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Bono, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Are Time Persons of Year (Time)
"For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow."

NYT Under Fire Over Handling of Spy Story (USAT)
The paper is under attack on two fronts: from President Bush for reporting that the administration has engaged in domestic spying, and from journalism experts who question why the Times held the story for a year. AP via Yahoo: Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., accused the paper of endangering American security to sell a book.

Kristof Eviscerates O'Reilly, 'War on Christmas' in Column (E&P)
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly "a self-righteous bully in the style of Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy," suggesting that perhaps he was a leftwing plant meant to make conservatives look bad.

Columnist Admits He Was Paid Off by Lobbyist (NYT)
A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Jack Abramoff.

Time Warner Will Sell Off Part of AOL to Google (NYT)
Rebuffing aggressive overtures from Microsoft, Time Warner has agreed to sell a 5 percent stake in America Online to Google for $1 billion as part of an expanded partnership between AOL, once the dominant company on the Internet, and Google, the current online king. NYT: Time Warner's expected renewal of its partnership with Google shows just how much Google has supplanted Microsoft as the force to be reckoned with in technology. Washington Business Journal via MSNBC: It's been bad news and more bad news for America Online in recent years. So why does the company seem poised for the comeback of the new century?

Legendary Crusading Journalist Jack Anderson Dies (Reuters)
Anderson is considered one of the major figures in modern investigative journalism, and was fearless in pursuit of a story. He won a Pulitzer for reporting on secret American policy decision-making that implied the United States leaned toward Pakistan in its 1971 war with India. WaPo: Anderson was highly successful during the 1950s and 1960s, when few reporters actively sought to uncover government wrongdoing. At one point, his column appeared in about 1,000 newspapers with 45 million daily readers. NYT: Anderson was a flamboyant bridge between the muckrakers of the early 20th century and the battalions of investigative reporters unleashed by news organizations after Watergate.

New Media to Get Their Own Emmy (LAT)
For the first time, original content being produced for platforms such as computers, cellphones and BlackBerry devices will be eligible for an Emmy award.

Former Philadelphia Magazine Editor Alan Halpern Dies (Philadelphia Daily News)
Halpern ran the magazine from 1951 to 1980, taking it from a Chamber of Commerce mouthpiece to a publication that grabbed many local institutions by the scruff of the neck and gave them a good shaking. Nothing was too sacred or off-limits, from Locust Street sex clubs to the Catholic Church.

Novak Leaves CNN for Fox News (AP via Yahoo!)
Commentator Robert Novak, who hasn't been seen on CNN since swearing and storming off the set in August, will leave the network after 25 years and join Fox News Channel as a contributor next month.

Cool Kids Move Away From WB (NYT)
Thirteen weeks into the season, the network has lost ground among the younger audiences that it is courting.

Baghdad on the Line (NYer)
War News Radio, a weekly half-hour show broadcast on the Swarthmore campus station, and podcast over the web, contacts Iraqis willing to share their stories directly. The show's stated aim is to "rediscover the voices of real people" in Iraq.

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One (PressThink)
Jay Rosen: The paper's print and online operations have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the user's experience no one has total control.

Mass Media's Deathbed (LAT)
Reed Johnson: Born sometime between the invention of baseball and the 1904 World's Fair, Mainstream Mass Culture began experiencing violent headaches and seizures shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, then lapsed into a coma during the launch of MySpace.com.

Reports of Media's Death Greatly Exaggerated? (Guardian)
Kim Fletcher: Circulations are falling, profits are dwindling and the Internet is threatening to put us all out of work—but journalism is thriving on new challenges. LAT: Or maybe not?

Tribunal Rules ABC Reporter Was Unfairly Dismissed (Variety)
London-based ABC News correspondent Richard Gizbert, who claimed he was fired because he refused assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan, won his unfair dismissal case against the network. Guardian: ABC plans to appeal ruling.

Can Howard Stern Pull Sirius Out of the Red? (Time)
Assuming Stern brings in 2 million listeners, who pay $13 a month, he more than pays for his $100-million-year in operating expenses, which also goes toward production costs for his show and two 24-hour channels he plans to program. Throw in ad revenues and he's raking in profits. NYT: Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are relying on small receivers and star power to fuel their growth.

Cheaters Too Real (UPI)
Four employees of the WB's reality show Cheaters have been indicted in Fort Worth, Texas, for assault, among other charges stemming from a confrontation between a woman and her estranged husband.

But Was Judy Miller Invited? (CSM)
As if to test their holiday spirit, the president and Mrs. Bush hosted a party for the press. And with 625 invitees it wasn't just a gathering for the White House regulars who have presidential nicknames.

Looking for the Next Lester Bangs (Only Please Be a Hottie) (NYT)
Casting calls are going out on college campuses late next month for aspiring Rolling Stone writers who would also look good on MTV and want to become famous, or almost famous.

New Nightline a Failure? (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: Granted, it's illogical, if not downright unfair, to expect a new program to measure up to its predecessor this early in the game. But sadly, it doesn't even come close. LAT: In the last 12 months, the television news industry has been confronted with waves of change so relentless that they have remade the very appearance, tone, and distribution of broadcast news.

2005's Best Books (Salon)
Laura Miller and Hillary Frey: This was the year that Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, at the urging of the New York Times Book Review, declared that fiction is dead. And we must admit that at the beginning of the eye-blearing process of picking the year's 10 best books we were almost inclined to agree.

Authors and Bloggers (NYT)
Pamela Paul: Prodded by a combination of curiosity and dread, most authors will scour the web not just to ascertain sales (impossible) or check out the press coverage, but to get a sense of what ordinary readers are saying about their book.

Localized 60 Minutes Spinoff Goes Deep (Grade the News)
30 Minutes Bay Area, hews closely to its parent program in both style and substance. Reporters and producers spend months working on lengthy stories—profiles, investigations, and examinations of social policy.

FCC Carefully Weighing Impact of Broadband (LAT)
For Kevin J. Martin, who took over last March as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the key to delivering the future of telecommunications is a high-speed, or broadband, network available to everyone.

Scotsman Sold (BBC)
The Barclay brothers have agreed to sell The Scotsman newspaper and other titles to Johnston Press. The sale includes the Edinburgh Evening News, Scotland on Sunday and the free Edinburgh Herald & Post.

Faith No More (WWD)
Seventeen garnered a heap of favorable press for its addition last year of a section dedicated exclusively to matters of faith. But perhaps the media was more smitten with the concept than were the magazine's readers, because the section vanished several months ago.

Keeping Current (Mediaweek)
To understand Current TV, one has to watch its eclectic—if occasionally schizophrenic—palette that includes reports ranging from the recent Paris riots and Skid Row heroin addicts to a bawdy piece on the dating habits of twentysomething women.

Japanese TV Goes Online (Reuters via IHT)
Softbank and Yahoo Japan have formed a company to broadcast television programs via the Internet, taking advantage of the growing number of Japanese users with high-speed Internet connections.

Arab Media Looking Inward (IPS)
Arab broadcasters are no longer blaming external forces for giving the region and its media a bad name. As debates at the "Arab and World Media Conference" revealed, they are also attempting to identify the deficiencies in their own systems and demanding remedies to overcome them.

—David S. Hirschman