Mediagazer: Sears, Kmart launch Alphaline Entertainment movie download service (Richard Lawler/Engadget)

9:00 AM ET, December 29, 2010

Top News:

Putting the Record Straight on the Lamo-Manning Chat Logs — Editor's note: This is a two-part article, in which Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen and senior editor Kevin Poulsen respond separately to criticisms of the site's Wikileaks coverage. — The Case for Privacy

Discussion: p2pnet, Firedoglake, Boing Boing and WL Central, more at Techmeme »

John Koblin / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: iPad Magazine Sales Drop — Remember when Wired's debut issue for the iPad sold more than 100,000 times in June? It looks like it will be a while before that type of performance is seen again. Digital sales dropped toward the end of 2010 for all the magazines that make those figures available …

Discussion: Strange Attractor

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Oprah Network and Cablevision Reach Deal — OWN, Oprah Winfrey's forthcoming cable channel, will be carried by Cablevision, the companies said Tuesday. — The agreement is important because Cablevision was one of the last big gaps in OWN's distribution footprint, and because Cablevision serves …

Discussion: Company Town, AdAge, Broadcasting & Cable and TVWeek.com

Amy Gahran / Knight Digital Media Center:

“Show me the document!” should be the newsroom rule — On Dec. 20, the FCC passed its Open Internet Order—a high-profile rulemaking that tackles the highly controversial issue of net neutrality. The day before this vote, I began researching my mobile blog post for CNN.com about the rule.

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Sears, Kmart launch Alphaline Entertainment movie download service — After Wal-mart, Best Buy and Amazon jumped on the digital delivery bandwagon it's clearly evident that just offering discs for sale isn't enough, and right on schedule Sears and Kmart are launching Alphaline Entertainment …

Discussion: MediaPost, The Consumerist, Wall Street Journal, WatchingTV Online and Inside Movies

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Sinclair and Time Warner in Fight Over Fees — The new year seemingly can't come without a fight over the fees paid for television programming. — Last year there was an end-of-the-year dispute between Time Warner Cable and News Corporation. This year Time Warner Cable is fighting again …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Mac Slocum / O'Reilly Radar:

What lies ahead: Publishing — Tim O'Reilly recently offered his thoughts and predictions for a variety of topics we cover regularly on Radar. I'll be posting highlights from our conversation throughout the week. — Mac — How will ebooks change publishing?

Susan King / 24 Frames:

'All the President's Men,' ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘Malcolm X’ among 2010 National Film Registry picks [Video] — “Airplane!” the outlandish 1980 spoof of disaster movies; “All the President's Men,” the Oscar-winning fact-based drama about the uncovering of the Watergate scandal; and “Let There Be Light …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Thompson on Hollywood, CultureMap and Company Town

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Q: What Does Quora Mean For The Future Of Blogging? A: Business As Usual — As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me") have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea.

Discussion: TeleRead and Fimoculous.com, more at Techmeme »

Phil Rosenthal / Tower Ticker:

Gerry Spector exiting as Tribune Co. COO — Tribune Co. Chief Operating Officer Gerry Spector, a long-time associate of real estate billionaire Sam Zell, is leaving the Chicago-based media company he has helped lead since Zell took it private three years ago.

Discussion: Poynter, MediaPost, The Wrap and New York Observer

Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:

In 2010: The 10 Best Ways to Consume the News — While I started to put together a list of the ten best news apps of 2010, I paused to think about how drastically our consumption of the news has changed over the past year. Fortunately, my brilliant colleague Martin Bryant has written a post …

Thanks:alex

MediaShift Idea Lab:

Why Are New Media Conferences Lacking in Minorities? — It's been a couple of weeks since Tim O'Reilly's News Foo rolled into the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, and while I truly enjoyed thinking big thoughts with big thinkers about the direction of our industry …