Mediagazer: UK copyright laws to be freed up and parody laws relaxed (Mark Sweney/Guardian)

7:45 AM ET, December 21, 2012

Top News:

CNN:

Jake Tapper Joins CNN As Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent — Tapper to Anchor New Weekday Program Beginning in 2013 — Accomplished Washington journalist Jake Tapper, who has served the last four years as ABC's senior White House correspondent and is a best-selling author …

Discussion: ABCNEWS, Poynter, Politico, The Huffington Post, Inside Cable News, Chickaboomer, @brianstelter, NetNewsCheck Latest, MediaPost, BuzzFeed, Mediaite, The New York Observer, @tvmojoe, @macfarlanenews and Cision

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CNN, Planning New Programming, Hires Jake Tapper From ABC — 8:57 p.m. | Updated CNN said on Thursday that it had hired Jake Tapper, the senior White House correspondent for ABC News, as new programming for the cable news channel was announced. — Mr. Tapper, widely seen …

Discussion: TVNewser, The Wrap and Chickaboomer

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

Brian McGrory Rises From Boston Globe Paperboy to Become the Paper's Next Editor — The Boston Globe announced on Thursday that Brian McGrory, a columnist and former metro editor at the newspaper and a Boston native with deep roots in the area, would be its next editor. The appointment is effective immediately.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM and NetNewsCheck Latest

Nieman Journalism Lab:

Brian McGrory named editor of The Boston Globe — Not a totally unexpected development — McGrory was viewed as a strong internal contender from the start of the race to replace Marty Baron, despite having moved from more of a management to being a metro columnist a few years back.

Discussion: The Boston Globe, The Wrap, Media Nation •, Poynter, Adweek and FishbowlNY

Wall Street Journal:

Hulu's Fork in the Road — As Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. battle it out for dominance in online video, owners of the much smaller Hulu LLC, Hollywood's own online video service, are under pressure to decide which direction to go. — Jason Kilar, chief executive of Hulu …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and VentureBeat

Rebecca Greenfield / New York Times:

What the New York Times's ‘Snow Fall’ Means to Online Journalism's Future — The New York Times debuted a new multimedia feature Thursday so beautiful it has a lot of people wondering — especially those inside the New York Times — if the mainstream media is about to forgo words and pictures for a whole lot more.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Emma Gardner / Lean Back 2.0:
The New York Times pushes the limits of online storytelling

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Carl Bernstein / Guardian:

Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency — Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgement? — So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate …

Discussion: Politico, @jackshafer and Pressing Issues

Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:

E-Reader Market Shrinks Faster Than Many Predicted — Nearly three years after the first iPad was introduced, the tablet has come a long way. Now there are plenty of smaller, cheaper tablets that are pretty powerful. So why buy a more primitive e-book reader?

Discussion: eMarketer and Blog Posts

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

UK copyright laws to be freed up and parody laws relaxed — Downloading purchased CDs onto laptop to be legalised, but music industry call for levy on copying devices is rejected — The government is to scrap an archaic law that makes it illegal for music fans to download a legally-purchased CD onto …

Discussion: The Verge, news.bis.gov.uk and GigaOM

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

VEVO Gets A Roku App, Bringing More Than 50,000 Streaming Music Videos To Your TV — Since being launched three years ago, VEVO has quickly grown to be the best place to find music videos online and on various mobile and connected devices. Indeed, for most major artists, it's the only place to find their content.

Discussion: VentureBeat

The Lede:

Syrian Television Journalist Announces Defection — In a telephone interview shown on Thursday by the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya, a man who identified himself as Ahmad Fakhouri, a prominent Syrian state television anchor, announced his defection. — In the interview …

Haniya Rae / Digiday:

Why Henry Blodget Has a ‘Buy’ on Media (and Slideshows) — Publishing models are undergoing challenging reformations as digital technologies continue to aggressively compete against traditional print formats. — Business Insider's CEO and editor-in-chief Henry Blodget sat down with Digiday's editor …

Juli Weiner / Vanity Fair:

Journalists Struggle to Locate People Who Think the World Will End; Are Not Deterred from Writing “People Think World Will End” Pieces — Oh right: the world is going to end tomorrow. This is the second time the world was scheduled to end in the past year and a half.

Discussion: New York Post and CNN

McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Letter from parents of missing journalist Austin Tice — HOUSTON — An open letter to those holding our son, Austin Tice: — Our family is longing for the safe return of our cherished son and beloved brother Austin, who was taken captive while working as a journalist in Syria.

Discussion: The Newspaper Guild

Jim Romenesko:

‘Fox Mole’ Joe Muto wants people to read his book ‘and laugh their asses off’ — On April 10, Gawker introduced a new columnist: The Fox Mole. The plan was for him to provide Gawker with “regular dispatches from inside the organization,” but then Roger Ailes & Co. “nailed” him.

Discussion: Reliable Sources and TVNewser