Four in the morning

1. Not sure if this is a consequence of the closure of the Orange County printing plant, but the Los Angeles Times got delivered late today in parts of L.A. and Orange County due to problems with its remaining presses. LAT

2. The iPad revolution continue to revolve, with Time magazine's latest app getting the Gizmodo staff all googly eyed. Gizmodo

3.Making Twitter shorter. New Yorker

4. (Self-promotion alert) On today's "To The Point," Wikipedia is more popular than ever but fewer people are contributing - that's led to an interesting change in policy. TTP

In iPhone case, shield law doesn't matter

A court has set aside concerns that police trampled the state's shield law protecting the free-press rights of journalists and appointed a "special master" to search through the computer files of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen in hopes of finding information about a prototype iPhone. Apparently Chen's attorney, Thomas Nolan, brokered a deal to let the search happen.

Chen published several online stories and videos about the prototype, which he obtained after Gizmodo's parent company, Gawker Media, agreed to pay $5000 to a man who said he found the phone in a bar.

Judge makes public document public

A San Mateo judge decided the time was right to unseal an affidavit used as the basis to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home. Police were looking for information about his connection to a man alleged to have stole a next-generation Apple iPhone. Here's the summary:

Suspect Brian Hogan found or stole a prototype iPhone 4G that was accidentally left at a restaurant by Apple employee Rober "Gray" Powell. Hogan identified the owner of the phone as Apple Engineer Gray Powell through the contents of the phone and through Internet searches. Rather than return the prototype phone to Powell and/or Apple, Hogan subsequently sold the iPhone [to] Jason Chen in Fremont for $5,000. Upon receiving the stolen property, Chen disassembled the iPhone, thereby causing it to be damaged. Chen created copies of the iPhone prototype in the form of digital images and video, which were subsequently published on the Internet based magazine Gizmodo.com

This search warrant seeks authorization to search the residence of Jason Chen for evidence related to the purchase of the iPhone prototype, copying (photographic images and video), and publishing of the iPhone prototype by Jason Chen...

Police search Gizmodo editor's home*

In the ongoing investigation into how Gawker Media's Gizmodo blog got hold of a prototype of Apple's next generation iPhone, police in Fremont, California, raided the home of editor Jason Chen and seized computers, cellphones, digital cameras, an iPad and other gadgets.

Business Insider has Chen's firsthand account of the raid here.

*Updated: New York Times gets a response from Gawker:

Gawker’s chief operating officer, Gaby Darbyshire, said it expected the immediate return of the computers and servers.

“Under both state and federal law, a search warrant may not be validly issued to confiscate the property of a journalist,” she wrote in a letter to San Mateo County authorities on Saturday. “Jason is a journalist who works full time for our company,” she continued, adding that he works from home, his “de facto newsroom.”

Four today

1. KCET's Ophelia Chong tries her hand at satire after reading Daniel Hernandez's bitch slap of The Entryway project (all found via LA Observed). KCET

2. As far as bitch slaps go, former Republican strategist Tony Quinn goes after Steve Poizner's increasingly embarrassing gubernatorial campaign: "Facing political collapse, he has resorted to the historic tactic of a political scoundrel, race baiting, in this case making immigrant bashing the central theme of his faltering campaign." Fox and Hounds

3. Online April Fool's hijinks, as catalogued by TechCrunch (found via Andrew Sullivan). TechCrunch

4. Everyone wants an iPad app. Nieman Lab

Four in the morning

1. Former LA Times and Weekly reporter Daniel Hernandez and others offer some righteous criticism of the "immersion" journalism practiced by The Entryway. LAO

2. The Voice of San Diego has advertised an opening for "engagement editor." Nieman Journalism Lab explores what the job title means. Nieman Lab

3. "Can the iPad feed a Slow Journalism movement?" and eight other questions answered about how the iPad could change news. Ken Doctor

4. MOCA wants kids to break some rules. LA Downtown News

The Apple tablet

Apple is expected to jump into the market for e-readers as soon as January with the Tablet, which looks a little bit like a giant iPhone.

Four today

1. A little more from Dean Singleton about the MediaNews Group online strategy (Neiman Lab):

We will be moving away from giving away most of our content online. We will be redoing our online to appeal certainly to a younger audience than the print does, but we’ll have less and less newspaper-generated content and more and more information listings and user-generated content.

2. Huffington Post is ready to get down to business (fishbowlny):

Today, the online pub announced that its had added a CFO, Eric Ashman, formerly CFO at TheStreet.com. Additionally, HuffPo said ex-Elle associate publisher Samantha Fennell will be joining its sales team as executive director.

3. So what really went wrong with newspapers? (Non Sequitur)

4. The Apple netbook is coming... right? (Mediabistro)

Like a heart attack (Updated)

A false report showed up on CNN's iReport claiming Apple founder Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. Proof that whether you call it "citizen" journalism or blogging or the next best thing in news, you still have to do the basics - like fact-checking.

UPDATE: Another basic, as Ken Doctor at Content Bridges points out, is labeling what is news and what is opinion. However, I don't think Doctor fully takes into account the uncontrollable urge CNN and other mainstream media outlets have in blurring the lines between commentary, opinion and news. They called it iReport because they wanted readers and contributors to consider the content as some form of journalism. The blurred line gives CNN more hits without much expense and gives the company some street cred in the world of "citizen" journalism. To use an economic metaphor, CNN wanted to benefit from the upside while minimizing the risk on the downside. We all see how well that worked in the housing market.

UPDATE II: Wired.com speculates as to whether the author of the erroneous iReport could get prison time.