Mediagazer: Hearst's inside track on Elle of a mag deal (Keith J. Kelly/New York Post)

9:15 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Net Rules and Braces for Fight — Updated The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved a new and still-unpublished set of rules that are intended to preserve open access to the Internet.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: Salon, Memex 1.1, Free Press and Geekosystem, more at Techmeme »

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 …

James Barron / New York Times:

Times Sues City Police, Saying Information Has Been Illegally Withheld — The New York Times has sued the New York Police Department, saying the department had routinely violated a state law that requires government agencies to provide information to the press and the public.

Discussion: mediabistro.com and New York Magazine

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

Joelle Diderich / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: YSL's Moroccan Passion... Barneys' List... MOROCCAN PASSION: Yves Saint Laurent is going back to its founder's Moroccan sanctuary. For the luxury brand's spring 2011 campaign, Stefano Pilati had model Arizona Muse pose in the gardens of Bled Roknine, a Thirties-style villa in Marrakech …

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Hearst's inside track on Elle of a mag deal — Bids are due this week in the big selloff of Elle and other magazine titles in the worldwide stable of the Lagardére Group, which is hoping to sell everything outside of its native France to the highest bidder.

Kate Kaye / ClickZ:

Q&A: FTC's Top Technologist Talks Data Tracking — When the Federal Trade Commission says “do-not-track,” what does it mean exactly? What types of online data is the agency referring to in its proposal for a browser-based mechanism allowing consumers to opt-out from tracking?

Discussion: AdExchanger.com, more at Techmeme »

Danielle Gould / Food+Tech Connect:

Gourmet Live: Iterating A Recipe For Digital Content Success — Gourmet Magazine's closure last year “presaged the death of magazines,” lamented Jeff Jarvis in a blog post about the end of the longest running food-magazine in the United States. As the social web increasingly democratizes publishing …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Dan Levin / New York Times:

Book Publishers Scramble for Chinese Readers — BEIJING — Star-crossed love between Alexander the Great and his teenage male slave. Ferocious battles that defined an empire. The bloodshed and romance of Ancient Greece. — The novel “The Persian Boy,” by Mary Renault, has it all.

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, Press Gazette, Media News, Guardian, Media Week and The Lede

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.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Keach Hagey / On Media's Blog:

Gregg Birnbaum joins POLITICO — Gregg Birnbaum, the former New York Post political editor who recently left that paper after 17 years after a widely reported newsroom spat, has signed on as a senior editor at POLITICO. — He will be based in New York and start off concentrating on breaking news coverage …

Discussion: New York Observer and FishbowlDC

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.