Mediagazer: NBCUniversal, Hearst Corp. Close Deal to Rebrand G4 as Esquire Channel (Lacey Rose/Hollywood Reporter)

10:10 AM ET, December 9, 2012

Top News:

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

An Empty Seat in the Courtroom — THE lawyer David Coombs rarely speaks publicly outside the courtroom. He says that his client, Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks, prefers it that way. — But last Monday night at a Unitarian Church in Washington, Coombs made an exception.

Discussion: GigaOM, @davidfolkenflik, @jayrosen_nyu and Techdirt

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:

NBCUniversal, Hearst Corp. Close Deal to Rebrand G4 as Esquire Channel — The move, which will look to court metrosexual viewers that History and Spike ignore, will include programming focused on gaming and lifestyle. — In its bid for the largely untapped metrosexual viewership …

Discussion: Joystiq, The Verge and Polygon

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

NYT DC bureau chief: ‘The Web has created a more responsible press, with higher standards’ — David Leonhardt explains in a Reddit AMA response why the Web has been good for journalism: … The New York Times D.C. bureau chief became the latest journalist to participate in a Reddit AMA …

Erik Wemple:

Progressive journos hang with Obama: Anything wrong with that? — The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington is generally forthcoming about her enterprise and its journalism. — Except, that is, when she's invited to an off-the-record meeting in the White House with President Obama.

Discussion: @nickbaumann and @jayrosen_nyu

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Press fear Obama private swearing in — The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the president's official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event could potentially be closed to the press.

Discussion: Mediaite and Saint Petersblog

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Web Video, on Your TV, That Looks Like TV — There are now lots of ways to get Web video onto your TV. But in lots of cases that stuff still looks like Web video — clips you're not supposed to watch for more than a couple of minutes at a time. — So here's another attempt to blur …

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Stop Calling Me a Troll — Author photo? — The other day I wrote a column criticizing iTunes. It was somewhat harsh. “Each new upgrade brings more suckage into your computer,” I argued under the headline, “Won't Someone Take iTunes Out Back and Shoot It?” Predictably, the column got some people riled up.

Discussion: New York Magazine

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

NYT launches Compendium, a Pinterest-like tool for the paper's content — Many newspapers and magazines have already created accounts on Pinterest, and it's not surprising they're thinking about other ways to get readers to share their content. This week the New York Times Research …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

29th Street Publishing wants to make selling magazines for iPads as easy as blogging — There was a time when blogging wasn't easy. Before the days of Tumblr, WordPress, and Blogger, you likely needed to be a coder if you wanted to write online. As Ryan Singer recently put it at Signal vs. Noise …

Discussion: NYConvergence.com

Angela Watercutter / Wired:

Google Grants $1.2M to Help Analyze Female Roles in TV, Film — Much like Madonna teamed up with Geena Davis in A League of Their Own, Google is joining forces with the movie star — and her nonprofit organization devoted to improving the images of women that young people see in films and TV shows.

Amy Rosewater / American Journalism Review:

When History Is Rewritten — Bonnie Ford, a senior writer for ESPN.com, remembers looking at the U.S. Figure Skating record book and seeing a name she found strange as the winner of the women's national championship title in 1994. Rather than seeing names such as Michelle Kwan or Nancy Kerrigan, one word was listed instead: Vacant.

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Pay Wall Push: Why Newspapers Are Hopping Over the Picket Fence — When The Wall Street Journal broke the news that The Washington Post was likely to start charging for online content sometime next year, it should not have come as a surprise, but it did. — The shock had something …