The "phone-hacking" scandal, 15 July 2011

[Whoops, look at the date -- it's actually the 16th. Sorry about that, but I'm not rewriting.]

• The human sacrifices have begun: Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton have resigned. Brooks ran News International, News Corporation's subsidiary that runs its British publications. Hinton was the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
  
  Like the Columbia Journalism Report's Felix Salmon, I think Brooks knows where bodies are buried. According to the Independent, she and other recently departed News Corporation execs will be subject to a nondisclosure agreement as part of their severance packages, though the agreements won't cover the inquiry announced by Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday or any criminal proceedings.
  
  • the New York Times
  • the Guardian on Brooks' resignation
  • the Guardian on both resignations
  • the Independent story claims to know how much was in some of the severance packages
  • the Daily Mail account repeats the Daily Telegraph allegation about Elisabeth Murdoch's remarks (see below)
• Rupert Murdoch visited Milly Dowler's family to apologize, and took out full-page apology ads in rival newspapers.
  
  • the Independent
  • the BBC
  • the Daily Mail piece includes a reproduction of the full-page advertisement from Murdoch that will appear in Saturday newspapers
• Elisabeth Murdoch was scathing about Rebekah Brooks in a private conversation. This story in the Daily Telegraph is unsourced, so take it with a grain of rock salt.

Various publications have whole sections of their Web sites dedicated to the phone-hacking story.

• BBC
• The Guardian
• Not so much a section as an FAQ, courtesy of the Independent; it includes basic questions that you likely would have if you knew little but the headlines, plus a glossary of terms like "hacking" and "blagging" (a term I had never encountered before this scandal)
• The (New York) Times Topic page