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GOP Candidates To Trump Debate: You're Fired (National Journal)
Donald Trump may have mastered the art of the real estate deal, but when it comes to debates, he's still an apprentice. The celebrity businessman is having difficulty securing commitments from Republican presidential candidates for a Dec. 27 debate that he's planning to moderate in Des Moines, Iowa. TVNewser: Suddenly finding himself a distant second in many state and national polls, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will make his first Sunday talk-show appearance since March 2010 when he appears on Fox News Sunday. TVNewser: Fox News had a big ratings night Saturday with a presidential forum as part of a two-hour edition of Huckabee. AllFacebook: Fans of GOP presidential candidates Romney and Newt Gingrich have launched two video campaigns to boost their Facebook presences and, hopefully, their fan bases. Yahoo! News / The Cutline: Jimmy Fallon says the late-night ruckus caused by his house band's choice of intro music for GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) when she was a guest on his show last month was an embarrassment. FishbowlDC: Howard Stern announced on his SiriusXM radio show that former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain would join him Wednesday morning.

Fed Lashes Out At 'Errors' In Reporting (NYT / Economix)
The Federal Reserve unleashed an unusual attack Tuesday on Bloomberg News, charging in a letter to members of Congress that stories about its bailout programs "have contained a variety of egregious errors and mistakes."

T.J. Holmes Leaving CNN (Maynard Institute / Richard Prince's Journal-isms)
T.J. Holmes, who anchors the weekend edition of CNN Newsroom on Saturday and Sunday mornings, told colleagues Sunday that he is leaving the network at the end of the year for another job. He did not disclose the new position. TVNewser: Holmes began his career as a producer for KSNF in Joplin, Mo., and would go on to work at local stations in Little Rock, Ark., and San Jose, Calif., before joining CNN in 2006.

Sun-Times To Start Charging For Web Access (Chicago Tribune)
The online meter will soon be running at the Chicago Sun-Times and its seven suburban newspapers. Sun-Times Media announced Tuesday that it is instituting a paywall for access to its websites, joining a growing list of publications that have adopted a pay-per-view model for online content. TheWrap.com / Media Alley: The Sun-Times' websites will grant users 20 free page views every 30 days and charge for anything beyond that. The big difference with this plan is that print subscribers will still have to pay for the online content. Chicago Sun-Times: Online subscriptions will be $1.99 per four weeks for home-delivery customers. Digital-only subscribers will be charged $6.99 every four weeks, or they can pay $77.87 for yearlong access. Subscribers to any of 40 newspapers that are part of Sun-Times Media will qualify for the $1.99 rate, regardless of which paper they want to access.

San Diego Union-Tribune Names New President And COO (FishbowlLA)
Papa Doug Manchester has officially taken control of the San Diego Union-Tribune, after it was announced last month that he planned to buy the paper from Platinum Equity. In his first official act at the paper, Manchester and his top media executive, John Lynch, sent a memo to staff announcing that Mike Hodges will be the new president and chief operating officer of the paper. Hodges has run the paper's website and digital operations since 2009. San Diego CityBeat: Here's the text of a memo sent by the new owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Manchester and Lynch, to employees.

New Arrest In British Phone-Hacking Scandal (NYT)
British police officials said Wednesday that a 41-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch's media outpost in London, the 18th suspect taken into custody since inquiries into the scandal intensified in January.

Verizon To Take On Netflix With Web Service (Reuters)
Verizon Communications plans to launch a stand-alone service allowing customers to stream movies and television shows over the Web, in a fresh challenge to Netflix and the traditional cable TV business, according to several people briefed on the plan. Multichannel News: Nielsen says it's prepared to give viewing credit for the 26 live TV channels that Verizon FiOS TV customers will be able to watch through Microsoft's Xbox 360 later this month. Bloomberg: Cablevision Systems, the fifth-largest U.S. cable-television provider by subscribers, sued Verizon for allegedly running an advertising campaign that misrepresents Cablevision's Internet speeds.

Netflix Looks Toward Original Content, Competition With HBO Go (AdAge / Digital)
Despite its recent stumbles, Netflix has as good a chance as anyone to win the jump-ball for the future of TV, CEO Reed Hastings said Tuesday. GigaOM / NewTeeVee: Netflix will stream "well over a billion hours" of video this quarter, Hastings revealed during the UBS Global Media conference Tuesday. TheWrap.com: Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos: "I'm as excited right now as I was a year ago -- and as I was 10 years ago. The market opportunity has not changed one bit. The only thing that's different over the last nine weeks or so is our stock price. We have over 20 million streaming subs and around 25 million paid subscribers, including DVD subscribers." paidContent: During a Q&A in a New York ballroom, Hastings said overconfidence had caused Netflix to resemble the country's most troubled bank, Bank of America. He later added that Netflix has a new strategy to be "the Moneyball of content providers," a reference to a book about how the low-budget Oakland A's used a knowledge of stats to compete with much richer teams.

Yahoo! Building New York Studio (THR)
About 5,000 square feet in an office building at the corner of Manhattan's 40th Street and Avenue of the Americas will become the city's next major studio space by mid-March. But the company that is looking to transform the gutted former conference-room space into two sets, seven edit rooms, a state-of-the-art control room, and a green room is not one of the traditional media and entertainment companies in town. It is Internet giant Yahoo!, which is these days mostly in the news for exploring its strategic alternatives, including the sale of a minority stake to outside investors.

The AP Brings A Quasi-Competitor Into The Fold (Nieman Journalism Lab)
The National Sports Content Sharing Network will begin using The Associated Press' Marketplace distribution platform to share content.

Court Says Blogger Isn't A 'Journalist' -- Implications For Hyperlocal (Street Fight)
A federal judge in Portland, Ore., has declared that a local "investigative blogger" doesn't qualify as a journalist -- calling into question whether online hyperlocal news publishers should be treated differently than traditional media.

PETA Sends Letter To White House Press Secretary For Taking Bestiality Question 'Lightly' (Yahoo! News / The Cutline)
On Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney fielded a question about bestiality during the daily press briefing. On Tuesday, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals fired off a letter cautioning Carney not to take bestiality questions lightly.

Will HBO And Aaron Sorkin Draw Canada's Ire With The Name Of Their New Show, Newsroom? (TVNewser)
Monday TVNewser revealed that West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin's new HBO program would be called Newsroom or The Newsroom. A number of bloggers, including Variety's Jon Weisman and Jim Romenesko, noted that the name might sound familiar to some TV fans, as it was the title of a popular Canadian TV series that aired in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Facebook Rolls Out Timeline In New Zealand (AllFacebook)
New Zealand was the site of the long-awaited debut of Facebook's timeline profile Tuesday night. Inside Facebook: Timeline is a redesign of the user profile that organizes all activity chronologically, with newest content appearing on top and older content being rolled into expandable month and year categories. TechCrunch: It's been 2.5 months since Facebook unveiled the timeline profile redesign at f8 and said the rollout would begin shortly. However, possibly due to product tweaks and a lawsuit from Timelines.com, until Tuesday, the feature was only available to developers or those who posed as them. GigaOM: Via email, a Facebook spokesperson said: "As a global company, we need to gain perspective and insights from outside of the United States. New Zealand is a good place to start because it's English-speaking, so we can read the feedback and make improvements quickly."

Facebook Memology 2011: Osama's Death Is Top Status Update, Rihanna Is Most Listened To (TechCrunch)
Facebook Tuesday night released a wealth of data about 2011′s most shared content, both globally and for specific countries. ReadWriteWeb: In the top global topics on Facebook category, the death of Osama Bin Laden wins, closely followed by the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl, and Casey Anthony being found not guilty. Mashable: Facebook status updates played a starring role in the evolution of the world's largest social network in 2011.