For retailers, the crucial season is on its way. Blow the Christmas rush, and next year starts off on a miserable foot. Success, of course, also delivers a healthy dose of momentum -- and a little bit of wiggle room, important in what will continue to be a tough economy through at least the first half of next year. For booksellers, now contending with a new variable in the form of digital readers, e-readers will play a major role in defining the winners and losers. So far, it looks like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is off to a great start, and it will take some genuine innovation for the competition to chip away at its market share.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), once the leading names in literary retail, is expected to release its own e-reader this week. It will look a bit like Amazon's Kindle, according to Reuters, but with a touch screen intended to make the reader's experience easier. The price hasn't been disclosed yet, but rumor has it that it'll be higher than the Kindle's $259. BKS is staying mum on its plans in this space. There are others in the space, as well, including IREX Technologies, which is a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), Asutek (tk: tk) and a project called FirstPaper that has Hearst behind it.

When News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) outspoken Chairman Rupert Murdoch reversed himself recently and declared that all his company's web properties would soon move to a fee model, were you perplexed? After all, Murdoch runs one of the largest media empires on the planet. Combine that with a conditioned customer used to getting almost all content for free and yes, we have a problem.

Murdoch's empire just suffered an advertising meltdown with the rest of the world, with News Corp. declaring a huge decline in ad revenue for its latest quarter. Just a few years ago, Murdoch was toying with the idea of dropping the fee for looking at the Wall Street Journal's articles and columns. He's done a 180 here and wants to bring the Journal's pay-per-use model to just about every web property his company owns while he shouts "quality journalism is not cheap" from the rooftops of Fox News.

When News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) bought MySpace.com for over $500 million back in 2005, some said it was the way Rupert Murdoch would charge into the digital media audience business in a big way. While that was true at the time, the digital world and its audience can become fickle and change rapidly as new web-based properties develop. It's pretty obvious by now that Facebook has leaped past MySpace and is "the place" to be when it comes to social networking interaction (although Twitter is garnering all the buzz presently).

Why Did MySpace lose its way? MySpace evolved to become a portal, offering music downloads and other goodies, while Facebook kept its social networking status as a place where friends and associates could virtually connect. And there you have it -- MySpace didn't evolve as trends were created and rapidly changed.

The Congressional Oversight Panel announced in a report this morning that it feels more bank stress tests are needed, especially if unemployment rates continue to rise. The group believes that the stress tests should be repeated periodically as long as banks continue to hold toxic assets.

The panel used a risk-modeling approach that is described as "reasonable and conservative," but added that it is impossible for an outside party to mirror the loss projections that form the core of the stress tests. The group noted that the "more adverse scenario" assumption for the U.S. unemployment rate in the tests has nearly been met in 2009. The yearly average for the unemployment rate stands at 8.5%, which isn't far from the 8.9% assumed in the first round of stress tests. The group recommended that the "Treasury publicly track the status of its stress test macro-economic assumptions (unemployment, GDP, and housing prices) and repeat the stress test if the adverse scenario assumptions have been exceeded."

It looks like it is out with the old, in with the old at News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), as former executive Chase Carey is returning to the company in the role of deputy chairman and chief operating officer. Carey has served as the CEO of DirecTV Group (NYSE: DTV) for the past six years, but was the co-chief operating officer for NWS from 1996 through 2002. Carey will replace COO Peter Chernin, who announced in February that he would depart NWS when his contract runs out at the end of June.

It is no secret that NWS has struggled since the economic crisis started, as weakness in the company's catalog of DVDs have driven the stock lower. Carey helped the company become a "truly viable fourth broadcast network" by helping Fox land NFL games, and helping launch Fox News Channel, FX, and the National Geographic Channel.

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has made enemy after enemy in recent years after continuing to aggregate news and information sources to ensure customers can find the information they want, any time and on any device.

When Google News was launched, it became a target for publishers who believed that Google was somehow pilfering content. These folks still do not get it, especially media baron Rupert Murdoch. It's odd, since Murdoch seemingly gets new media.

Sumner Redstone, who is the de facto head of Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and CBS (NYSE: CBS), was supposed to be the media baron who could not keep his top management. Now Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), has joined the club. The president of his company, Peter Chernin, is leaving.

Murdoch may be gambling that he can keep his job for life and hand it to one of his children. Since he is 77 and none of his children may be qualified, that could be a bad gamble. At least Chernin could have kept the CEO's seat warm while one of Murdoch's offspring got some more on-the-job training.

The press has made the Chernin departure into a story about the earnings trouble at News Corp. In reality, its problems are not much worse than they are at most other big media companies. News Corp is burdened more than some of its peers because of its newspaper holdings. But, odds are that News Corp will make it out of the recession intact and in a position to take advantage of the eventual improvement in the ad markets.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) paid what most people thought was the limit of the rational price when he bought Dow Jones over a year ago for $5 billion. His company has already been forced to write-down a part of that in its earnings report for 2008. But, Dow Jones might be only worth $500 million or $1 billion if it were still public today.

A quick look at the Saturday Wall Street Journal shows a paper in four sections, each very thin. When all the ads for Dow Jones products are subtracted, there are about three paid pages of advertising left. That has to create a really large loss.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch, at 77, has been around for a while. But it looks like that while may be too long after today's report on News Corp. earnings and outlook. That report suggests that Murdoch wildly overpaid for Dow Jones. But he wanted it and he got what he wanted. The questions for long-suffering shareholders is whether what Murdoch wants is good for them and whether he's the person to lead News Corp through the troubled waters ahead.

Prospects are for more pain. Analysts are estimating a 22% drop in News Corp.'s fiscal 2009 operating profit to almost $4 billion. And with its stock down 56% in the last year, what could Murdoch do to revive it? One possibility is to restructure the newspapers in a radical -- but obvious way -- put all the content online and sell search advertising to those who want access to all the readers. That would cut the cost of the newspapers tremendously.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), the big media conglomerate that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), CBS (NYSE: CBS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, reported not-so-good earnings for the fiscal second quarter on Thursday after the bell.

Of course, not many companies are reporting good earnings these days, are they? News Corp. lost $2.45 per share due to impairment charges for goodwill and intangible assets. Throwing that aside, the company earned 12 cents per share. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, that came up well short of estimates of 19 cents per share. Net sales dropped 8%.

This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

There's no doubt about it -- times are tough. People are struggling to find work and to pay the bills as the value of their homes and savings dwindle. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Or do they? It's all relative, of course, but world's billionaires have been taking some big hits too. We take a look at Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Lakshmi Mittal in their own separate posts, but here are some other billionaires who have lost billions this year (courtesy of Forbes and Business Sheet).

• Brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance lost $32.5 billion and $28.2 billion, respectively.
• Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, lost $16.5 billion. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) are down about 32% since the beginning of the year.
• Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen lost $12.3 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, while CEO Steve Balmer lost $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft are down 46% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google Inc. (NYSE: GOOG), lost $11.9 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, and CEO Eric Schmidt lost $3.8 billion. The share price of Google has fallen 55% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), lost $8.2 billion. Shares of Oracle are down 21% since the beginning of the year.
• Media maven Sumner Redstone lost $7.2 billion. Shares of his private investment firm National Amusements fell 70% this year.

Is Jim Cramer the "Grinch who stole Christmas?" That's what his rivals at Fox Business Network want the world to think.

According to Talking Biz News, the News Corp.-owned cable channel's holiday card features the head of the bombastic host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and chairman of my former employer TheStreet.com Inc. (NASDAQ: TSCM) on the body of the Dr. Seuss character. Cramer, also a blogger here, is dyed green for good measure.

There is even a bit of verse that begins: "You're a mean one, Mr. Cramer; You rant and rave every day; You told us all that Bear was fine, there's nothing more to say." The poem goes on from there. You can read the whole thing here.

The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) reported that its October revenue got beat up again. If anything, it was worse than some previous months this year, but it's papers are caught in the vortex of a failing industry. For the month, advertising revenue was down 16.2%. Internet revenue only rose in the single digits, so online sales are not going to save the company.

In an odd way, the drop in revenue was the relative good news because the company also cut its dividend by a very large amount. The payout was cut by 74% to $0.06 per share. To make matters worse, the stock sold off 10% to a 52-week low of $5.72.

NYT has debt that is due next year. Its papers in New England, led by the Boston Globe, are losing as much as 20% of their ad revenue each month.

The company is controlled by the Sulzberger family, which has been in charge for over a century. One of the reasons the brothers and sisters, aunt and cousins have supported management was for the rich payout they received each quarter. Now, that is going away.

With an unhappy family, the company may be in play. Perhaps Rupert Murdock might buy it. NYT would make a nice bookend for The Wall Street Journal.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO and media baron Rupert Murdoch speaks, people in the media business should listen. The 77 year-old tycoon has built an impressive array of media properties and is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how media should be created, by whom it should be created, and how it's consumed by different consumer segments.

Recently, Murdoch indicated that the deeply troubled newspaper industry can survive only if editors and writers throw their egos out the window and regain the trust and loyalty of their readers. The once monopolistic newspaper industry now competes with the 24/7 internet news trade and its army of well-informed bloggers and citizen journalists. If the old guard doesn't believe this is the new competition, then I hope they have a second career all lined up.

Murdoch's words appear uncannily prescient: "My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers." He goes on to say that the "paper on the porch" might go away, but daily news will not.