Mediagazer: On the Media: A plea for honesty in paid TV pitches (James Rainey/Los Angeles Times)

1:30 AM ET, December 22, 2010

Top News:

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

F.C.C. Approves Net Rules and Braces for Fight — Updated The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved a new and still-unpublished set of rules that are intended to preserve open access to the Internet. — There was disagreement Tuesday about whether the F.C.C. had the legal authority …

Sam Gustin / Epicenter:

FCC Passes Compromise Net Neutrality Rules — FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski presides over an open-internet meeting in March 2010. — In a closely watched vote, the Federal Communications Commission approved compromise net neutrality rules Tuesday that would forbid the nation's largest cable …

Discussion: Memex 1.1, Free Press and Geekosystem, more at Techmeme »

Al Franken / The Huffington Post:
The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Jilted Ex Blasts NY Times Over ‘Vows’ Story: ‘Revisionist History’ — Yesterday I asked whether The New York Times made any attempt to get both sides of the controversial story of two married parents who left their spouses for each other — a question the Times refused to discuss. Now we have our answer.

Discussion: Gawker, Politics Daily, Runnin' Scared, New York Observer, The Daily Dish, Gothamist, Yahoo! News and New York Magazine

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

The End Of Hulu As We Know It (And Comcast Feels Fine) — What the hell is going on at Hulu? Monday's mysterious story in The Wall Street Journal portends significant changes in 2011 that may just be scratching the surface of what's to come for the service.

Discussion: MediaPost, Company Town, GigaOM, NetNewsCheck Latest, Techland, Mediaweek, Show Me The Money, Stop Big Media News and Digital Trends

Jim / Gannett Blog:

All shook up: As Newseum's operating costs soared to $250,000 a day, Freedom Forum's finances sank — [This year's Presley exhibit is a stretch for a news museum] — Four months ago, the Freedom Forum journalism foundation issued a late-afternoon press release that nearly begged to be ignored.

EditorandPublisher.com:

Editor & Publisher Partners with MediaSpan to Improve Its Website — Visitors to E&P's website (www.editorandpublisher.com) in the coming months will find it much easier to navigate and jam-packed with a database of articles and exclusive content now that the magazine has partnered …

Discussion: Big News Network.com and FishbowlNY

Dylan Stableford / The Wrap:

News Corp. Gets Antitrust Approval for BSkyB Bid, But ‘War’ is Declared — News Corp.'s £7.8 billion bid to buy British Sky Broadcasting won anti-trust approval from the European Commission on Tuesday, clearing a key hurdle on the path to the mega-merger.

Discussion: Telegraph, Guardian, paidContent, EU Press Room and Media Week

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:

Rush Limbaugh's TV Nemesis — Ed Schultz was a right-wing radio talk-show host—until he fell in love with a liberal and hit the big time. Howard Kurtz talks to Schultz about his feud with Rush and why he's mad at Obama. — After bashing the president's tax-cut compromise on MSNBC …

Discussion: Mediaite, TVNewser, Chickaboomer and The Huffington Post

Robert Ambrogi / Robert Ambrogi's LawSites:

Bloggers Beware of Demand Media's Demand for Ownership — [See my update about this: Clarification on Demand Media: Two Contracts.] — Way back in 2006, I accepted an invitation to enroll this blog in something called the BlogBurst Network. It described itself as “a syndication service …

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

The Pandora-Elevation Deal that Never Closed and a Mid-2011 IPO? — Back in August we reported that Elevation Partners had signed a letter of intent to buy secondary shares in Pandora, the long-suffering, now-hot online radio station. I wondered what ever happened to that deal, so I started digging.

Michael Starr / New York Post:

Katie, CBS to talk next month — CBS is expected to begin contract negotiations with “Evening News” anchor Katie Couric next month, sources say. — Couric's five-year, $75 million deal expires in May. A report yesterday that she had already begun renegotiating her contract was shot down by insiders.

Discussion: TVNewser, Chickaboomer and Bloomberg

Alex Howard / O'Reilly Radar:

The growing importance of data journalism — One of the themes from News Foo that continues to resonate with me is the importance of data journalism. That skillset has received renewed attention this winter after Tim Berners-Lee called analyzing data the future of journalism.

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: A plea for honesty in paid TV pitches — It shouldn't be that hard for news programs to clearly point out when guest ‘experts’ are being paid to pump up certain products. So why aren't more stations following through? — To that long list of buyer-bewares this Christmas season …

Mashable!:

Exclusive Hands-on With HuffPo's Elegant New iPad App [PICS] … The next edition of The Huffington Post's iPad app — dubbed NewsGlide — has arrived in the App Store, serving up the publication's top stories to device owners in a newly elegant, image-rich format that improves greatly upon the previous version.

Discussion: Poynter