Mediagazer: The Gift of Information — Julian Assange and WikiLeaks … (Misha Glenny/T Magazine)

9:45 PM ET, December 4, 2010

Top News:

Chronicle is launching subscriptions for digital access — Free for a limited time. — Digital access to The Augusta Chronicle's news stories - also available in a nifty iPad format in the coming weeks - is moving from being completely free to a subscription-based model.

Discussion: paidContent and WebNewser

Misha Glenny / T Magazine:

The Gift of Information — Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been jettisoned to fame or notoriety (choose your noun, please) not because of a passing political battle but for reasons much deeper: the desire to possess, distribute and devour information. Ever since the release in July …

Will Richmond / VideoNuze:

With Widevine Acquisition, Google is Poised to Go Hollywood — Just as the week is wrapping up, Google has announced its acquisition of Widevine, a provider of digital content protection and video optimization technologies. Widevine was a private company that had raised over $50 million to date.

Discussion: MediaPost and TechCrunch

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: Is Perez Hilton's conversion for real? — Only time will tell if the snarky blogger, who built a career by being mean-spirited, is a changed man. — There he was on national television, the self-styled “Queen of Mean.” Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton sat bolt upright in an almost-conservative jacket and tie.

Discussion: The Big Picture

Rick Edmonds / Poynter Online:

Mary Meeker's math: Old media captures $50 billion in advertising that should go to Internet — Besides Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I mark November as the occasion for analyst Mary Meeker's voluminous and always provocative report on the state of the Internet.

Beet.TV:

Roku Readies Pay-Per-View System for Small Publishers — While Netflix, the MLB.com and Amazon have sophisticated payment systems in place on the Roku platform, smaller publishers have few options to generate subscription or pay-per-view payments. — Beginning early next year …

Discussion: GigaOM

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

Viacom Files Appeal in $1B Copyright Suit Against Google, YouTube — As promised, Viacom filed an appeal in its $1 billion copyright case against Google and YouTube on Friday, asking a federal appeals court in New York on Friday to reverse a lower court's decision that sided with the search giant.

Discussion: Company Town, Multichannel, paidContent, MediaPost and Inside TV

Virginia Heffernan / New York Times:

Music by Numbers — In 1997, when Garry Kasparov, the great Russian chess champion, resigned the sixth and final game of his match with Deep Blue, the I.B.M. computer, he crumpled. He couldn't conceal his despair. No opponent had ever beaten him in a match before, and this one didn't even have a heartbeat.

via:gillianmae

David Saleh Rauf / American Journalism Review:

Dispatches from the Last Frontier — An aggressive Web site covers Alaska and searches for profitability. — David Saleh Rauf (drauf@ajr.umd.edu) is an AJR editorial assistant — As the Deepwater Horizon rig began gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico in late April …

Discussion: Poynter

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

INMA Transformation of Media Summit: Bundling, or how and when to get readers to pay for content — It was early in the morning when John Paton, CEO of of the Journal Register Company, had a curious statement for the assembled audience at the INMA Transformation of Media Summit Thursday here in Cambridge.

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Apple, Publishers Still Miles Apart on iTunes Subscriptions — Magazine publishers used to salivate over the iPad. Now they're a lot more reserved. They make hopeful noises about Google's Android tablets instead. — That's because Apple and the publishing industry haven't been able …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Observer, Electronista and Tech Trader Daily

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Times of London Paywall Paying Off Already! * — News Corp.'s Jon Miller. Image by Getty Images Europe via @daylife — The Times of London has lost a huge volume of its web traffic since erecting a restrictive paywall around its site in July, and converted only 14 percent of its web readers …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and Yahoo! News

Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

Yahoo IS Focused: “We're A Content Company” — News Corp.'s Jon Miller took a potshot at Yahoo this morning at IGNITION, saying that the company is caught between being a media company and a technology company, and that it has to “get religion” about something.

Discussion: Beet.TV