Last year, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley told staff that the company needed to cut 10 percent of its payroll costs. According to a recent statement, after laying off 90 people across the organization have brought them to that point.

AOL is offering employees who "volunteer" to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year.

The first Chicago edition of the New York Times, with added pages of local and regional news, will be published Nov. 20, the Times announced, a month after the paper began publishing a similar regional edition in San Francisco. The Chicago edition is part of a national strategy to win over new readers and advertisers.

Despite heavily hyped expectations of an NBC Universal sale to Comcast, a deal before Thanksgiving now appears unlikely. Negotiations between General Electric and Vivendi have stalled over the price, among other terms. Though the two-step deal is still likely to go forward, talks could drag on through mid-December.

For years, the rumor has floated that either Verizon or AT&T would buy DirecTV in order to have direct control of the company's satellite TV operations. Sometimes these rumors are based in conjecture, but more often, they're based on nothing whatsoever. The rumors are apparently bubbling up once again.

AT&T recently admitted that its network has had problems. Yet in a stunning display of arrogance, the company has attributed network congestion to customer use. It's blaming customers who never stopped holding up their end of the agreement by paying nearly $100 per month for nonexistent service. And AT&T's egregious behavior doesn't end there.

Testifying before the New York City Council, Free Press delivered signatures from more than 4,000 New Yorkers calling for strong open Internet rules. The City Council is considering a resolution urging the federal government to protect Net Neutrality.

A new report, the Big Thaw: Charting a New Course for Journalism, is refreshingly different from every journalism report published this year. The Big Thaw delves into the future. Rather than center on how we arrived at our media juncture, it looks to where we are headed.

By blocking the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast, the Obama administration can send a message to the behemoth corporations that dominate nearly every aspect of American life: Big is not always better, especially when it comes to media.

The FCC seeks to develop a set of research recommendations that Congress should consider to enable the U.S. to be a global leader in broadband networking in the years 2020 and beyond and to further broadband deployment in the US over the next decade. A workshop to begin gathering input is being held on Nov. 23.