Mediagazer: FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions for program sharing (Cecilia Kang/Post Tech)

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Demand Media's IPO-Which Won't Happen Until After the New Year Now-Depends on How It Accounts for Content — Yesterday, Demand Media submitted another amended S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission, part of its march to an initial public offering many had expected to take place sooner rather than later.

Discussion: Mediaweek, New York Magazine, SAI, VentureBeat and mediabistro.com, more at Techmeme »

Henry Blodget / The Wire:

Come On, Demand Media, Just Drop The Bogus Accounting — The reason the Demand Media IPO has been delayed, Kara Swisher says, is that the regulators are taking a closer look at the company's accounting. — As well they should. — Because it's unusual.

Discussion: Mixed Media

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Tribune's new management team releases updated conduct code — “It's impossible to spell out every possible situation that you might face,” says a memo sent to Tribune employees on Wednesday, so “use common sense and good judgment to steer your behavior and decisions.”

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:

FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions for program sharing — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission issued a draft order approving Comcast's proposed merger with NBC Universal on Thursday, putting the deal up for vote before the agency's other members.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, MediaMemo, VentureBeat, Free Press, Tech Daily Dose, Between the Lines Blog, Bloomberg and Hillicon Valley

Why Comcast/NBCU matters — Since January 2010, I've been writing about the Comcast/NBCU merger. Now we're in the end-game - so let's pull some threads together for this last post for the year. — This merger has more angles than a marathon trick-billiards match, but the most important one is this …

Discussion: Multichannel, rbr.com, The Wrap and Free Press

Graham Bowley / New York Times:

Computers That Trade on the News — The number-crunchers on Wall Street are starting to crunch something else: the news. — Math-loving traders are using powerful computers to speed-read news reports, editorials, company Web sites, blog posts and even Twitter messages …

Discussion: The Big Picture, GigaOM and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme »

Guardian:

BSkyB: Without prejudice — On one level the Sky deal is simply business. But the issue of media plurality is more than an argument about competition — It is a much-remarked upon irony of yesterday's humiliating slap-down of Vince Cable that he was both wrong and right.

Discussion: BBC

Discussion: Agence France Presse, The Deal LLC, Reuters, Daily Mail and Broadcasting & Cable

Justin McGuirk / Guardian:

They've shaped the internet, but can designers save the newspaper? — We can see design thinking at work in web phenomena such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but the predicament of printed news remains an unsolved problem — In the 1850s, a New York publisher announced that newspapers were dead: he had seen a telegraph in action.

Peter S. Goodman / The Huffington Post:

Kaplan Tarnishes Washington Post Legacy — Nearly four decades ago, the Washington Post found itself faced with the sort of agonizing decision that can define a reputation. The New York Times had begun printing classified federal documents known as the Pentagon Papers …

Discussion: Media Myth Alert and Poynter

Rene Lynch / Daily Dish:

Restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila photographed and kicked out of Red Medicine — Our restaurant critic has been unmasked. — S. Irene Virbila, the L.A. Times' restaurant critic for the last 16 years, was visiting Red Medicine restaurant in Beverly Hills on Tuesday night when she was approached …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Poynter, The Big Picture, Eater National, Gawker, Squid Ink and LA Observed

Longreads:

Foster Kamer: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010 — Foster Kamer (ex-BlackBook + Gawker + Village Voice) is online features and news editor at Esquire. — 2010 was an incredible year for writing, bottom line. Despite the proliferation of things whose output is mostly antagonistic to great writing …

Thanks:markarms

Fortune:

So you want to be a viral video? — A look at Xtranormal, the company that makes those sardonic robot videos, and how they plan to be the Zynga of intentionally bad online animation. — By Chadwick Matlin, contributor — Screengrab from the Xtranormal Geico commercial

Kristina Loring / design mind:

Print is Dead? Nah, It's Just a Start-Up — In 2010, it seemed everyone was eager to declare that print was finally dead, even before a proper funeral. The economic recession shed light on the outrageous cost of production (printing the New York Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber …

Ben Kunz / Business Week:

The $8 Billion Do Not Track Prize — Don't be fooled: The FTC proposal to protect online privacy has more to do with big publishers' revenue than Internet users' personal Web data — There's a great moment in All The President's Men, the film based on the 1970s Watergate investigation …

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

New CEO wastes no ‘Time’ with shakeup — Say goodbye to the Ann Moore business template — new Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin yesterday smashed it to pieces. — In a major pre-Christmas shakeup, Griffin busted up the single News & Sports Group that contained Time and Sports Illustrated …