Mediagazer: Google Hastily Launches Currents, Its New Reading App (Laura Hazard Owen/paidContent)

5:50 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: CNET News, Electronic Frontier Foundation and TorrentFreak, more at Techmeme »

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, The New York Observer, Washington Post, DCist, Runnin' Scared, This Just In, CBS New York and College Media Matters

Adam Hochberg / Poynter:

News orgs take to social media to find Va. Tech witnesses, photos — News organizations from around the country are using social media to locate witnesses and obtain interviews and photos of today's campus shooting at Virginia Tech. “Call our newsroom if you know anyone that goes to Virginia Tech …

Discussion: Mediaite, Gawker and Poynter

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, Poynter, NetNewsCheck Latest and Guardian

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

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

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?

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, Washington Examiner, Los Angeles Times, FishbowlNY, The Caucus and Poynter

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

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: Journalism.co.uk and Press Gazette

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger — No miscarriage of justice here. — It was the $2.5 million dollar lawsuit heard round the blogosphere. The Seattle Weekly reported that an “Oregon blogger” had been found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay an investment firm $2.5 million.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Poynter, Media Decoder, The Daily Weekly, FOI FYI and ShortFormBlog, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
If we are all journalists, should we all be protected?

Discussion: ABC News, Guardian, Oregonian, Medacity, Media News, 10,000 Words, CNET News and The Daily Weekly

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

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