Mediagazer: ‘Like Crazy’ Wins Big at Sundance Film Festival 2011 (Michelle Kung/Speakeasy)

12:10 AM ET, January 31, 2011

Top News:

Julian Assange, The Man Behind WikiLeaks — Talks To Steve Kroft About The U.S. Attempt To Indict Him And The Criticism Aimed At Him For Publishing Classified Documents — (CBS) Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a Web site called WikiLeaks, or of its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange.

Discussion: The Firewall, kateoplis, Between the Lines Blog and New York Times, more at Techmeme »

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

WikiLeaks: The Guardian's role in the biggest leak in the history of the world — In an extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's war on secrecy, the Guardian's editor-in-chief explains why Assange remains such an important figure - and why the story is destined to run and run

via:sdkstl

Aljazeera:

Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau — Network's licences cancelled and accreditation of staff in Cairo withdrawn by order of information minister. — The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network's licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Nieman Journalism Lab, Mediaite, Epicenter, @naomiaklein, The Wire, Associated Press and Future of Journalism

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

Al Jazeera reporters now anonymous on TV, still tweet — The Egyptian government closed Al Jazeera's Cairo bureau early Sunday, pulled its reporters credentials and blocked the network's TV signal in Egypt, the network said. “Our staff has packed up our entire office in the downtown bureau …

Discussion: BuzzMachine and Multichannel

Robert F. Worth / New York Times:
Al Jazeera Covers Protests Despite Hurdles

Discussion: News: News blog, The Lede, Guardian, The Next Web, Blogs and Stories, Boing Boing, Soaring on a Pig …, The Corsair and ReadWriteWeb

Reuters:

Comcast completes NBC Universal merger — (Reuters) - Comcast Corp has completed its takeover of NBC Universal, creating a $30 billion media behemoth that controls not just how television shows and movies are made but how they are delivered to people's homes.

Discussion: TVNewser

Johnnie L. Roberts / The Wrap:

It's Got NBCU ... Now Comcast Has a Fight for Reinvention — From Hollywood to Madison Avenue, all eyes will be glued to Comcast's top-priority mission: scripting television's greatest comeback narrative at also-ran NBC, which the cable giant formally took control of on Friday.

Discussion: Multichannel and Broadcasting & Cable

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter: U.S. Media and Entertainment Deal Volume Rose 3% in 2010

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

iPad Mags Need A New Blueprint — Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they've just been stumbling over themselves. — They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay …

Discussion: VentureBeat and TeleRead

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Ongo... where? — Ongo is an ambitious digital kiosk. Launched last week, it was founded last year by Alex Kazim, a high-tech executive who worked at Ebay, Skype and PayPal. Kazim lined up an impressive group of investors: Gannett, The New York Times, The Washington Post …

John Naughton / Guardian:

Why the BBC's old guard called time on the Wibbly Wobbly Web — The corporation's online arm is being cut off at the elbow... and many are secretly delighted — So the BBC is slimming down, in response to government pressure. The World Service is to lose five of its foreign-language services, and a quarter of its staff.

Michelle Kung / Speakeasy:

‘Like Crazy’ Wins Big at Sundance Film Festival 2011 — Earlier this evening, actor Tim Blake Nelson hosted the awards ceremony for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Dressed as a snowflake (prompting actress/director Vera Farmiga to dub him 'Tim Flake Nelson'), he bumped chests …

Discussion: The Daily Beast and The Wrap

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Exclusive: Yahoo Delivering 1 Million Video Views for Washington Post's “The Fast Fix” — Could Chris Cillizza Beat Rachel Maddow? — WASHINGTON, DC — “The Fast Fix” a daily, 60-second daily video update on Beltway news featuring the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza has exceeded online viewership …

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Now This Is a Content Mill: Narrative Science Raises $6 Million for Human-Free Stories — Demand Media and its peers pay lots of writers small sums in order to generate lots and lots of content, with the help of computers. But you can do it for even less if you eliminate the writers altogether.

Discussion: Trends in the Living Networks

Steve Safran / Lost Remote:

Networks are paying close attention to social media — Encouraging news came out of Friday's #TVNext conference in Boston: the networks are paying attention to social media and are working on strategies to merge it with their TV shows. The Boston advertising agency Hill Holiday put …

Discussion: CBS Boston and Future of Journalism

Joe Coscarelli / Runnin' Scared:

Brisenia Flores Is Still Not Quite National News: Why? — We've written twice this week about the trial of Shawna Forde, a troubled anti-immigration crusader, who stands charged with first degree murder for the 2009 killing of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in Arizona.