Mediagazer: Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War (Randall Stross/New York Times)

8:00 PM ET, December 26, 2011

Top News:

A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court — How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost? — In base economic terms, the value of individual Twitter updates seems to be negligible; after all, what is a Twitter post but a few bits of data sent caroming through the Internet?

Discussion: Forbes, Betabeat, Marketing Pilgrim and VatorNews

Ben Farmer / Telegraph:

Congress calls on Twitter to block Taliban — American congressmen are calling on Twitter to block Taliban propagandists from the micro-blogging site. — Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt …

Discussion: Mediaite, Business Insider, VatorNews, Boing Boing and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

David Collins / Daily Mirror:

Sue Caroll: Piers Morgan and Ed Miliband lead tributes — Sue Carroll photographed in March 2011 — Tributes to Sue Carroll flooded in today from the worlds of journalism, showbiz and politics. — Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “She spoke truth to the powerful and punctured the vanity of celebrity.

Discussion: Guardian

Tara Conlan / Guardian:
Columnist Sue Carroll dies of cancer

Discussion: Mirror.co.uk

Nancy Phillips / Philly.com:

Seventh victim tells of Conlin abuse — Yet another woman has come forward to say that Hall of Fame baseball writer and former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin sexually abused her when she was a child. — The woman said Conlin assaulted her at the beach in Margate, N.J. …

Wyatt Williams / Creative Loafing Atlanta:

Can Don Lemon set CNN straight? — Cable news is broken and the ‘CNN Newsroom’ anchor could be the guy to fix it — Earlier this year, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” ran a segment titled “CNN's Don Lemon appears to not care for CNN.” The clip shows the Atlanta-based “CNN Newsroom” …

Discussion: The Maynard Institute

Jack Shafer:

OTUS and the golden age of political reporting — Just what the country needed: Another political Web site. — At the beginning of the week, ABC News launched OTUS, its political news supermarket with its top political reporters (Jake Tapper, Jonathan Karl, Amy Walter, and George Stephanopoulos) hunkering on the site's home page.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and @romenesko

David Carr / New York Times:

Rules for the New Ways of Watching — For the last year, media pundits like me have been running around screaming our heads off about falling skies and collapsing paradigms, and yet as 2011 comes to end, the sky is still there. — Yes, competition is storming out of every device and connection …

ESPN:

Fox wins ruling against Dodgers — DOVER, Del. — A U.S. District Judge in Delaware on Friday dealt a significant blow to the Los Angeles Dodgers' plans to sell the media rights to future games, halting the sales process while he consider an appeal by Fox Sports.

Randall Stross / New York Times:

Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War — LAST year, Christmas was the biggest single day for e-book sales by HarperCollins. And indications are that this year's Christmas Day total will be even higher, given the extremely strong sales of e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook.

Discussion: VatorNews, more at Techmeme »

Mona Zhang / 10,000 Words:

Growth of Twitter Fueled by Media Coverage — A new study by MIT, which seeks to understand Twitter's “contagion process,” has found that news media played a crucial role in the site's growth. The study tracked development from 2006 to 2009, and also found that more traditional forms of social networking …

Discussion: TVNewser and Marketing Pilgrim

Kelly McBride / Poynter:

Can a sports network known for its male brand serve the female fan? — We watched with great interest this year as ESPN launched espnW, a brand designed to grow the female portion of ESPN's audience. — “W” is mostly a website at this point, grown out of a blog born in December 2010.

Daniel Bardsley / The National:

Journalists fighting an information war in secretive North Korea — SEOUL // Hunched over, staring at their computer screens, the dozen or so journalists in this cramped office in north-west Seoul collect the latest reports for their online news service about one of the world's most secretive countries.

Dean Starkman / CJR:

The Hole In FON Theory — Continuing the discussion about the future of news with Clay Shirky — I thank Clay Shirky and other posters for their responses to “Confidence Game: the limited vision of the news gurus.” Since Clay and I are going to differ on a few things …

Discussion: Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Dan Kennedy / Nieman Journalism Lab: 2012 will bring “the great retrenchment” among newspaper publishers

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Caseby's squalid note to The Guardian editor shows News International's true face — I was surprised when I switched on Newsnight last week to hear that Nick Davies had refused to take part in a discussion with The Sun's managing editor, Richard Caseby. — I've known Davies for more than 35 years …