Mediagazer: Interview with a Really Funny Guy (Vincent Barr/Times Union Blogs)

2:45 PM ET, December 27, 2010

Top News:

In ‘Daily Show’ Role on 9/11 Bill, Echoes of Murrow — Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause? — And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart …

Discussion: Gawker, Mediaite, Poynter, New York Observer, Media Research Center, The Wire, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Company Town, Media Myth Alert and The New Yorker Blog

Jon Kalish / New York Times:

Talking Tech and Building an Empire From Podcasts — Balancing on a giant rubber ball in a broadcast studio and control room carved out of a cottage in Petaluma, Calif., Leo Laporte is an unlikely media mogul. — From that little town in California wine country, he runs his empire, a podcasting network, TWIT.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Business cable primed for hefty gains — While viewers of the three business cable networks may be feeling a bit better today than a year ago — thanks to the 10 percent plus gain in the S&P 500 index in 2010 over last year — those producing TV's daily dose of business babble have a right to be downright giddy.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, The Wire, TVNewser and Talking Biz News

Glenn Greenwald / Salon:

The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired — For more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year's most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source.

Discussion: Firedoglake

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:

Hollywood Moves Away From Middlebrow — LOS ANGELES — When negative Twitter commentary seemingly torpedoed the Sacha Baron Cohen film “Brüno” in July 2009, movie executives started talking in solemn tones about the ability of social networking to sway attendance.

Wall Street Journal:

While on Cellphone, a Rival's Ad — Mobile-phone companies are experimenting with a new way to steal their rivals' customers: the mobile insult to the device in hand. — Their new tactic involves mobile ads that appear when a person using a competitor's phone or network launches an application or browses the Web on their phone.

Vincent Barr / Times Union Blogs:

Interview with a Really Funny Guy — It's one thing to be make me laugh in person, but quite another to do it on paper or on screen. — So, when I came across Brandon Mendelson, well, I was pleasantly surprised. I read his Tweets and grinned; read his articles on The Post and chuckled …

Thanks:bjmendelson

Lynne Brennen / INMA:

Gen Y's reality is print newspapers' challenge — The other day, as we were musing around a conference table, someone asked a straight forward and seemingly naïve question: why don't people read print newspapers as much as they once did? — We all know that there are easily a hundred …

Amy Wicks / WWD:

Memo Pad: The Kardashian Covers... Terry Richardson's Equinox Campaign... KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIAN COVERS: Kim Kardashian and her sisters have become the gift that keeps on giving for celebrity weeklies such as In Touch, Life & Style and Us Weekly. During the past year …

Discussion: Jezebel

Benjamin Wallace-Wells / New York Magazine:

Peretz in Exile — For decades, Martin Peretz taught at Harvard and presided over The New Republic—a fierce, if controversial, lion among American intellectuals and Zionists. Now, having been labeled a bigot, taunted at his alma mater, and stripped of his magazine, he has found peace in a place where there is little: Israel.

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

“Incredible Appetite for Financial Journalism” Will Drive Expansion of New York Times Dealbook in 2011 — Despite many well established sources for financial journalism, The New York Times will expand its newly revamped Dealbook property with more data features, video and reporter hires …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and WebNewser

Perry Bacon Jr / Washington Post:

For aides, reporters in Hawaii, a mix of work and play — HONOLULU - If the beachfront home where the Obamas are staying in Hawaii is the “Winter White House,” then you might call the Moana Surfrider this island's version of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.