Mediagazer: Cord Cutters Survival Stories: Online Content Is Exciting (Janko Roettgers/GigaOM)

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Is What WikiLeaks Does Journalism? Good Question — While the U.S. government tries to determine whether what WikiLeaks and front-man Julian Assange have done qualifies as espionage, media theorists and critics alike continue to debate whether releasing those classified diplomatic cables qualifies as journalism.

scienceblog.com:

Ben-Gurion U researcher reveals newspapers' historic resistance to granting reporters' bylines — A new study by Dr. Zvi Reich, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beer-Sheva, Israel, documents the process through which journalists at major newspapers fought …

Discussion: International Business Times

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Does the FCC Want to Kill Hulu? — One of Washington's proposed conditions on the Comcast-NBC U deal will force the merged company to offer NBC's shows to any Web competitor. — So what does that mean for Hulu, which has already locked up exclusive rights to NBC's Web video?

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, MediaPost, Washington Post, Engadget, Media Decoder, Company Town, DailyFinance, SAI, Los Angeles Times and MediaPost, more at Techmeme »

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Woos Local Advertisers — Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising. — The Internet-search giant this year …

Discussion: SAI, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Gannett Blog and Search Engine Land

Michael Humphrey / Techno-tainers:

“Call of Duty” - Newspaper of the Future? — Two days ago, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick compared the “Call of Duty” franchise with Facebook. He told CNN this: … Kotick estimated that “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has already logged 600 million hours on consoles around the world. In six weeks.

Discussion: TeleRead

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Cord Cutters Survival Stories: Online Content Is Exciting — What is it like to cut the cord from pay TV? What's working, what's missing, and what kind of equipment does the best job replacing the cable box? In our new weekend series, we're asking cord cutters to tell us about their experiences.

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

Christmas Gifts May Help E-Books Take Root — The publishing industry used to be afraid of e-books. In 2010 it embraced them. — Publishers expanded their digital divisions, experimented with video-enhanced e-books, worked on digitizing their older titles and made sure that new books …

Discussion: TeleRead

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:

Hulu gets more YouTube-like with playlists — Hulu unveiled some new features today that could help users discover more content on the TV- and movie-watching site, as well as make it a little more social. — The biggest addition is the ability to create playlists.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Jason Falls / Social Media Explorer:

BREAKING: Newspaper Quietly Launches Hyper-Local Location-Based App — It appears the Cincinnati Enquirer is about to take yet another step along the scale of social media innovation by a traditional media member to help increase reader loyalty, advertiser commitment and continued relevance …

Discussion: Poynter, Thanks:jspepper

James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:

On the Media: The media heroes of 2010 — Traditional reporting can still have an impact in our high-tech times. — The news may not have been bigger in 2010. But it came at us every which way — on cellphones and iPads, laptops and BlackBerrys, even by conventional television and newsprint.

Irina Slutsky / AdAge:

Why Google Dropped Groupon and Local Just Doesn't Scale — Ad Age Talks to Infectious Greed Blogger and Tech Investor Paul Kedrosky — SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Prolific tech business analyst Paul Kedrosky made a name for himself as the founder of longtime blog Infectious Greed …

Discussion: MediaPost

Kimberly Turner / Regator:

Why Blogs (Still) Aren't Dead...No Matter What You've Heard — Stan Schroeder of Mashable recently published a post based on research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The post was originally titled: “Everyone Uses E-mail, But Hardly Anyone Blogs Anymore.”

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Demand Media's Accounting Is Even More Bogus Than It Seems — Demand Media is making headlines today for disclosing its unorthodox method of accounting in a new filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The so-called content farm, which is trying to get approval for a $125 million IPO …

Discussion: MediaPost, New York Magazine, VentureBeat, BoomTown and Yahoo! News

Discussion: Search Engine Land, CNET News, Techi.com and SAI