Yesterday, Runnin' Scared brought you news of Picture the Homeless' funding fracas.

The Bronx-based non-profit has received $240,000 in public money over the last five years, but payouts got frozen this week as the City Council investigates squatting allegations.

Picture the Homeless says that the City's move stems from a New York Post story claiming that a non-profit member taught illegal squatting classes on the taxpayers' dime -- an allegation the group disputes.

Now, Picture the Homeless is strongly considering legal action against the tabloid.

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​When Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" on his radio show Feb. 29, it sure seemed like the end of an era might be upon us.

Public outcry prompted sponsors to pull support from the show, leaving many to wonder whether the conservative stalwart would have much longer to lash out against liberals and ladies.

To be fair, Rush did damage control issue an apology, but many saw the mea culpa as meaningless -- worthy of all-out mocking.

But as bad as Rush's gaffe might be -- and to be clear, it is bad -- you have to wonder: could this bolster Limbaugh's languishing career?

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Tumblr CEO David Karp's contentious visage.

​NYC-based blogging platform Tumblr is having some problems, namely with people from the fashion industry who are fed up with certain aspects of its service. BetaBeat ran this headline today: "The Flood Gates Are Now Open On Publicly Bashing Tumblr," after yesterday announcing that "The Fashion Industry Wants Tumblr To Get Its Fucking Act Together" (oh my). NYmag's The Cut blog joins in in slightly more measured tones: "Fashion Brands Have Started to Air Grievances About Fashion-Hungry Tumblr."

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​Thursday! A wide-ranging media news kind of day. Ranging from Ashton Kutcher's murky Details editorship to Piers Morgan's failed interview of Christine O'Donnell to the everlasting travails of the dead News of the World, Thursday's Press Clips is all about conflict.

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via

David Leigh

​David Leigh, an assistant editor at the Guardian, admitted to hacking voicemails in an article written in 2006 that just seems to have been dug up. Leigh listened to the messages of a "corrupt arms company executive," and said his aim was to expose "bribery and corruption." Interestingly, his paper was the one that broke the empire-burning News of the World hacking scandal in the first place. More >>

They've outdone themselves!

I mean, damn. The obviousness of it. The comparison of the News Corp hacking scandal to the hacking incidents at the Pentagon and Citibank boggles the mind, since the Pentagon and Citibank were the victims of hacking, while News of the World was the perpetrator. Not that that should even have to be spelled out.

[The Atlantic]

[@_rosiegray]

​Rupert Murdoch's son James could face "corporate legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic that involve criminal charges, fines and forfeiture of assets" related to the phone hacking scandal currently embroiling News Corporation. Murdoch fils, who is the deputy COO of News Corp, has admitted to misleading the British Parliament about the hacking. The conglomerate decided to shutter tabloid News of the World this weekend after revelations that the paper had hacked into the phones of murder and abduction victims.

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​ANIMAL New York's Bucky Turco is taking a stand against the apparently rampant ripping-off of local blog stories by the New York Post. In a post today, Turco explains how a reporter from the Post basically out-and-out copied sections of an ANIMAL post about the mural on Bowery and Houston. It's pretty bad.

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It was hard to feign much surprise last month when the New York Times slapped New York's finest with a lawsuit, accusing the department of habitually withholding information and flouting government transparency laws. In fact, as any reporter would certainly know, one of the city's toughest agencies to crack for information -- even information it's obliged, by law, to cough up -- might be New York's boys in blue.

Freedom of Information Law requests (or "FOIL requests," as they're known) are supposed to be a useful tool for the public; immigrants applying for citizenship use them to collect documentation, inmates use them to prove their innocence, reporters use them to uncover wrongdoing, and advocacy groups have used them to gather a breadth of data on subjects like political surveillance, school performance, racial profiling and homelessness.

But ask anyone who's filed a FOIL, and they'll tell you that prying loose information isn't always so simple. Especially, it seems, from the NYPD.

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​Hey! Big day for Mediaite! The website owned by Dan Abrams -- the former MSNBC talking head, sworn enemy of Keith Olbermann -- took in a new employee today in the form of MediaBistro blogger Alex Alvarez! Yet how have they pissed on their own parade?

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