Mediagazer: Google executives acquitted in Milan autism video case (Manuela D'Alessandro/Reuters)

10:15 AM ET, December 21, 2012

Top News:

News Corp. Says Publishing Unit Lost Money — News Corp . said the publishing company it plans to spin off incurred losses last fiscal year and in the most recent quarter. — The media conglomerate, which plans to separate its entertainment businesses from its publishing businesses …

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

News Corp's head of demerged newspaper arm may take home £2.5m — Robert Thomson will also receive £1.2m bonus as company hives off publishing division from TV and film business — Robert Thomson will be paid potentially well over $4m (£2.5m) a year in salary …

Discussion: The Wrap

Sayantani Ghosh / Reuters:

News Corp files with U.S. regulators to split company … (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp formally applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to separate its publishing and entertainment assets into two independent, publicly traded companies.

Discussion: Deadline.com and Asiaone

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg Tech Blog:

The New York Times Paywall Is Working Better Than Anyone Had Guessed — Ever since the New York Times rolled out its so-called paywall in March 2011, a perennial dispute has waged. Anxious publishers say they can't afford to give away their content for free, while the blogger set claim paywalls tend …

Discussion: @zimbalist

Manuela D'Alessandro / Reuters:

Google executives acquitted in Milan autism video case — (Reuters) - An Italy appeals court acquitted three Google executives of charges of having violated the privacy of an Italian boy with autism by letting a video of him being bullied be posted on the site in 2006.

Discussion: Betabeat, SocialTimes, Wall Street Journal and The Verge

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC Daily and Sunday Politics editor tipped to run Newsnight — Robbie Gibb emerges as leading candidate to rejuvenate programme in wake of Jimmy Savile and McAlpine scandals — The editor of the BBC's Daily and Sunday Politics shows has emerged as the leading candidate to be the next editor of Newsnight.

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
BBC director of news returns with rallying memo to crisis-hit staff

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, The Huffington Post and Guardian

Wall Street Journal:

Hulu's Fork in the Road — As Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. battle it out for dominance in online video, owners of the much smaller Hulu LLC, Hollywood's own online video service, are under pressure to decide which direction to go. — Jason Kilar, chief executive of Hulu …

Discussion: Business Insider, NetNewsCheck Latest and VentureBeat

Carl Bernstein / Guardian:

Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency — Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgement? — So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Politico, @jackshafer and Pressing Issues

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CNN, Planning New Programming, Hires Jake Tapper From ABC — 8:57 p.m. | Updated CNN said on Thursday that it had hired Jake Tapper, the senior White House correspondent for ABC News, as new programming for the cable news channel was announced. — Mr. Tapper, widely seen …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, TVWeek.com, CNN, ABCNEWS, Politico, Poynter, Chickaboomer, Softpedia News, TVNewser and The Wrap

Rebecca Greenfield / New York Times:

What the New York Times's ‘Snow Fall’ Means to Online Journalism's Future — The New York Times debuted a new multimedia feature Thursday so beautiful it has a lot of people wondering — especially those inside the New York Times — if the mainstream media is about to forgo words and pictures for a whole lot more.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online and NetNewsCheck Latest

Emma Gardner / Lean Back 2.0:
The New York Times pushes the limits of online storytelling

Discussion: New York Times, Poynter, FishbowlNY and Gawker

Erik Maza / WWD:

Wal-Mart Turns to Condé Nast for Beauty Magazine — Wal-Mart's BeautyScoop. — Photo By Courtesy of Wal-Mart Photo By Courtesy of Wal-Mart — Buried within Wal-Mart's Web site, beneath the red sales banners and loud holiday graphics, is a magazine called BeautyScoop.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

Brian McGrory Rises From Boston Globe Paperboy to Become the Paper's Next Editor — The Boston Globe announced on Thursday that Brian McGrory, a columnist and former metro editor at the newspaper and a Boston native with deep roots in the area, would be its next editor. The appointment is effective immediately.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, Nieman Journalism Lab, Boston Globe, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Wrap, Media Nation •, Adweek and FishbowlNY

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

The Good News Bears of Atlantic Media announce new China Channel, new hires, promotions — ‘The Atlantic’ in print. Digital revenue at the company is growing. — In a cheery year-end staff memo unlike most of the ones we see in the media industry these days, Atlantic Media has announced …

Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:

E-Reader Market Shrinks Faster Than Many Predicted — Nearly three years after the first iPad was introduced, the tablet has come a long way. Now there are plenty of smaller, cheaper tablets that are pretty powerful. So why buy a more primitive e-book reader?

Discussion: eMarketer and Blog Posts