Mediagazer: Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive (Julie Bosman/New York Times)

8:55 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, USA Today, The Wrap and Yahoo! News

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

Discussion: Editors Weblog

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 …

C.W. Anderson / Nieman Journalism Lab:

From Indymedia to Wikileaks: What a decade of hacking journalistic culture says about the future of news — The first time I ever heard the words “mirror website,” I was sitting at a debris-strewn desk, hunched over a desktop computer, on the second floor of a nondescript office building on East 29th in Manhattan.

Discussion: Tomorrow Museum, Boing Boing, New York Magazine and Guardian

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

NPR:
NYT Reporter Defends Publishing WikiLeaks Cables

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Techdirt

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.

Discussion: Associated Press

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

John Eggerton / Multichannel News:

NAB's Smith: Government Retrans Moves Could Send Super Bowl To Pay Platform — Warning Comes In Response To FCC's Proposed Retrans Rulemaking — If the government injects itself into the “private business negotiations of retrans,” says National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith …

Discussion: rbr.com and Multichannel

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

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

Don Jeffrey / Bloomberg:

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Sues IMG Holdings Over ‘The Daily’ Trademark — A company owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sued publisher IMG Worldwide Inc. over the trademark for the name The Daily, which News Corp. plans to introduce as a tablet-computer news publication.

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

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

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive — Sarah Wendell, blogger and co-author of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms,” is passionate about romance novels. — Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests.”

Discussion: New York Observer and TeleRead

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Hulu's in a Netflix headlock — Tweet — Netflix's muscle-flexing deal yesterday with Disney not only reinforces the fact that it is a programming distributor to be reckoned with, it is also forcing rival Hulu to reconfigure its business plan, sources tell The Post.

Discussion: Media Maverick and Company Town