Mediagazer: New iTunes Features Aim To Outdo DVD (Andrew Wallenstein/paidContent)

Wayne Barrett / Runnin' Scared:

Time for Something New — Ed Koch and I were inaugurated on the same day in 1978. He became mayor and I became his weekly tormentor. — I had written a few pieces for the Voice before I took over the Runnin' Scared column that January, going back as far as 1973.

Discussion: Poynter, New York Observer, FishbowlNY, On Media's Blog and Gothamist

Barrett, Robbins Out at Village Voice — Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins, two muckraking fixtures of the New York City press corps, are leaving The Village Voice. Mr. Barrett was let go; Mr. Robbins quit in protest. — Mr. Barrett, who has written for The Voice since 1973 …

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

3rd Quarter Ad Spending Accelerated, Report Finds — The recovery in advertising spending gained momentum in the third quarter, according to a report scheduled to be released on Tuesday morning, underlining the belief that Madison Avenue may be poised for continuing gains in the new year.

Discussion: MediaPost, AdAge, Poynter and Gawker

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Entertainment forecast 2011: Insider predictions on who and what will make headlines — Our informed crystal ball says: Apple will unveil its own TV set and Netflix will buy the Starz channel. Also, CBS will move to gobble up Sony Pictures, and — surprise! — Carl Icahn will continue to make trouble for Lions Gate.

Discussion: Company Town and Wall Street Journal

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors) — Earlier today, we ran a “TechCrunch 2010 In Review” post featuring some key data WordPress.com sent our way for 2010. Interesting stuff all around. However, as some people have noticed, in our top referrers for the year …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, SAI, Scripting News, Stowe Boyd, Malcolm Coles and A VC

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Hearst, Lagardère Finally Confirm Sales Talks — French publisher's U.S. arm Hachette includes Elle, Woman's Day — Could the media M&A market be primed to kick off? Hearst Corp. and Lagardère SCA finally admitted they're in sales talks, confirming the growing buzz of an impending deal.

Discussion: Publishing Executive News and FishbowlNY

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Press Gazette, Editors Weblog, WWD Media Headlines, Canadian Magazines, MinOnline, AdAge and Gawker

David Folkenflik / NPR Topics:

In London, A Case Study In Opinionated Press … This is the first in a two-part series looking at ideology in the media. — British newspaper reporter Polly Curtis strides around back corridors of the Houses of Parliament with a steely confidence in her paper's mission: — Get the facts.

Discussion: New York Observer and Poynter

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

New iTunes Features Aim To Outdo DVD — Some of the coolest so-called “extras” embedded only on the iTunes' version of several recent film releases from Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures aren't even mentioned in their promotional materials. That's because Sony Pictures Home Entertainment …

Discussion: Computerworld, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb and MacRumors, more at Techmeme »

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: NetNewsCheck Latest, Poynter and WebNewser

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Chartbeat Says the Rise of the Machines Won't Be So Bad If You're a Cyborg — Tony Haile has a vision of the future, and it involves turning people like me into cyborgs. — And Haile thinks this is a good thing! It's part of his pitch for Chartbeat, a Web analytics start-up …

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Yes, iNewsStand Is Coming, But Not From Apple — The fight is on for the nascent digital periodical market, with Apple and Google each positioning itself to be the leading vendor. In the latest development, Google is courting publishers for a “digital newsstand for users of devices that run …

Discussion: MediaPost, DailyFinance and MediaPost

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 …

Carl Court / Newsweek:

Why Journalists Aren't Standing Up for WikiLeaks — Three reasons that efforts to prosecute Julian Assange aren't drawing more of an outcry about the First Amendment. — If you think prosecuting journalists is the province solely of the sort of authoritarian governments in the developing world …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org blogs, The Nation and Free Press

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

USA Today Buys Consumer Electronics Review Network Reviewed.com — The USA Today just announced the purchase of Reviewed.com, a group of 12 consumer electronics review sites that focus on gadgets, technology and more. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Discussion: paidContent, mediabistro.com, PR Newswire and Talking Biz News

Peter Costa / Wicked Local East Bridgewater MYSOURCE:

Telling stories as journalists — I'm often asked at holiday parties what I do. Usually I respond, “I'm a print journalist.” That used to mean something, but now young people might as well highlight the word “journalist” and hit control-p for print. — What is print? Is that like the opposite of cursive?

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

The New York Times is Capturing the “Character-Driven Drama” of Wall Street with Dealbook Videos — The newly expanded Dealbook section of The New York Times, is adding several video elements to its offering in an effort to capture the “character-driven drama” of Wall Street, says Mac William Bishop …

Discussion: WebNewser

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

St. Louis Beacon On Pace To Raise $3.5 Million — Nearly three years into its publishing life, the nonprofit St. Louis Beacon starts the new year with some breathing room thanks to a $1.25 million gift from the hometown Danforth Foundation. The gift, the largest single donation so far …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and St. Louis Beacon

Bob Provost / INMA:

Changing the culture of (newspaper) advertising sales — Earlier this month I had three experiences that successively drove home how profound the changes in our (newspaper) marketing philosophy have become. Each was a uniquely different circumstance, but each in its own way provided perspective …

Journalism.org:

Wild Winter Weather Tops the Web — A po werful East Coast winter storm—and complaints about the cleanup effort that followed it—topped the online news agenda last week, according to a special News Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Discussion: Yahoo! News

Pats Papers / Pat's Papers:

Pat's Papers SOS: Call to Action — Message to readers from Pat Kiernan: — I wish this was a cheery New Year's greeting, but I'll get straight to the bad news. As much as I love producing Pat's Papers each day, the website is a money loser. We've been steadily building our audience …

Discussion: Runnin' Scared

Walter Mayr / Spiegel Online:

Facebook Generation Fights Hungarian Media Law — As Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has introduced a new law aimed at gagging the media. The Facebook generation is up in arms. But Orbán remains largely unchallenged …

Rob Horning / The New Inquiry:

Open Books: The E-Reader Reads You … It's fitting that at the end of this essay about the proliferation of e-readers, Scott McLemee invokes critic Franco Moretti, who has devoted the past decade to deromanticizing literary criticism and reconfiguring serious study of the novel as a bloodless …

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The Wrap:

BBC America Hires Discovery Exec Rachel Smith to Focus on Original Programming — BBC America has hired former Discovery, IFC and Bravo executive Rachel Smith, to the newly-created position of vice president of original programming, a move that signals the network's focus on — you guessed it — original programming.

Discussion: Multichannel and Broadcasting & Cable