Mediagazer: Influential investor Gordon Crawford has left his mark on media (Joe Flint/Los Angeles Times)

8:20 AM ET, December 25, 2012

Top News:

Wire cutters: Tribune Co. newspapers dropping AP — The Chicago Tribune and six other newspapers owned by Tribune Co. are dropping the services of Associated Press, effective in early January. — In addition to the flagship Tribune, other company-owned papers cutting ties …

Discussion: bizjournals, The Wrap and Big News Network.com

John Robinson / Media, disrupted:

As newspapers drop wire services, will readers care? — On Sunday, Allen Johnson, editorial page editor of the News & Record and my friend, announced that the paper was dropping the New York Times News Service. — Today, I read that the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun …

Discussion: PandoDaily

Andrew Romano / The Daily Beast:

An Oral History of Newsweek Magazine — For the last print issue of Newsweek, Andrew Romano compiles an oral history of the storied magazine. — Peter Goldman should be famous. As the voice of Newsweek from 1962 to 1988—the ace writer at a magazine read by as many as 20 million people each week …

Discussion: Capital New York, The Daily Beast, The Wrap, Mashable! and MetaFilter

Joe Weisenthal / Business Insider:
Newsweek's Final Ever Print Cover Features A... Hashtag?

Discussion: @thetinabeast, The Verge, @sacca, Engadget, BBC, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY, @mat and @rsarver

Peter Finn / Washington Post:

Lanza's brother denies giving Facebook interview to New York Post — The brother of the Connecticut school shooter, Adam Lanza, said through a spokesman Sunday that he never conducted a Facebook interview with the New York Post and that any statements or postings attributed to him were fabricated.

Discussion: New York Post, Trust But Verify and Gothamist

Dan Gillmor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Do the math — The coming year will feature a surge in evidence-based journalism. — A high point of this month's NewsFoo gathering of journalists and technologists was a call to quality by a prominent non-journalist. Asked what advice he had for the craft, Harper Reed …

Discussion: Media, disrupted

David Carr / New York Times:

John Miller of CBS, at Home on Both Sides of the Police Tape — On the day of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., reporters were struggling and failing to get their arms around a story too horrible to fathom. At our house, we stared at the incremental television coverage and came to realize that no one really knew anything.

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Influential investor Gordon Crawford has left his mark on media — ‘Gordy’ Crawford, who is ending a four-decade career at Capital Group, became something of a trusted advisor to media magnates. His new focus: journalism. — Gordon Crawford of Capital Group is shown at KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena.

Samanth Subramanian / The National:

India rape protests widen as police shoot journalist — NEW DELHI// On a day of protests against rape and sexual assault, police shot dead a journalist in the north-eastern state of Manipur and tear-gassed crowds in New Delhi. Th. Nanao, a 36-year-old cameraman, working for a private television channel …

Discussion: TheAustralian, Committee to Protect … and Telegraph

The Huffington Post UK:

Deport Piers Morgan Petition Gains 30,000 Signatures As CNN Host Attacks Second Amendment — The White House could be forced to respond to a gun lobby petition to deport Piers Morgan, which objects to how the CNN host and former British tabloid editor has attacked the right to bear arms in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre.

Discussion: Gawker, Politico, @ggreenwald, Sky News, @jason_pontin, TVNewser, ibtimes.co.uk, ITV News and Associated Press

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

ITV makes move into US cable market — Broadcaster's value hits 108.6p following acquisition of 61.5% in Gurney Productions, a maker of US cable network shows — ITV's share price hit a high not seen in more than five years in early trading on Monday, after the broadcaster confirmed …

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Amazon Book Reviews Deleted in a Purge Aimed at Manipulation — Giving raves to family members is no longer acceptable. Neither is writers' reviewing other writers. But showering five stars on a book you admittedly have not read is fine. — After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Media Decoder, The Big Picture and The Verge

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Getting It First or Getting It Right? — THE media critic Jack Shafer wrote recently that, in the age of Twitter, the public had better get used to a new fact of life: News stories, especially the early reports of breaking news events, are very likely to be inaccurate.

Discussion: @antderosa, @davidfolkenflik, Kirk LaPointe's … and Pressing Issues