Morning Reading List, 10.30.07

Good morning Washington. You guys love the holiday season. AFP reports, "The White House on Monday announced the recipients of the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor, including a Cuban dissident, Liberia's president, and a beloved US author. ... The other five winners include the 1992 Nobel economics prize winner Gary Becker; Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins; US civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks; former House Foreign Affairs committee chairman Henry Hyde; and groundbreaking television executive Brian Lamb." Variety's Peter Bart writes, "The world's biggest media company, Time Warner, will imminently get a new CEO, and its 96,000 denizens (indeed, the industry in general) are eager to discover what changes Jeffrey L. Bewkes will make. To be sure, Bewkes himself, a feisty, tightly wound TW lifer, isn't talking -- and understandably so. Why reveal your strategy in a chess game as unruly as that raging in and around this corporate monolith? Some companies (Google) are the result of a great idea. TW is the result of a series of corporate collisions." Los Angeles Times reports, "Film and TV writers, actors and crew members are canceling vacations, working overtime and squirreling away savings while they still can. Talent agencies, postproduction houses and equipment rental shops have drawn up plans to cut costs and payrolls while caterers and special-effects houses scramble to find jobs that reduce their dependence on the entertainment industry. All over Hollywood, people are bracing for a strike." International Herald Tribune reports, "NBC Universal, late for party, joins gold rush in international television" The Associated Press reports, "Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones." Media Week reports, "As news organizations slash budgets and scale back bureaus, CNN is expandingâ€”except not in real life. In the week of Nov. 5, the news giant is set to open a news-gathering outpost in Second Life. And unlike news service Reuters, which embedded a real reporter in the online virtual world last year, CNN will rely on Second Life â€œresidents" to do all the legwork." New York Post reports, "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is an even richer rich man today after selling a sliver of his company to Microsoft for $240 million -- valuing the closely held social-networking startup at a whopping $15 billion." TVNewser reports, "Fox News Channel's VP and Washington bureau chief Brian Wilson tells TVNewser he sent an email to Bill O'Reilly this morning explaining his comments about the FNC anchor at Texas Tech last week. Last Thursday evening, after a day of teaching classes at the University, Wilson took part in a Q&A session with the local SPJ chapter; a group Wilson today described as 'fairly adversarial.' Wilson told the students, 'Bill O'Reilly is not a journalist; it is an opinion-based program.'" The Associated Press reports, "Google Inc. is confident that its $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick will win over European and U.S. regulators, a company executive said Friday -- even as advertisers expressed concerns the deal will shrink competition." AdAge.com reports, "After years of development, Time Inc. plans to introduce an online service next year that will offer pay-as-you-go, mix-and-match, highly flexible magazine subscriptions from a variety of publishers. Consumers using the service, to be called Maghound, will be able to pay one monthly fee for three subscriptions, with the ability to swap one title out for a new one or cancel entirely at any point." Washington Post reports, "The magazines stack up, unread, on your coffee table: the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair. You subscribe to them but don't have time to read them. So there they sit, a glossy pile of guilt. Where you see wasted money, Jeremy Brosowsky saw a business opportunity. The Washington publishing entrepreneur recently rolled out Brijit, a Web site that creates 100-word abstracts of articles from dozens of magazines and rates them. Brijit, Brosowsky said, aims to be 'everyone's best-read friend.'" PRWeek reports, "PRWeek has relaunched its Web site, introducing a number of improvements on existing offerings and a host of new features." DCRTV reports, "DCRTV hinted on Monday morning. Now, on Monday afternoon, Bonneville makes it official. Washington Post superstar sports columnist Tony Kornheiser will return to his radio program live in-studio on talker 3WT beginning 1/21." Deadline Hollywood reports, "Federal Mediator Will Attend WGA Talks; Writers Focus On New Media & Internet" Jobs National Real Estate Magazine is looking for an Associate Publisher. Washingtonian Magazine is looking for an Advertising Intern. The Advisory Board Company is looking for an Editor: Health Care Weekly. Heldref Publications is looking for an Editorial Production Director. Voice of America is looking for a News Division/Writer. Hat Tips: DCRTV, TVNewser, IWantMedia, Romenesko, MediaBistro, JournalismJobs, JournalismNext

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Morning Reading List, 10.30.07

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