Unlikely GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich has tried to explain away the fact that he practically invented the health insurance mandate as a practical response to the evil Hillary Clinton push for universal health care in the early 90s, but The Wall Street Journal has uncovered a 2006 newsletter that vaporizes that claim. The April 2006 edition of “Newt Notes,” which the Gingrich campaign says their candidate didn’t write, contains high praise for mandated health insurance.

In a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Fox News contributors Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen urged President Obama to “abandon his candidacy for re-election” in favor of “the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

Their premise is that Sec. Clinton not only has a better chance to win, but “is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.”

According to a report by ProPublica and the Guardian, key members of the family that controlled The Wall Street Journal now say they would not have agreed to sell the paper to Rupert Murdoch if they’d known about the phone-hacking underway at the time at News Corp’s News of the World. “If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against” the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family that controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of the WSJ.

Just as one of the most popular search terms following the Casey Anthony verdict was “Nancy Grace reaction,” schadenfreude-enthusiasts are eagerly looking to all News Corp. outlets today to see how they’re covering the shuttering of their corporate cousin News of the World amidst massive phone-hacking allegations. So, how are the rest of the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets tackling this family embarrassment?

The normally sharp Howard Kurtz really missed the boat in his rundown of the recent Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace interview, and Politifact-ual aftermath. On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, he and his panel missed the mark on Stewart’s response to Politifact’s charge that his assertion about Fox News viewers was false, and when panelist Aaron Barnhart tried to bring up the crucial edit of an exchange about Fox exec Bill Sammon, Kurtz promised to go back to it, but never did.

The New York Times‘ Julie Bosman reports Rep. Michele Bachmann has agreed to a deal to write a memoir, set to be published by Sentinel, described by the Times as “a conservative imprint at Penguin Group,” citing people familiar with the negotiations. The book, to be co-written withJohn Fund, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is set to hit bookstores in the fall:

The U.S. press systematically refer to Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi as a crazy, narcissistic despot whose people are suffering and whose country is in turmoil. But, for a brief slice of time in 2007, people reading through certain U.S. and British publications may have found themselves reading about a new or “changed” Gaddafi, a Gaddafi committed to paving the way for democracy in Libya.

There’s a reason for that.

Fox Business loves to hear media moguls talk about Fox Business. Last week, they had CNN thinker-upper Ted Turner show up to talk about new Fox Business employee Lou Dobbs. Now they’ve invited their leader Rupert Murdoch to discuss the most pressing matters of the day—like how awesome Fox Business is. “Fox Business, Fox News” are News Corp.’s “best growth engines,” he said. “Seriously.”

Readers of both NYMag.com and the Wall Street Journal‘s website may have noticed that in the wee small hours of the morning, both publications posted similar but competing articles about author James Frey and Full Fathom Five, the book-packaging company he launched to churn out young adult fiction. As it turns out, New York’s version was rushed online only after the magazine learned that the WSJ was about to scoop them on a story they’d had in the works for weeks.

Yesterday, Poynter Online’s Jim Romensko posted a memo that Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson sent to that paper’s entire staff. In the message, Thomson announces that two News Corp. employees—Journal Deputy Managing Editor Jim Pensiero and Gabriella Stern, Newswires‘ Senior Editor for global news—will be leading a new “Special Project” at the company. Pernsiero is to be the project’s Editor-in-Chief, while Stern will be his Managing Editor.

Many people on both sides of the argument have weighed in on the Park 51 Islamic center, more commonly known as the Ground Zero Mosque. But until now, one important and clearly relevant voice was left unheard – that of the exotic dancer community that apparently thrives around the Word Trade Center site. Now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, that voice is being heard.

Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corporation, the parent company for Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, recently made a $1 million contribution to the Republican Governors Association, a partisan 527 designed to bolster GOP gubernatorial campaigns.

Facing immediate and ferocious criticism, News Corp. responded by citing their sympathy with the RGA’s “pro-business agenda”. Articles about the transaction were similarly quick to note that other companies, even other media companies, have given money to the RGA as well as Democratic committees.

There is such a thing as looking too hard for the upside to things, and BP has apparently discovered it. Benoit Faucon at The Wall Street Journal somehow got a look at an excerpt from Planet BP, an online publication exclusively for BP employees, in which a “BP reporter” put one of the most outrageous [...]

Michael Wolff: “There’s the sex vibe, the exhibitionism and preening, the weird family stuff, the phony authenticity, and the euphoric sense of his own arrival…while Brown may be Palin-like he may actually be much better than Palin. “

Further evidence Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid sensibility is seeping into the Wall St. Journal? Or merely proof someone over there is reading HuffPo?! The former according to Reuters’ Felix Salmon who picked up on this photo and caption in today’s WSJ column by Patience Wheatcroft. Boobs sell!

Malls are retail newspapers. They are professionally curated assemblages of commercialism, vulnerable to simple tools that get the job done more specifically and rapidly. Nowadays, it’s far easier and more personalized to fulfill a shopping list online, putting together your own virtual mall from which you buy only what you’re interested in, skipping over the online equivalents of Cinnabon and the sunglasses kiosk. Not to mention parking.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is planning to introduce a New York city edition of the Wall Street Journal, and is reportedly going “all in” to do it. John Koblin reports for the NY Observer that he is “ready to roll out a budget of $15 Million,” in an effort to compete directly with the NY Times.

President Obama — who has made more public appearances than perhaps any sitting president in history — will be doing a “El Completo Ginsburg” on Sunday, hitting five Sunday shows, plus Letterman on Monday. Judging by the headlines he has a lot of explaining to do.

James Warren (formerly managing editor and Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune) took a trip across the pond recently and discovered, much to his amazement, that the British know how to have more fun than we do! Or more fun with their newspapers, anyway.

How bored or self-important does a person have to be to make a name for themselves posting in the comments section of a blog? Ever wonder how these people have time to pay the bills? Wonder no longer. Being a blowhard pays — and not just on cable news — thanks to a new online advertising scheme from the British bank HSBC.

The Wall Street Journal makes its home at the intersection of business and journalism, two industries that increasingly rely on speed — speedy information that is. In a move to keep up with the increasingly rapid flow of information on the Internet — not to mention beat the competition in the ever-tightening print market — The Wall Street Journal will no longer participate in traditional news embargoes unless their reporters are getting exclusive access.