Mediagazer: Time Out Chief Tony Elliott Sells 50 Percent Stake, Alleviates $15 M. Debt (Kat Stoeffel/New York Observer)

5:55 PM ET, December 9, 2010

Top News:

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

Why The New York Times eliminated its social media editor position — Earlier this week, New York Times Social Media Editor Jennifer Preston tweeted that she would be returning to reporting full-time. The news made me wonder: What would this mean for social media at the Times?

Discussion: Gawker, FishbowlNY, New York Observer, The Wrap, USA Today and Yahoo! News

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab: Aron Pilhofer and Jennifer Preston on the new shape of social …

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

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, Swampland, Mediaite, TVNewser, Ben Smith's Blog, The Wrap, New York Observer, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Gawker, CJR, New York Magazine, Inside Cable News, ThinkProgress, The Wire, Salon, The Huffington Post, On Media's Blog and The Daily Caller

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: Gawker, The Social, WebNewser, MarketingVOX, Mashable!, Mediaite, CBS News, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, ONI, TomiLaw, Guardian, New York Times, The Next Web, broadstuff, Social Medium, ResourceShelf and SAI

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek:

Bonnier Revs Up Roadtrip — Joining the likes of News Corp.'s forthcoming tablet newspaper The Daily and Richard Branson's iPad-only magazine, Project, Sweden's Bonnier Corp. has created Roadtrip, a made-for-the-tablet publication. — The new form shows how publishers are experimenting …

Discussion: Media Buyer Planner, MarketingVOX and MediaPost

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, MarketingVOX, paidContent, SAI, Bits, Search Engine Land and GigaOM

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Automattic Hits 300 Million Unique Visitors, Roughly $10 Million In Revenue — Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and CEO Toni Schneider were interviewed by our own Alexia Tsotsis at Le Web 10 today. Our live notes (paraphrased): — Can you talk about your vision from blogging and how it changed from 2003 to 2010?

Discussion: SAI and One Man & His Blog, more at Techmeme »

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 …

Discussion: WebNewser and BoomTown

Sirius:

Howard Stern Signs New Five-Year Contract With SIRIUS XM — Agreement Includes Rights for SIRIUS XM to Transmit Howard Stern's Programming to Mobile Devices — Howard Stern and SIRIUS XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) today announced a new five-year agreement. The news was first reported by Howard during his show this morning.

Discussion: The Wrap, MediaMemo, Media Decoder and paidContent

David Barboza / New York Times:

China Moves to Block Foreign News on Nobel Prize — SHANGHAI — Chinese censors apparently began blocking the news Web sites of CNN, the BBC and the Norwegian broadcaster NRK from appearing in China on Thursday, a day before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is to be held in Oslo to honor Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned dissident.

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, The Atlantic Wire and This Is London

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.