Click here to receive mb's Newsfeed by email.

Time Inc. Bloodbath for the Holidays (AP via Yahoo!)
A wide-scale management reshuffling at the company, in which 105 employees got their pink slips, was designed to simplify the company's corporate management structure, continuing a streamlining effort that began in the summer. Folio: The restructuring included a number of eye-opening executive-level changes. NYT: Fewer than 20 of the departing employees are from the editorial side of the company. NYP: Moving up in the corporate shuffle are Nora McAniff and John Squires, who become co-chief operating officers, the first time in history that the division has had that designation. Guardian: U.S. publishers are realizing that they need smaller, more responsive teams in a tough print ad climate, writes Jonah Bloom.

LAT Spiking National Edition Next Week (NYT)
The separate national edition has been an endangered species for years, kept alive as a way to give the newspaper's reporting a physical presence in Washington and New York.

Plamegate Revelations (Huffington Post)
Arianna Huffington: The investigation has exposed the ugly underbelly of modern, big-time journalism: the rampant insiderism, the oh-so-cozy relationship between those in power and those theoretically tasked with covering them, the acceptance of transgressions with barely a whimper. NYO: American journalism must take some of the blame for the Iraq war, writes Nicholas Von Hoffman. "In this tragedy, American journalism didn't act as the messenger but as co-instigators, co-propagandists, co-warmongers." VV: One of the reasons the press is reluctant to report graphically and in depth about the torture and brutishness of war is the fear of backlash from readers or viewers who don't want to see or hear about war's true-life destruction, writes Syd Schanberg.

New York Media's 'Power Geezers' (NYO)
An Observer rundown of wily Gotham elders who still haven't lost anything on their fastball, including Rupert Murdoch, Si Newhouse, Robert Silvers, Cynthia Ozick, Gay Talese, Lynn Nesbit, Gloria Steinem, and Regis Philbin.

U.S. Ranks Sixth Among Countries Jailing Journalists (NYT)
The United States has tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Each country is jailing five journalists.

Fineman: Woodward 'Has Become a Great Reporter of Official History' (Daily Record)
Howard Fineman, Newsweek's chief political correspondent, said that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward had become a "court stenographer" for the Bush administration.

China Silences Media on News of Protests (NYT)
In the wake of the biggest use of armed force against civilians since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Chinese officials have used a variety of techniques to prevent news of the deaths from spreading.

Family-Friendly Cable 'a Bunch of Poop' (NYDN)
Richard Huff: People, it's time you learned to program your cable boxes. Yes, you. Stop looking for outside help from Congress or watchdog groups to clean up, clear up, and make safe the programming your kids watch. Bloomberg via LAT: FCC member urges Congress to consider a bill to curb sex and obscenity on television.

The Airwaves Are A-Changin' (WaPo)
Enigmatic troubadour Bob Dylan has signed on to host a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio. Dylan will select the music, offer commentary, interview guests, and answer e-mail from listeners during the one-hour program, which will start in March.

Will Showtime Save Arrested Development? (Reuters)
Word in L.A. this week is that the network is in talks to pick up the comedy about a chaotic family. Sources stressed that the talks are still exploratory and that it would be a big financial commitment on Showtime's part to pick up the show in its current form.

British Officer Aided Pentagon 'Good News' Program in Iraq (Guardian)
A former British military intelligence officer and an expert in psychological warfare has emerged as a crucial strategist in the Pentagon's covert operation to pay Iraqi newspapers and journalists for publishing "good news" stories about the coalition's reconstruction efforts.

Rita Cosby Watches Tookie Die (Jossip)
MSNBC's Rita Cosby got her latest "exclusive" on death row: Witnessing the execution of Crips gang founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams—but first, a sit down with the condemned inmate!

School District Asks O'Reilly for Apology Over Inaccurate Report (DMN)
The Plano school district is fighting back against national television and radio talk show host Bill O'Reilly, saying he falsely accused a school of outlawing the colors of Christmas. NYO: Perhaps the Fox News Channel's blowhards and political preachers have exaggerated (or even invented) the notion of a "war on Christmas" for their own purposes, writes Joe Conason.

Showdown at Time Warner (NYP)
A gang of corporate gunslingers is gathering for a big showdown against Dick Parsons so they can force his Time Warner Inc. into a break-up sale. Billionaire Carl Icahn has demanded that Time Warner chief Parsons and his directors turn over board minutes and records.

'Briefing' Scuffle at WaPo (PressThink)
Jay Rosen interviews two key players in a dispute at the Washington Post over Dan Froomkin's web column, White House Briefing. National politics editor John Harris, and washingtonpost.com's executive editor Jim Brady explain what's going on. Then Froomkin talks back.

British Broadcaster ITV Will Shutter News Channel (The Independent)
Director of Television for ITV Simon Shaps said: "The question we have asked ourselves is what does news look like in five or 10 years' time? The answer is that it looks very different from the traditional 24-hour rolling news format that we are used to now." Guardian: The station will go off air by the end of January.

Sex and the Foodie (WWD)
An HBO series about a female newspaper writer with a glamorous beat and a complicated love life. Sound familiar? No, it's not Sex and the City, but a new show based on the memoirs of Ruth Reichl, Gourmet's editor in chief.

Former ProJo Publisher Stephen Hamblett Dies (AP via E&P)
Under Hamblett's leadership, the newspaper merged its morning and afternoon newspapers into one edition, became a publicly traded company, and then was acquired by A.H. Belo Corp. in 1997.

PETA Steps Up Wintour Offensive (Radar)
The anti-fur outfit is planning to mail festive green-and-red envelopes to Vogue staffers containing illustrated peek-a-boo cards that open to reveal an emaciated Wintour in her underwear. A message scrawled on the front and inside reads: "Without Fur I Am Nothing."

Kazakhs Pull Plug on 'Borat' Website (Reuters)
The authorities in Kazakhstan, angered by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's satirical portrayal of a boorish, sexist, and racist Kazakh television reporter, have pulled the plug on his alter ego's Web site.

The Year in Corrections (Regret the Error)
This was a very bad year. That's the inevitable conclusion after reviewing this year's long list of errors, corrections, and plagiarists. But it's about more than just quantity. What jumps out is that this was a year during which we witnessed the astounding consequences of media errors.

—David S. Hirschman