Mediagazer: Digg Founder Kevin Rose Launches Private Newsletter Called Foundation (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch)

9:40 PM ET, January 3, 2011

Top News:

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

TV Viewing Continues to Edge Up — Historians may someday note with wonder that by the end of 2010, at least six cable television shows were about auctioneers and pawnbrokers. And all were considered successes by their respective channels. — Countless shows were about cops and robbers …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, The Hairpin, Mediaite, Tuned In, TVWeek.com and LA Observed

Jessi Hempel / Fortune:

What the hell is going on with TV? — Google TV. Xbox. Apple TV. Roku. All these gadgets promise to make television more like the web. There's just one hitch: None of them are ready for primetime. — By Jessi Hempel, senior writer — You don't have to wait for Thursday nights to watch The Office these days.

Discussion: Mediaite and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Are One in Four of You Really Going to Cut Cable and Switch to Web Video? — May as well kick off the new year by restarting the cord-cutting debate: Are people really dropping their cable subscriptions in favor of the Internet and some combination of Netflix/Hulu/iTunes/YouTube etc?

Discussion: GigaOM

camen design:

RSS Is Dying Being Ignored, and You Should Be Very Worried — RSS Is Being Ignored, and You Should Be Very Worried — Update: More reworking of article. I stand by my convictions, but I have been wrong in my delivery. — Also, here's a French translation of the previous version, kindly done by zar / teckee.

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, Scripting News and parislemon

Colby Hall / Mediaite:

CNN's Former Morning Host John Roberts Expected To Join Fox News — CNN's John Roberts is expected to join FOX News Channel as a senior national correspondent based in Atlanta and will be reporting on major domestic and international stories for the network.

Discussion: The Wrap, Poynter, Moraes on TV, Broadcasting & Cable, Media Decoder, New York Magazine, Multichannel and Inside TV

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

What's Ahead for Media and Digital Businesses in 2011 — PARIS — The end of 2010 was greeted with relief by many media companies. “Not as bad as 2009” was a common refrain. Advertising bounced back more strongly than expected, led by television. Experiments in charging for digital content held …

David Carr / New York Times:
The Great Mashup of 2011 — For years, those of us who toiled …

Discussion: Poynter

Evan Smith / The Texas Tribune:

Lots of Good News in the Trib's 2010 Analytics — It was a very interesting and newsworthy year for Texas politics and public policy, so it makes sense that traffic on our still-new-ish site would be robust — but even we optimists at Trib HQ didn't imagine that it would be this robust.

Discussion: Poynter and WebNewser

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Ex-Sacramento Bee sports editor launches sports opinion site — Romenesko Misc. — Bill Bradley, who was laid off from the Sacramento Bee in October, says the mission of 27x7com is to fill the sports-opinion void in the Sacramento market. He'll write multiple columns each day that focus …

Discussion: WebNewser

Craig Fehrman / Boston Globe:

The incredible shrinking sound bite — It's not just a modern problem — and may not be such a bad thing after all — In the summer of 1992, just as George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot were gearing up for their presidential race, CBS announced a new policy for its nightly news.

Discussion: Poynter

Wall Street Journal:

Google Digital Newsstand Aims to Muscle In on Apple — Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have stepped up their battle to win over publishers, as the two companies vie to become the dominant distributor of newspapers and magazines for tablet computers and other mobile devices.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Why digital newsstands stink

Discussion: Computerworld

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

The actor, the ex-News of the World executive and a broken-down Ferrari... You will surely have noted in the above picture that the actor Hugh Grant looks somewhat less than happy to be shaking the hand of the man on the right. — There is no sign of a smile. The stare towards the camera is cold.

Discussion: DownloadsEdge

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

‘Daily Show’ May Return to Hulu — “The Daily Show” could soon return to Hulu, the premier Web site for television viewing. — The show and its counterpart on Comedy Central, “The Colbert Report,” were removed from Hulu in early 2010 when the two parties could not agree on a fair price for distribution.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, GigaOM, CNET News, Online Video News, Electronista, TVWeek.com and The Huffington Post

Matt Kinsman / Folio:

With Hearst In Talks To Buy Hachette, New Pres. David Carey Addresses the Troops — Stresses “entrepreneurial thinking” and an “end to playing it safe.” — Most people in the publishing world are stumbling in today to dig out from a blizzard of e-mail and slowly get back into the groove.

Discussion: MinOnline, Gawker, mediabistro.com and AdAge

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Delays dog unleashing of NewsBeast — NewsBeast isn't ready to come out of the cage quite yet. — While the Newsweek/Daily Beast merger was expected to be wrapped up by late November or early December, it has been delayed and is not closing until later this month.

Discussion: Poynter and FishbowlNY

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

Is Instagram the Next Distribution Opportunity for News Media? — From apps to podcasts, Facebook to Twitter, Flickr to YouTube, and more, mainstream media has embraced a number of new, technology-driven — and often social — platforms in the past decade to grow and engage its audiences.

Natalie Zmuda / AdAge:

ABC, Syfy and Best Buy? Retailer Launches Network — Electronics Expert Turns Publisher With Multichannel Net Packed With Original Content — and It's Seeking Ads — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The press corps at this year's Consumer Electronics Show may find themselves jostling for soundbytes …

Discussion: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and Journalism.org

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Longreads: A Digital Renaissance for the Long-form? — At the South by Southwest conference last year, a button featuring the acronym “tl;dr” seemed ubiquitous. “Too long, didn't read” has become a rallying cry for a generation that likes it short and sweet, or else.

Discussion: New York Observer

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Digg Founder Kevin Rose Launches Private Newsletter Called Foundation — I bet you didn't know that Twitter was almost named Jittter or Twitch. Well, now you will. — Last year Digg founder Kevin Rose was mulling over a new video show called fforward. Fforward never launched, but the idea did change into something else.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Peter Maass / New Yorker:

The Toppling: How the media inflated a minor moment in a long war. — How the media inflated a minor moment in a long war. — As viewers watched on television, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Leon Lambert and Corporal Edward Chin prepared to bring down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square.

Discussion: ProPublica, The Atlantic Wire, Yahoo! News and Arkansas Blog

Tonya Garcia / mediabistro.com:

Former ‘Early Show’ Producer Joins Gawker as PR Manager — Kevin Prince has joined Gawker Media as PR manager. Previously, Prince was a producer CBS' The Early Show and has worked with MSNBC. — According to the memo from Gawker head Nick Denton, Prince will be using his TV know-how to promote …

Discussion: Poynter

Matt Zoller Seitz / Salon:

The Oprah Winfrey Network's odd, splashy kick-off — I spent my New Year's Day watching the TV titan's ambitious new cable venture. To my surprise, it won me over — Oprah Winfrey — What time is it? What day is it? What year is it? Who glued my eyelids shut and stuffed my brain with wet socks?

Discussion: Boston Globe, James on screenS, The Huffington Post, Mediaite, Hollywood Reporter, The Wire, On The Air, New York Magazine, The Atlantic Online, ArtsBeat and Gawker

Rishi Chandra / The Official Google TV Blog:

Google TV: A new partner for the new year — We're back from the holidays and ready to get crackin' on 2011. Last year, we launched the first version of Google TV with our partners Sony and Logitech, and this year, we'll continue to make the product even better for you.

Discussion: WebNewser and SAI, more at Techmeme »

digiphile:

Blogging isn't dead, influence contests should be, and hyperlinks rock. — My belated wishes for the media in the New Year: — Please stop making generalized statements that “bloggers” are ____. — Blogs, whether they're written by members of the media, business people or “average” citizens matter in 2011.

Matthew Creamer / AdAge:

Your Followers Are No Measure of Your Influence — Popularity on Twitter or Facebook Is Just That; It's the Ability to Drive Behavior That Matters — Since Malcolm Gladwell began popularizing his “Tipping Point” theory 14 years ago, marketers have fantasized about a world in which they can identify …

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

TV apps will be key focus at CES 2011 — The Consumer Electronics Show gets underway in Las Vegas later this week, and while new tablets, phones and 3D television sets will grab much of the attention, the biggest development in the television business will be the dramatic surge of internet-connected sets and TV apps.