Comcast, GE Close To Deal On NBCU|WaPo Newsroom Fight|Time Inc.’s Vivek Shah Departs|Gannett’s New Guidelines|Business Press Struggles|Jay Leno

TVNewser: Comcast is coming close to closing its deal with General Electric over NBC Universal. An announcement might come as soon as this week.

FishbowlDC: Rumble in the Washington Post newsroom: Henry Allen punched Manuel Roig-Franzia in the face last night.

PaidContent: Time Inc.‘s Vivek Shah is leaving the company after 15 years.

Editor & Publisher: Gannett has issued a list of priorities to its papers’ editors, asking them to beef up investigative reporting, reposition Web sites for breaking news, and better engage young readers and Sunday readers.

New York Times: David Carr mourns the loss of the business press. Another casualty of the recession.

Broadcasting & Cable: An exclusive Q&A with Jay Leno. He talks about the negative press he’s received recently and what’s it’s like to work at NBC: “I find there’s a lot of anger at NBC. But it’s like I say to the people who write the dramas: If I weren’t doing this, it would be “Dateline” five nights a week or reality shows. We’ve kept work in California, we have 22 WGA writers, but there’s always going to be anger and resentment. The last couple of weeks I’ve seen some articles that are a little more, ‘It’s not Jay’s fault, its NBC’s fault,’ and that’s OK, I get it. But when your name’s on the thing, you take the hit and that’s fine.”

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