The Times doesn’t want to be “so serious all the time that you end up being just a dreadful bore at the dinner party, you know? Nobody wants that, either. We want to be entertaining as well, we want to have some fun. It doesn’t have to all be heavy and brooding.”

Jonathan Stray, Meredith Artley, and John Davidow share some of the big ideas they’ll take away from the year.

Plus: Lessons from the Petraeus scandal, war on social media between Israel and Hamas, and the rest of the week’s media and tech must-reads.

Plus: Sandy and the power of Instagram’s images, Google News’ showdown with newspapers, and the rest of the week’s media and tech news and commentary.

Plus: Lowering paywalls during Sandy, the ongoing fallout from the BBC’s sex abuse scandal, and the rest of this week’s media and tech reads.

Nate Silver’s number-crunching blog is perceived as a threat by some traditional political reporters — but its model has lessons for all journalists.