Mediagazer: Washington Post's Kaplan Higher Education Unit to Cut About 770 Employees (Olga Kharif/Bloomberg)

3:30 PM ET, December 8, 2010

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

At CNN, Talk Show Tensions — In one sweeping move, the 8 p.m. political talk show “Parker Spitzer” could have turned around CNN's flailing prime-time ratings, publicly rehabilitated the fallen New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and turned his co-host Kathleen Parker into a television star.

Discussion: The Wire, Yahoo! News, TVNewser, Chickaboomer, Company Town, Mediaite, Inside Cable News, New York Observer, The Huffington Post and On Media's Blog

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:

New York Post Political Editor Quits After Fight With Tyrant Boss — Gregg Birnbaum was the well-liked political editor of the New York Post, a 17-year veteran of the paper. Until yesterday, when he left abruptly. The reason, we hear: he got sick of NYP chief Col Allan's obnoxious behavior.

Discussion: On Media's Blog, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Movies at Home, for $20,000 — A proposed service aims to bring movies to homes the same day they hit theaters, a milestone that Hollywood has long anticipated with a mixture of fear and fascination. — But there's a catch: At the prices currently being discussed by Prima Cinema Inc. …

Discussion: /Film, Engadget, The Moviefone Blog, Gizmodo and IFC.com, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

News Corp. COO: Please Don't Associate Us With Our Newspapers — Rupert Murdoch may have printer's ink flowing through his veins, as is often said of the News Corp. chairman, but for his No. 2, president and COO Chase Carey, newspapers are more like an albatross around the neck.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Jodiolson / Twitter Blog:

Now Playing on #newTwitter: Embedded Music, TV Shows, Slides and More — One of the most popular features of #newTwitter is the ability to check out photos, videos, and music directly in the details pane. Click on a Tweet with a link to media, and the details pane on the right lets …

Discussion: GigaOM, Shaping the Future …, TechCrunch, L.A. Times Tech Blog, The Wall Blog, paidContent, The Social, WebNewser and The Next Web, more at Techmeme »

Craig Silverman / Regret the Error:

Crunks 2010: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections — While you're here, please consider purchasing a copy of the Regret the Error book, which won an award for media criticism from the National Press Club, and also contains hundreds of hilarious corrections. You can learn more about the book and read some reviews here.

Emily Bell:

How Wikileaks has woken up journalism. — If you follow the latest cache of diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks and reported by the Guardian, The New York Times and others it is impossible not to conclude that this is a pivotal moment for journalism, its teaching and its practice.

Discussion: ellsberg.net, Memex 1.1, TechCrunch, Guardian, The Nation, The Wire, News: News blog, http://www.Stinkyjournalism …, National Review, Salon, The Lede, TPMMuckraker, Wall Street Journal, Media Diary and Associated Press, more at Techmeme »

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

CBS Interactive Head Neil Ashe Stepping Down — Neil Ashe (pictured here), president of CBS Interactive, is stepping down from his post. — CBS confirmed the move after BoomTown made inquiries recently, after hearing of various executives who had been contacted by the media giant about the position.

Discussion: paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

The Deal on DealBook — In the beginning, DealBook was a newsletter with links to that morning's Times, and then, when DealBook became a blog, it was a place for the newspaper to compete on news that broke during the day and would be too late for tomorrow's edition.

Mike Shields / Mediaweek:

Moonves to Google TV: Pay Up — If Google wants access to the broadcast networks' top prime-time shows for its fledgling Google TV product, they are going to have to cough up some cash. — At least, they will have to for CBS' shows. — According to CBS CEO Les Moonves …

Discussion: MediaMemo

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Correction: Netflix And Disney Agree On 15-Day Window For Some Streaming — Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) have a new agreement that will allow the rental service to run some new episodes 15 days after the original programming airs. The deal builds on the the existing arrangement …

Discussion: Company Town, rbr.com, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Nicholas Christakis on the networked nature of Twitter — Earlier this fall, Alyssa Milano — known for being on “Who's the Boss” and, more recently, for being on Twitter — sent out a somewhat surprising tweet to her nearly 1.2 million followers: a link to the Amazon page of a book called Connected …

Discussion: FishbowlLA

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:

Washington Post's Kaplan Higher Education Unit to Cut About 770 Employees — Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Higher Education division said it plans to cut about 770 employees, or about 5 percent of the workforce, because of slowing enrollment. — “These are difficult decisions to make …

Discussion: On Media's Blog

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

ViKi Raises Millions for Web Video From Around the World — Problem: You want to watch foreign-language movies and TV shows on the Web. — But! You only know English. — Solution: ViKi, a site that shows videos from around the world and provides captions in 100 different languages.

Discussion: TechCrunch