Mediagazer: Beware of contempt, AG warns UK press (John Plunkett/Guardian)

1:55 PM ET, December 31, 2010

Top News:

Elinor Comlay / Reuters:

Time Warner Cable, Sinclair yet to reach deal — (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc have yet to renew a carriage agreement ahead of an end-of-year deadline, but the second largest U.S. cable operator agreed to carry the four broadcast networks despite the dispute.

Discussion: Company Town

Mike Reynolds / Multichannel:

Time Warner Cable: We Hold Big 4 Programming Cards In Sinclair Retrans Dispute — Negotiations Continue As Midnight Deadline Nears — As a midnight deadline nears, Time Warner Cable, armed with Big 4 programming, says it is continuing to negotiate a retransmission-consent renewal deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Nonprofit News May Thrive in Comcast Takeover — Included in Comcast's promises regarding its acquisition of NBC is a little-noticed plan that may stimulate the growth of nonprofit news organizations. — Comcast is pledging to establish partnerships between news nonprofits and at least five …

Todd Shields / Bloomberg:

Comcast Should Provide Program Contracts to the FCC, Groups Say — Advocacy groups asked the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to demand more documents from Comcast Corp. before voting on the cable company's proposed merger with General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal.

Discussion: MediaPost

Nick Davies / The Huffington Post:

The Julian Assange Investigation — Let's Clear the Air of Misinformation — Bianca Jagger last week launched a fierce attack on the Guardian for carrying my story about the evidence collected by Swedish police who have been investigating the claims of sexual assault by the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

Discussion: Jon Slattery and Soup

Alicia Shepard / NPR:

NPR Apologizes for WikiLeaks Mistake; Nina Totenberg and Teena Marie — Thanks to one persistent listener, NPR published a correction admitting that it has mistakenly - and more than once - inflated the number of State Department diplomatic cables released recently by WikiLeaks.

Discussion: The Nation, Poynter, Techdirt, Yahoo! News and On Media's Blog

Steve Green / Las Vegas Sun:

Judge questions whether nonprofit's Web posting harmed R-J — A judge was skeptical Tuesday about claims the Las Vegas Review-Journal was harmed when an entire Review-Journal story was posted without authorization on an Oregon nonprofit's website. — U.S. District Judge James Mahan commented …

Discussion: MediaPost

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Shaping a Network With Oprah's View — For decades cable channels have been built around specific interests like news, sports or classic movies. Beginning this weekend, there will be something altogether different: a cable channel shaped around a person, Oprah Winfrey.

Discussion: Company Town, Guardian, Inside TV and New York Times

John Plunkett / Guardian:

Beware of contempt, AG warns UK press — Attorney General Dominic Grieve warns UK media not to prejudice any future trial with its coverage of murder suspect Chris Jefferies — The Attorney General issued a warning to newspaper editors today not to prejudice any future trial with their coverage …

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Borders Delays Payments — In a potentially ominous turn of events for the book business, Borders Group Inc. said Thursday that it is delaying payments to some publishers, a sign that its financial troubles are worsening. — The nation's second-largest bookstore chain by revenue …

Discussion: Deadline.com, Electronista and SAI

Mary Ann Giordano / New York Times:

The Year in Collaborative Journalism — Some end-of-year thank yous — and explanations. — This time last year, The Local was in a state of flux. Our founding reporter/blogger, Andy Newman, had just been elevated to run City Room, the popular blog for all things NYC on nytimes.com.

Andrew Walkingshaw / paidContent:

What Comes After Newspapers: Forget Form, It's About Content — Andrew Walkingshaw is CEO of London-based startup Timetric, which specializes in economic data services, but he is writing a series about the post-newspaper world at his personal blog with pretext. We're publishing this installment with his permission.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Local Researcher Borrell Buys Small Biz Ad Spend Analyst Belden Interactive — Local media researcher Borrell Associates has acquired the similarly-focused Belden Interactive. Terms were not disclosed. As part of the deal, Greg Harmon, the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Belden …