Mediagazer: An Empty Seat in the Courtroom (Margaret Sullivan/New York Times)

8:55 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: @davidfolkenflik, @jayrosen_nyu, GigaOM and Techdirt

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

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 …

Discussion: CJR, Poynter, The Atlantic Wire, Daily Download and DCist

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Online Paywalls and the Future of Media: A Few Hard Truths

Discussion: New York Magazine, Deadline.com, JIMROMENESKO.COM, The Wrap, Media Decoder, The Verge, The Daily Beast and Forbes

Caity Weaver / Gawker:

DJs Behind the Royal Hospital Hoax Have Deleted Their Twitter Accounts; There's Speculation They've Been Fired (UPDATE) — The two DJs behind the Kate Middleton hospital prank, now being blamed as a contributing factor to her nurse's suicide, have either deleted their verified Twitter accounts, or had them removed.

Discussion: Daily Mail, New York Magazine, National Post, mUmBRELLA, Media Decoder, TMZ.com, Mirror.co.uk, Yahoo! News, KNXV, Daily Mail, National Updates, International Business Times, @thematthewkeys, The Huffington Post and The Atlantic Wire

Guardian: 2Day FM: Australia's shock-jock station with history of backfiring stunts

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.

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.

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Incoming Tribune CEO Peter Liguori plans WGN facelift — Tribune Co. CEO-in-waiting Peter Liguori will focus on a makeover of the company's WGN America cable station as soon as the media giant emerges from reorganization, The Post has learned. — The national cable network …

Discussion: TVWeek.com