popular forum for backpackers and travellers because "uncomfortable themes" were being discussed. BBC Worldwide suspended the Thorn Tree forum on its Lonely Planet website on Saturday. It brought the travel guide company for a total of GBP132.2m in two deals in 2007 and 2011.
Evening Standard
"This column is a clich. It's a look back at what has happened in 2012 and therefore one of newspaper journalism's most overused traditions - an end-of-year review," writes columnist Roy Greenslade. "Worse still, I am about to employ another clich by stating that it has been a landmark year of tumultuous and unprecedented events, a turning point in media history. But there is plenty of justification for the hyperbole and the clichs."
BBC
A pornographic film-maker has revealed plans to chase more internet users for compensation for pirating others' adult movies. The move follows a Court of Appeal ruling which overturned a previous block on Golden Eye offering its services to other rights holders. It keeps about 75% of all payments. Spokesman Julian Becker -- who funded the case -- said he now planned to travel to the US to offer to enforce local firms' copyrights in the UK. "I look forward to travelling to adult conferences in Los Angeles and Vegas in early January to offer Golden Eye's services to other producers," …
ContactMusic.com
Publishers at Rupert Murdoch's "Sunday Times" newspaper are suing disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong for cash he won from them in a libel settlement. The publication's bosses are demanding over $1.6 million (Gbp1 million) from the former Tour De France champion, who was stripped of all his cycling titles and banned from the sport for life earlier this year (12), amid an investigation into his alleged illegal drug use. Armstrong successfully sued the publishers after newspaper editors reprinted doping claims against him from a book in 2005, and won a $485,000 (Gbp303,000) settlement.
The Drum
The high street is hoping for a boost as one in ten Britons hit the Boxing Day sales, spending around GBP2.4 billion. But many people were not willing to brave to rain and beat the in store queues by turning to online retailers instead, so much so Experian has predicted that Christmas 2012 will be the "biggest and busiest ever" for online retailers. Visits to retail websites were expected to have reached 126 million yesterday, up 31 per cent on 2011. Figures from Money Supermarket claimed that more than five million people will search for bargains online. James Murray, the …
The Guardian
Jimmy Savile gleefully informed the prime minister about "my girl patients" after meeting her at a Downing Street fundraising ceremony, where he sought advice on charities' tax deductions. A letter preserved in Downing Street's records sheds fresh light on the extraordinary access the now-disgraced BBC presenter enjoyed at the height of his popularity. In the letter sent to Margaret Thatcher during her first year in office, Savile displayed all his brazen charms. The note, featuring a prominent colour photo of himself, declared: "Dear Prime Minister, I waited a week before writing to thank you for my lunch invitation because I …