Mediagazer: 2010 Trend Watch Update: Books and Newspapers (Cindy/Electronic Frontier Foundation)

10:05 PM ET, December 25, 2010

Top News:

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

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

Ramin Vaziri / 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

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: MediaPost, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Washington Post, Media Decoder, Company Town, DailyFinance, SAI, Los Angeles Times and MediaPost

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

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

MediaShift:

iPads, Print-on-Demand Slowly Transform Magazines in 2010 — This revolution is going to take its time. — It's been a year of high expectations but little fulfillment for those who thought 2010 might forever change the way we read magazines. We've seen that disappointing uses of new tools …

Cindy / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

2010 Trend Watch Update: Books and Newspapers — At the beginning of this year EFF identified a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we thought would play a significant role in shaping digital rights in 2010, with a promise to revisit our predictions at the end of the year.

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.