Mediagazer: The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating just made Twitter the first purely social ranking of US TV program popularity (Matthew Panzarino/The Next Web)

1:20 PM ET, December 17, 2012

Top News:

John Cook / Gawker:

Richard Engel is Missing in Syria; NBC News Enforces News Blackout — NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyava, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for.

Discussion: @jeremyscahill, JIMROMENESKO.COM, @jeremyscahill, @the260, @jameslongmanbbc, @sallykohn, @mcmeljo, @sarahmmimms, @joelrubin, @gideonyago, @hemlockmartinis and Twitchy

Michael Kelley / Business Insider: REPORTS: NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel Is Missing In Syria

Chloe Sladden / Twitter Blog:

Coming Soon: Nielsen Twitter TV Rating — Today Nielsen announced an agreement with Twitter to create the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating,” an industry-standard metric that is based entirely on Twitter data. — As the experience of TV viewing continues to evolve, our TV partners have consistently asked …

Discussion: Worldwide and TechCrunch

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web: The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating just made Twitter the first purely social ranking of US TV program popularity

The Huffington Post:

Crowd Funding the Right to Know — “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” — Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case …

Discussion: Boing Boing

Dan Gillmor / Guardian:

Why we all have a stake in the Freedom of the Press Foundation — This new nonprofit to protect WikiLeaks and other whistleblowers from payment systems blocking deserves our support — Two years ago this month, the major online payment systems - Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and more …

Discussion: Guardian

David Carr / Media Decoder:
Group Aims to Be a Conduit for WikiLeaks Donations

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Broadcasting & Cable, Politico, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of the Press …, The Verge, Forbes, Boing Boing, @xeni and @digiphile

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Baron: It's ‘probable’ Washington Post newsroom will shrink — Incoming Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron tells Paul Starobin “It's probable” the paper's headcount will go down, but that he hopes the Post can do more on local reporting. “I don't think for a minute that local journalism …

Paul Starobin / The New Republic:

Martin Baron's Plan to Save The Washington Post — Martin Baron, the incoming executive editor of The Washington Post, is bespectacled and scruffily bearded, a nice Jewish boy from Tampa and an itinerant survivor of America's imploding newspaper industry. For the past eleven and a half years, he has edited the Boston Globe.

Discussion: FishbowlDC

Nat Ives / AdAge:

A Look at Newspapers Turning a Profit — Yes, There Are Some — and Those That Are Not — Speculation surged last week that Michael Bloomberg, New York's billionaire mayor and founder of Bloomberg LP, might buy The Financial Times, after The New York Times reported he'd been thinking about it.

Discussion: USA Today, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Noted and @michaelroston

Mark Sweney / Guardian: Print in 2013: Newspapers cut costs and seek tablets of salvation

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Disruptions: Instagram Testimony Doesn't Add Up — SAN FRANCISCO — On a late August morning, Kevin Systrom, chief executive of Instagram, took an oath before testifying at a hearing of the California Corporations Department, which sought to determine if Facebook's acquisition …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Betabeat, New York Magazine, VatorNews, DealBook, Softpedia News, The Appside, The Verge, GigaOM and Business Insider

New York Times:

Newtown has Mixed Feelings About the Media Horde in Its Midst — NEWTOWN, Conn. — Wolf Blitzer understands that his presence here is not appreciated by some local people, who wish that the TV satellite trucks, and the reporters who have taken over the local Starbucks would go away and leave them to ache, grieve and mourn in peace.

Discussion: danah boyd, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Daily Download, AdAge, mediabistro.com, Washington Post, Erik Wemple, Media Decoder, Guardian and Guardian

Matt Bors:
I am Facebook Friends With Ryan Lanza, Which Became A Problem

Discussion: Poynter, Yahoo! News, The Week, The Age and GigaOM

David Carr / New York Times:

Buffeted by the Web, but Now Riding It — When the consumer Web exploded in the mid-1990s, part of the promise was that it would transform careers and the concept of work. Remember the signs on telephone poles and banners all over the Internet? “Work at home and turn your computer into a cash register!

Discussion: The Awl

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

87% of U.S. magazine and newspaper publishers have an iPad app, survey says — A large annual survey of magazine and newspaper publishers finds that 90 percent have some sort of mobile presence — whether it's on a tablet, smartphone or e-reader. And while less than a quarter (22 percent) …

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Mobile's Rude Awakening — Mobile audiences are large and growing. Great. But their monetization is mostly a disaster. The situation will be slow to improve, but the potential is still there — if the right conditions are met. — This year, a major European newspaper expects …

Discussion: Guardian

Sarah Laskow / CJR:

I am a journalist; ask me anything — Media figures are flocking to Reddit to converse with fans — On Wednesday, Chris Anderson, the ex-EIC of Wired, went on Reddit and told users to ask him anything. On Monday, it was Carl Zimmer, the science journalist.