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Janet Robinson, Chief Executive Of Times Co., To Step Down (NYT / Media Decoder)
Janet L. Robinson, who served as chief executive of The New York Times Co. during a time of rapid change and uncertainty in the newspaper industry, will step down at the end of the month, the company announced Thursday. Yahoo! News / The Cutline: No replacement was named; an executive search will begin immediately, the Times said. Times Co. chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. will take over until Robinson's successor is found. WSJ: Robinson's departure comes as persistent weak advertising results this year had raised questions among analysts about the future of a company that still relies on print for the lion's share of its revenue. paidContent: Robinson will be paid $4.5 million next year as a consultant, according to an SEC filing; in return, she has agreed to various restrictions, including a two-year noncompete. Her total compensation for 2010 was $4.3 million; 76 percent of the eligible amount. AdAge / MediaWorks: The move also comes five weeks after The Times Co. said longtime digital chief Martin Nisenholtz would leave at year's end, while the flagship paper's online pay meter was still in its infancy and his effort to turn the company's About.com division around was barely off the ground. WWD / Memo Pad: In Robinson's time with the Times, fortunes dropped dramatically, as advertising and circulation both saw precipitous declines. For the first time in its history, the Times had to cut from its newsroom, which resulted in more than 200 job losses in the past three years. Additionally, the Times had to eliminate sections in the paper, reduce trim size, close a printing press, take out a mortgage on its new skyscraper, and take an onerous loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. The Times Co.'s market cap -- today at $1.1 billion -- dropped into the hundreds of millions. FishbowlNY: Robinson joined The New York Times Co. in 1983, becoming CEO in 2004. Along with The New York Times, the company owns The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune. Gawker: One newsroom source tells us: "People here in the newsroom are reacting with astonishment. Janet Robinson was widely viewed here as overpaid and not well-liked. Speculation is that she took a buyout, adding to her already overstuffed and undeserved coffers. There was pretty much a collective, audible gasp throughout the newsroom when people simultaneously opened the email. Was she forced out and is she taking a buyout are the two questions everyone is asking each other." Business Insider / Silicon Alley Insider: No sooner had the news crossed that Robinson was out than the newsroom chatter began about who will replace her. Two names have surfaced so far. The first, president Scott Heekin-Canedy, is a natural choice. The second, star M&A reporter, DealBook founder, and now CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, would be quite a wild card. AllThingsD: While the Times has said it will conduct an internal and external search for a successor, it has not hired a search firm for the job.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011: In Memoriam (Vanity Fair)
Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say it, God. He died Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, after a punishing battle with esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father. Yahoo! News / The Cutline: Hitchens, the author, writer, and Vanity Fair contributing editor, was 62. GalleyCat: Hitchens wrote a number of books, including God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, and Hitch-22: A Memoir. FishbowlDC: He spent much of the week surrounded by family and loved ones at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Washington media outlets had been preparing for the news. Hitchens is survived by his wife, Carol Blue, and their daughter, Antonia, and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia. HuffPost: After immigrating to the United States in 1981, Hitchens began writing for The Nation magazine. He would later edit and contribute articles to numerous publications, including Vanity Fair, the Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Harper's, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post. THR: Over the years, Hitchens took aim at several high-profile personalities, including Michael Moore, Mel Gibson, Bill Clinton, Bob Hope, George W. Bush, Sean Hannity, Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Jerry Falwell, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa. Daily Beast: The Daily Beast looks back at some of his famous feuds, Newsweek contributions, lasting one-liners, and photographs from his life. Slate: For an aspiring journalist in Washington, nothing could be headier than Christopher's boozy instruction in radical politics and contemporary literature. J-School Buzz: Here is a valuable lesson for any journalist, particularly journalism students who are going to have to crank out a few obituaries when they first step into a newsroom: If you are going to write someone's obituary before they die (which is standard practice!), you should probably fill in key details like "cause, place of death" of the deceased before you hit publish. Apparently, a few people at The Washington Post missed that class in journalism school. Whoops!

Final GOP Presidential Debate: Rick Perry Mocked By Media For Tim Tebow Comparison (THR)
The seven remaining Republican candidates gathered for a final televised debate in Sioux City, Iowa, three weeks before the state's Jan. 3 caucuses formally kick off the 2012 presidential race. WSJ / Karl Rove: "Sloppy looking…hack…bad person…so-called pundit." What sin prompted these classy insults from Donald Trump? I objected to him moderating a televised Republican presidential debate. Originally scheduled for Dec. 27, it has now been canceled (after only Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum had agreed to participate). AllFacebook: Is the last Republican presidential primary debate -- before the first votes of the 2012 elections are cast next month in the United States -- a boon to the candidates' popularity on Facebook?

Golden Globe Nominees Announced: HBO And Showtime Lead The Way (FishbowlLA)
HBO and Showtime lead the television pack in nominees for this year's Golden Globes. The networks picked up 18 and eight nominations, respectively. TheWrap.com: Golden Globes nominations 2011: a complete guide.

Barbara Walters To President 'I'm Retiring Next Year!' (TMZ)
Barbara Walters told President Barack Obama she's retiring next year…this according to a source who heard Walters say it. Walters was interviewing the president at the White House. According to the source, during a break in the action, she leaned over to Obama and said, "I need one more interview with you because I'm retiring next year." Here's the thing…Walters' mic was open when she said it, and lots of people were listening. TVNewser: Turns out Walters is not retiring -- probably not ever -- but rather it's her way of booking an interview, even the Commander in Chief. "Barbara has joked that she is retiring every year since the Clinton administration," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider tells TMZ. "Anyone who just did a day trip to Syria, a 90-minute primetime special, and an interview with the president and first lady hardly sounds like someone retiring from anything."

AP Stylebook's New Tool Automatically Edits Your Writing (Mashable)
The Associated Press unleashed software Thursday that proofreads content using AP Stylebook's guidelines on spelling, language, punctuation, usage, and journalistic style. The new plug-in software -- AP StyleGuard -- works in Microsoft Word and will come in handy for writers and editors who produce and publish news articles and press releases. Poynter / MediaWire: The wire service has made it easier -- at a cost of $49.99 -- to follow AP style without checking a separate website or reference book. The AP Stylebook costs $19.95 (less for newspaper members); online access to the AP Stylebook is $25 for a single license, $200 for 10 licenses.

Mag Maven Rasmus Jumping To Digital (NY Post)
John Rasmus, a start-up magazine veteran and the only editor in history who can claim three National Magazine Awards for General Excellence at three different publications, is going digital.

Reader's Digest Association Cuts 150 Jobs Worldwide (Folio:)
Reader's Digest Association has eliminated 150 positions across all of its business groups worldwide, with one-half of the cuts affecting jobs in the United States and the other half international.

Time To Resurrect Style & Design (Adweek)
Time magazine is resurrecting Time Style & Design, but this time with a less fashion-y focus and bigger online complement.

Piers Morgan To Testify In Phone-Hacking Case Next Week (Yahoo! News / The Cutline)
Piers Morgan, CNN host, reality show judge, and former U.K. tabloid editor, will appear next week in front of a committee investigating the News of the World phone-hacking case. Guardian: Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror and News of the World, is to appear before the Leveson inquiry next week.

Rutledge Resigns From Cablevision (Multichannel News)
In a surprise move, longtime Cablevision Systems chief operating officer Tom Rutledge has informed the company that he will resign after nearly 10 years at the New York metro MSO. WSJ: Rutledge quit abruptly Thursday, raising questions about both the future of the New York cable operator and Rutledge's next move. Variety: Under his watch, according to ISI Media, Cablevision upgraded its entire plant and achieved "almost cartoonish-like penetration" in its markets -- 60 percent of basic video subscribers, of which 90 percent also buy high-speed Internet and 88 percent telephone service. LA Times / Company Town: Cablevision -- which has about 3 million subscribers, primarily in the tristate region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- did not provide any explanation for Rutledge's abrupt resignation. Rutledge's exit comes just a few weeks after the surprise resignation of John Bickham, Cablevision's president of cable communications. THR: Cablevision said it has an experienced senior management team in place, but has commenced a search for an executive to oversee the cable operations.

Wynton Marsalis Named Cultural Correspondent For CBS News (TVNewser)
Some culture is coming to the Cronkite network. B&C: Wynton Marsalis has been named cultural correspondent for CBS News, where he will contribute to the network's new morning program, CBS This Morning, and CBS Sunday Morning.

Marc Ambinder Departs Atlantic Media (FishbowlNY)
Marc Ambinder, a White House correspondent for National Journal and contributing editor for The Atlantic, is taking "a pause from daily journalism" and departing Atlantic Media to work on other projects. Politico / Ben Smith: When I came to Washington in 2007, having written a reported political blog in New York for a couple of years, there was only one person in town whom I saw as a real rival: Marc Ambinder, who'd come to the form around the same I had, but was already a national political institution with his blog at the Hotline.

Fox News Extends Streak Of On-Screen Graphics Flubs (Yahoo! News / The Cutline)
When you have 24 hours of cable news programming to fill -- with the requisite scrolls and chyrons and touch-screen wall maps and human holograms -- you're bound to make some mistakes. But Fox News has had a string of on-screen graphical flubs this week, all of them pointed out rather gleefully by left-leaning websites.

NBC Stations Integrate iPhone Photo App Into Production Systems (TVSpy)
After months of testing, NBC announced that its stations will begin using iPhone app Instagram to help viewers easily share their photos.