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Merger of XM and Sirius Appears Close to Approval (NYT)
The FCC was on the verge of approving a merger between XM and Sirius on Wednesday, a move that would end a nearly 18-month government review of a deal that would essentially create a monopoly in satellite radio. Deborah Taylor Tate, a Republican member of the FCC, appeared ready to vote in favor of the deal, which would break a deadlock along party lines among the other four commissioners.

NYT to Raise Newsstand Price to $1.50 (AP)
The New York Times Co. will increase the Monday-Saturday newsstand cost of its flagship paper by 25 cents to $1.50. Times CEO Janet Robinson said the price increase for The New York Times will take effect Aug. 18. The last increase came a year ago. The company recently announced a 4.5 percent increase in home delivery prices for the paper that takes effect this month, the second bump in a year. NYP: Just before 5 p.m., Standard & Poor's placed the Times Co. on credit watch with negative implications.

Google Throws Open Rival for Wikipedia -- Anonymous Authors Discouraged (Wired)
Experts in a given subject log into a Google account and use the company's Knol software to post an item, also known as a knol to the site. In some senses, the process is like producing a blog post -- but in this case it's not something written off the cuff but carefully crafted to coherently explain a single subject. One key attribute: Knols are meant to be signed with the author's actual name.

Dozens Protest Outside Fox News Headquarters (TV Newser)
What brings out MTV News, AllHipHop.com, Access Hollywood, The Colbert Report and, well, us? A Nas-led protest outside News Corp. today, home of Fox News Channel. The hip-hop star joined about 50 protesters, (less than another anti-FNC protest in 2004) from two organizations: ColorofChange.org and MoveOn.org who called on the network to, "stop its racist smears against the Obamas and other Black Americans."

Obama Makes $5 Million Olympics Ad Buy (AdAge)
It's official. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will be among the TV sponsors of NBC Universal's Olympics coverage. In the first significant network TV buy of any presidential candidate in at least 16 years, the Obama campaign has taken a $5 million package of Olympics spots that includes network TV as well as cable ads.

IHT Names Top Editor (IHT)
William Schmidt, an assistant managing editor at the New York Times, has been appointed to take over as the top editor at the International Herald Tribune. Schmidt, a veteran foreign correspondent and newsroom administrator at The Times, has been named editor, global editions.

Clear Channel Settles Tribune Suits (Reuters)
Clear Channel Communications said on Wednesday it settled lawsuits against Tribune Co and several former Clear Channel employees lured away by the newspaper publisher and broadcaster. Clear Channel said Tribune agreed not to further solicit or hire Clear Channel employees under contract.

Army Shuts Down Soldier's Popular Blog (WaPo)
An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches -- at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying -- provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month -- Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog -- it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper.

AMI Eyes Reorg -- Equity Firms Could Lose Millions (NYP)
Battered magazine publisher American Media is inching closer to a deal that would turn over a substantial amount of the company to creditors and deal another blow to its private-equity owners. THL Partners and Evercore Partners, are working on firming up a deal that would reduce the publisher's debt by around $200 million and hand a sizable minority equity stake in the company to its lenders.

Good-bye, Google Bomb (WaPo/The Trail)
Bloggers, take note: the old-school Google bomb is no more. That's right, the online behemoth best known for its search engine says that it has rejiggered its legendary and proprietary technology so that online efforts by bloggers to manipulate its top-secret search algorithm to create cheeky, offensive, and decidedly off-message answers to searches will no longer work.

Amazon Sales Brisk Despite U.S. Economy (AP via LAT)
Amazon.com Inc. showed that it wasn't being hurt by economic weakness and high fuel prices, reporting Wednesday that its second-quarter profit more than doubled and surpassed analyst expectations. The Internet retailer also raised full-year revenue projections. Sales were strong in several sections of Amazon's massive marketplace.

Green Issues a Tough Sale at the Newsstand (Portfolio)
As global warming was first becoming a cause celebre a few years ago, many serious environmentalists worried that green was in danger of becoming a fad -- something that would inevitably recede from consciousness after overtaxing our limited pop-cultural attention span. Sad to say, that prediction shows signs of coming true.

Why the Press is Ignoring the Edwards "Love Child" Story (Slate)
Jack Shafer: If John Edwards had an affair and lied about it, shouldn't he suffer scrutiny akin to that of Larry Craig? At least three-dozen daily newspapers in the United States published the Craig news the day after the Roll Call scoop, according to Nexis, but yesterday morning not a single U.S. daily mentioned the National Enquirer piece.

Bob Novak Cited After Hitting Pedestrian (Politico)
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning. A reporter saw Novak in the front of a police car with a citation in his hand; a WJLA-TV crew and reporter saw Novak as well.

David Carr's Potato Obsession (NY Press)
David Blum: David Carr's compulsion to characterize human faces as spud-like isn't limited to himself and Tim Russert -- whose name, after all, might at least suggest such a comparison. But in the end, Carr comes back to his stock phrase and its studied simplicity, much the way the rest of us return, with regularity, to a favored meal of meat and -- let's say -- potatoes.