Atlanta -- Cox Enterprises, the large Atlanta-based media company, announced on Wednesday that it plans to sell the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, its affiliated operations including Austin360.com, and all of Cox's stand-alone community newspapers in North Carolina, Colorado and Texas.

After a tight first round last week in which Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Satoru Iwata, Rupert Murdoch, and Google’s Sergey Brin & Larry Page went head to head for the title of “The Most Powerful Player Today in Media, Entertainment, & Technology,” the readers responded with resounding support for Murdoch and Jobs.  Advancing them to the final round, take our new poll and tell us what you think.  And if you think neither is worthy of the title, or if you have a strong opinion why you chose one over the other, leave a comment and let us know.  Steve Hawley had the comment of the week last week when he wrote:

Virgin is not in the business of music.  Or credit cards.  Or mobile phones.  Or space travel.  Though the brand has done remarkably well in translating its popularity from one business to the next - they are actually in the business of reinventing stagnant industries.  Just look at the track record of industries that they have entered and how they have done it.  Last week they announced the newest business they will try to reinvent, now that they finally have their long awaited approval in the US to start a new domestic airline. 

After Tuesday’s annoucement that Tom Freston resigned as president and chief executive of Viacom you might be surprised that Wall Street did not immediately welcome the new leadership by sending the stock price up a few percent. After all, Viacom’s stock has been underperforming its corporate sibling CBS by more than 20 percent since the split last year. Instead the Viacom stock closed down 5.6 % on Tuesday. The reason for this is most likely spelled u-n-c-e-r-t-a-i-n-t-y. A word that Wall Street despises.

Fuel up your jets, next week is the start of “Camp Allen”, the annual summer investment conference hosted by the investment banker Herbert A. Allen Jr. of Allen & Co. that caters to the crème de la crème of media, entertainment and tech managers.