Mediagazer: TV apps will be key focus at CES 2011 (Cory Bergman/Lost Remote)

3:15 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: Nieman Journalism Lab, TVWeek.com, The Hairpin, Tuned In, 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, Electronista, 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: The Wrap, Media Decoder, Poynter, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, Yahoo! News and New York Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: AdAge, Multichannel, WebNewser, ABCNEWS, ReadWriteWeb, Bloomberg and CNET News, 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

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 …

Discussion: Poynter

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.

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.

Noel Randewich / Reuters:

Intel woos Hollywood studios with new microchip — (Reuters) - Intel Corp's new microchips, touted as its biggest-ever leap in processing power, include built-in content protection to make it safer for Hollywood studios to offer premium movies to consumers over their personal computers.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

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

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.