Media

  • House Tries to Pass Media Shield Law

    Stop the presses. Congress might give reporters a Stay Out of Jail card. Like California, many states have a media shield law that gives reporters the right to withhold information from the courts to protect a confidential source.  But for the last eight years, the Bush administration fought to require reporters to disclose their confidential…

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    Johanna Neuman

  • Ferocious Cuts At HarperCollins; Book-Land Reels

    The cutbacks at HarperCollins felt like they were aimed at erasing the legacy of former CEO Jane Friedman. But maybe her innovations were a victim of the market.

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    Sara Nelson

  • Sirius XM Preparing Bankruptcy Filing

    Sirius XM Satellite Radio has hired advisers to arrange a possible bankruptcy filing which may pressure satellite television company EchoStar Corp.

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    Amy Kaufman

  • HarperCollins Announces Layoffs; Collins Division Shuttered

    HarperCollins announced today the shuttering of its Collins division, which was founded by erstwhile CEO Jane Friedman in 2006. Among the layoffs are Steve Ross, who came to  Collins  from Crown after original US publisher Joe Tessitore retired. Lisa Gallagher, another HarperCollins honcho, was also let go, and insiders suggest there are more to come.…

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    Sara Nelson

  • Media Turns Against Octuplet Mom

    Nadya Suleman, the mother who sparked national controversy after recently giving birth to octuplets, is in the thick of a backlash from media outlets who claim her actions were an attempt to emulate the lifestyle of actress Angelina Jolie.   Jolie, of course, has been lauded for her charity work and ever-expanding family with Brad Pitt, which…

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    Amy Kaufman

  • Who’s Afraid of Jake Tapper?

    From The Daily Beast:   Last night’s prime time presidential address may have been like prom to the White House press corps, but every high-schooler knows that reputations are made in the schoolyard. And for the freshman class of 44, the first skirmish happened last Thursday in the White House Briefing room between presidential Press…

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    Rachel Sklar

  • The Stretch Chronicles: Confessions of a Grammy Limo Driver

    I was flat on my back late at night out in the garage when I heard my father’s footstep on the cement. I knew the sound. He’d been left with a limp from all those years riding a brake as a limo driver. All those awards ceremonies and all those drop-off and pick-up lines: Golden…

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    “Stretch”

  • Can the Sleeker — But Still Pricey — Kindle2 Change Publishing?

    Publishing hotshots show up to check out Amazon’s device — and glimpse their possible future.

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    Sara Nelson

  • Grammys Go Political

    President Obama isn’t the only one doing town hall meetings these days. John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was in Los Angeles Friday night for the Grammy Town Hall Meeting. Conyers warned the crowd that there would be “a serious struggle” in Congress this year over whether to force…

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    Johanna Neuman

  • Radio Fight: Loophole or Performance Tax?

    For 70 years, musicians and record companies have done everything they can to get AM and FM radio stations to play their songs. Now, they want radio stations to pay them for it. In the opening salvo of what could be a contentious fight in Congress, the music industry this week introduced a bill to…

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    Johanna Neuman

  • House Makes It Official: Digital TV Deadline Delayed

    Read my story here.

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    Johanna Neuman

  • I’ve Seen the Future Of Music: It’s Micro

    Tonight I got a glimpse of what may be the future of the music industry – independent, micro-entrepreneurship. Peter Himmelman, a long-established singer-songwriter who has recorded a dozen albums, scored a handful of television shows and toured the world in concert, has gone micro. (Read his guestblog on TheWrap.) He is now starring in a…

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  • Exclusive: Bale’s Co-Workers Say His F-Bombs Were Justified

    Crew members on “Terminator” step up to defend the star

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    Sharon Waxman and Amy Kaufman

  • Sam Zell’s Secret New Year’s Gift: ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’

    We hate to expose Sam Zell, the billionaire entrepreneur who bought then gutted then bankrupted the Tribune Company. But when we learned that the once-junkyard king had just a few years back given a bronze statue to his closest friends with the prediction that a clothesless emperor was on the horizon, we felt it our…

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  • I’ll Be On www.YouStreamTv.com Tonight; I’ll Try Anything Once

    Hey everybody, I will be appearing on “Furious World” tonight at 7 pm. It is billed as the “passionately organized chaos of rock and roll and film,” and is a new Internet effort by musical recording talent Peter Himmelman, the latest mainstream artist to try his entrepreneurial hand on the web. The show, in its sixth week,…

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