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

2:00 PM ET, January 3, 2011

Top News:

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

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: TVWeek.com, Mediaite and LA Observed

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: Online Video News, TVWeek.com and The Huffington Post

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: Poynter, Broadcasting & Cable and New York Magazine

camen design:

RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried — Update: Added response from Asa, thanks! Getting a lot of attention now. Stop crying about the title; I've been ill all week. It simply means that “RSS is under threat of becoming irrelevant. The floppy disk is still around, but you don't get many cameras with Floppy drives”.

Discussion: Scripting News and parislemon, more at Techmeme »

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, FishbowlNY and Gawker

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: Yahoo! News and Arkansas Blog

David Carr / New York Times:

The Great Mashup of 2011 — For years, those of us who toiled in the backwater of media reporting — covering people who cover other people — were left to trace the slow-motion decline of mainstream media and the inconsequential pratfalls of nascent digital efforts.

Discussion: Poynter

John Koblin / WWD Media Headlines:

Memo Pad: Lady Gaga, Newsstand Hit... Calvin Klein's New PR Director... THE LADY'S A WINNER: Put Lady Gaga in anything — flesh-colored bra, black bustier, meat dress, artillery-undie extravaganza — and it doesn't matter. She sells. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations …

Discussion: Gawker and Poynter

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.

Discussion: Multichannel, ABCNEWS, Bloomberg, CNET News, FT tech hub and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Michael Learmonth / AdAge: Why Marketing's Big Guns Are Winging Their Way to Las Vegas

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: Journalism.org

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: VentureBeat

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Calling Netflix or Huffpo: After 2010, Hollywood Needs a Game-Changer — It seemed like a quiet year as the entertainment industry continued down its uncertain path into the 21st Century. — No big mergers occurred. No major bankruptcies, save Blockbuster and MGM. Carl Icahn kept tilting at Lionsgate.

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Wall St. spanked debt-laden publishers in 2010 — Wall Street repudiated the shares of debt-heavy newspaper companies in 2010 at the same time the stocks of generally less leveraged publishers advanced. — In a decidedly mixed year for the 11 remaining publicly traded newspaper companies …

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

iPad publishing: time to switch to v2.0 — There is no way around this fact: the first batch of magazines adapted to the iPad failed to deliver. Six months after the initial excitement, the mood has turned turned sour. See the figures below, they show the downturn in circulation …

Discussion: Rebooting The News, MediaPost and Bill's blog