Mediagazer: Departing NBCU Chief Zucker Considers Private Equity, Other Options (Jessica E. Vascellaro/Speakeasy)

12:55 PM ET, December 9, 2010

Top News:

How Fox News Spun Health-Care Debate — As the debate over the public option heated up last year, Fox News brass told staffers to change the way they talked about it. Howard Kurtz on the memo that echoed a key GOP talking point. — As the health-care debate was heating up in the summer of 2009 …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, TVNewser, Mediaite, Ben Smith's Blog, Gawker, CJR, Salon, The Wire, On Media's Blog, New York Observer, LA Observed, Swampland, Inside Cable News, The Huffington Post and ThinkProgress

NPR:

NYT Reporter Defends Publishing WikiLeaks Cables … Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has suggested that The New York Times should be investigated for publishing classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. — “To me The New York Times has committed …

Discussion: Techdirt and The Huffington Post

Rem Rieder / American Journalism Review:

A Profoundly Bad Idea — Sen. Joe Lieberman and his call for a federal investigation of the Times over WikiLeaks. Posted: Wed, Dec. 8 2010 — Rem Rieder (rrieder@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's editor and senior vice president. — Sen. Joe Lieberman has come up with a terrible idea.

Discussion: Salon

Cpen / Twitter Blog:

To Trend or Not to Trend... Since Twitter first introduced the Trends feature in the summer of 2008, one frequently asked question has been “Why isn't X trending?” This question has come up around a variety of subjects, from #justinbieber and #adamlambert to #flotilla, #iranelection and #demo2010.

Discussion: Mediaite, The Social, Yahoo! News, Mashable!, CBS News, Guardian, TomiLaw, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Social Medium, ResourceShelf and SAI, more at Techmeme »

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Pulitzer board announces changes for 2011 competition — Romenesko Misc. — The rules for 12 of the 14 categories now state explicitly that entries may use any available journalistic tool, including text reporting, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or any combination of those formats.

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Interview: Neil Ashe On Why He's Leaving CBS Interactive Now — If you're looking for post-acquisition personnel drama a la MySpace (NSDQ: NWS) or frustration a la Dodgeball-Google (NSDQ: GOOG), don't read this. Aside from losing control over the timing, so far Neil Ashe's decision to leave CBS …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
CBS Interactive Head Neil Ashe Stepping Down

Discussion: Company Town, paidContent, WebNewser and ClickZ

Santa Rosa Press-Democrat:

Sonoma Index-Tribune drops paywall on news website — The Sonoma Index-Tribune has ended its three-month-long practice of charging readers to view online content, even as another news website begins operation in the community. — In September, the twice-weekly Index-Tribune started charging viewers $5 …

Discussion: paidContent, eMedia Vitals and mediabistro.com

Yahoo / Yodel Anecdotal:

Yahoo! Gets Hyper-Local — Here at Yahoo! we are constantly redefining how people experience and interact with content on the Web. Users today want to go beyond words presented on the screen. They want videos. They want social activity. They want it anywhere and anytime.

Discussion: Y! Mobile Blog, NetNewsCheck Latest, paidContent, SAI, Bits, Search Engine Land and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Timothy Garton Ash / Guardian:

The foreign correspondent is dead. Long live the foreign correspondent — The de luxe life satirised in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop has gone for good, but we can still preserve the best of a necessary craft — 'I still have a suitcase in Berlin," Marlene Dietrich used to sing.

Discussion: Editors Weblog, This Is London and The Atlantic Wire

Amy Garmer / KnightComm:

Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive — At a time when government funding for public broadcasting is hotly debated, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, a new policy paper by Barbara Cochran, offers five broad strategies …

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Speakeasy:

Departing NBCU Chief Zucker Considers Private Equity, Other Options … Departing NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker has added to his list of possible next acts one more item: joining a private-equity firm. — Zucker has been approached by several, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Mediaite

David Folkenflik / NPR:

TV Network Expands Bloomberg News' Horizon … Just last year, Margaret Brennan walked away from the nation's leading financial cable news channel to a rival with such small ratings that its executives currently do not pay to find out how many people are watching. — “Yeah, it was a gamble,” Brennan concedes.

Discussion: TVNewser and Inside Cable News

Patricia Cohen / Media Decoder:

Foer Steps Down at The New Republic — The New Republic is getting a new editor in the new year. Richard Just, currently the executive editor, is taking over Jan. 1 from Franklin Foer, who is stepping down after a five-year stint. — Mr. Foer, 36, who closed his last issue of the magazine on Tuesday …

Discussion: New York Observer, Yahoo! News, Poynter, The Huffington Post and bookforum.com

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

News Foo Camp: Not fully open, but certainly not secret — I tweet a lot from journalism events. I think I can say that few people tweet as much about journalism as I do. I didn't tweet much from News Foo Camp last weekend. — But other campers and I tweeted enough that our tweeps wanted more.