Mediagazer: Google's News Reader — Now Called Currents — Finally Coming (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

4:10 PM ET, December 8, 2011

Top News:

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details... Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses …

Discussion: Electronic Frontier Foundation, CNET News and TorrentFreak, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Civic journalism 2.0: The Guardian and NYU launch a “citizens agenda” for 2012 — Last August, Jay Rosen published a blog post arguing for “a citizens agenda in campaign coverage.” The idea, he wrote, “is to learn from voters what those voters want the campaign to be about …

Discussion: The New York Observer, NetNewsCheck Latest and Poynter

Guardian:

The citizens agenda: making election coverage more useful — We invite you to help refresh the media's tired templates of campaign coverage to address issues people really care about — In a few weeks, the Iowa caucuses will officially kick off the 2012 campaign for president and we'll begin …

Discussion: Pressthink

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Collegiate Times shifts publishing to Twitter, Facebook for shooting coverage — The website of Virginia Tech's independent student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, is struggling with traffic as people seek information on a campus shooting Thursday. The home page now redirects to a sparsely designed …

Discussion: Guardian, Washington Post, The New York Observer, Gawker, Poynter, DCist, CBS New York, Runnin' Scared and College Media Matters

Read It Later Blog:

Who Are the ‘Most-Read’ Authors? — Saving a story for later can tell us a lot about loyalty, longevity and quality—and it changes the way we think about the most popular stories on the web — If we're to believe Woody Allen, “80 percent of success is showing up.”

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Nieman Journalism Lab, Felix Salmon, Media Decoder and Poynter, Thanks:jaredbkeller

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent: Who Are The Most-Read Authors On The Web?

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Verizon And RedBox Planning Major Partnership For Early 2012 Launch — Yesterday, it was reported that Verizon was planning a Netflix competitor and in talks with various content producers to provide the streams and downloads. TechCrunch has obtained additional information on this story …

Discussion: rbr.com, Fortune, Gizmodo, Consumer Reports News, Engadget and FT Tech Hub, more at Techmeme »

Leonora LaPeter Anton / St. Petersburg Times:

‘60 Minutes’ piece on homelessness spawns viral misquote — A recent 60 Minutes piece on homeless families in Central Florida living in their cars generated lots of buzz nationally. — The compelling piece, which ran Nov. 27, explored the lives of two teens living with their father …

Steve Myers / Poynter:

‘60 Minutes’ homelessness statistic was apparently too good to check — A “60 Minutes” story that aired on Nov. 27 said that a third of homeless families without any kind of shelter live in Florida. That includes people who live in cars, under bridges, in parks.

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New York Times Election 2012 iPhone app launches — Big, rapid change can be hard to implement at any organization the size of The New York Times, so I appreciate how the talented journalists, designers, and coders within the Times use offshoot or ancillary projects to try out new features or ways of approaching the news.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, FishbowlNY, Washington Examiner, Los Angeles Times, The Caucus and Poynter

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Google's News Reader — Now Called Currents — Finally Coming — I was wrong about the rollout timing — I had reported mid-November (sorry, Sean!) — but Google's entrant into the news reader space is finally set to launch as soon as tomorrow. Sources said the product …

Discussion: Google Mobile Blog, paidContent, iPhone in Canada Blog, Electronista, WebProNews, CNET News, Softpedia News and Business Insider, more at Techmeme »

Cahal Milmo / The Independent:

Brooks' links to Clifford payment cast doubt on her hacking denials — Rebekah Brooks personally negotiated a £680,000 out-of-court settlement with the publicity guru Max Clifford which led to his withdrawing a potentially explosive phone-hacking claim against the News of the World, News International (NI) revealed last night.

Sarah Marshall / Journalism.co.uk:
James Murdoch: Brooks did ‘not seek authorisation’ for Clifford settlement

Discussion: Press Gazette and Journalism.co.uk

Michael McAuliff / The Huffington Post:

Rupert Murdoch Lobbies Congress To Restrict Internet … WASHINGTON — News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch threw his weight behind Congress' attempt to restrict the Internet, personally lobbying leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday for two measures that purport to combat piracy.

Richard Verrier / Company Town:
Hollywood moguls convene in nation's capitol for a change

Discussion: Deadline.com

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Thurlbeck rounds on NoW executives in new evidence — Former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck has told MPs about a culture of “suppression” and “paralysis” at the News of the World which he says had “catastrophic consequences” for the paper.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Guardian:
Neville Thurlbeck's letter to MPs - full text

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Nadia White / MediaShift:

Nobel Prize Winner on How New Media is Democratizing Science News — MediaShift's science journalism coverage is sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School, which offers an innovative specialized M.A. for experienced journalists who want to cover science, business, arts or politics in a sophisticated, nuanced manner.

Curtis Brainard / CJR:
Besser to Oz: “You Were Right”

Discussion: Editors Weblog

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon Expands Kindle Owners' Lending Library To Self-Published Authors — As rumored, self-published authors who agree to make their e-books available exclusively on Kindle for 90 days are now eligible to include their books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library and have the chance to make extra money.

Discussion: MediaShift, PC Magazine, TeleRead and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

A Y Combinator for public media: PRX, Knight launch a $2.5 million accelerator — A new Public Media Accelerator, funded by $2.5 million from the Knight Foundation, will rapidly fund disruptive ideas in public media, PRX announced today. — The final details are still being worked out …

Discussion: paidContent and rbr.com

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Vevo, MTV hook up again for music videos — Singer Adam Lambert performs during Vevo's 2009 launch party. — Vevo, the 2-year-old online music video service, will once again make its clips available on MTV.com and other MTV-owned sites, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations.

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:UK:

Apple TV Streaming Quietly Goes International — Back in August, we wrote about how Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had started to offer U.S.-based users of its Apple TV device the ability to stream shows purchased from iTunes via Apple's iCloud. Now it looks as if that service is becoming available internationally.