Mediagazer: Gannett Agrees to Sell KMOV As Part of Belo Merger (Merrill Knox/TVSpy)

7:05 PM ET, December 16, 2013

Top News:

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

The almost-post mortem for Patch — David Carr all but writes the obit for Patch today. One could quibble and say it's not quite dead, that Aol plans partnerships for the ill-fated ganglion of local sites. Fine, but it's still not wrong to look back and ask what went wrong.

Discussion: @dangillmor, @the_fjp, @jayrosen_nyu and @jeffjarvis

David Carr / New York Times:

AOL's Tim Armstrong reluctantly lets go of Patch as shareholder pressures mount — AOL Chief's White Whale Finally Slips His Grasp — Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, is finally winding down Patch, a network of local news sites that he helped invent and that AOL bought after he took over.

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:
LEAKED MEMO: Patch Execs Tell Employees Patch Is Not Dead, Despite What They Read In The New York Times

Discussion: Gigaom, Forbes, TechCrunch, Businessweek, SocialTimes, @kantrowitz, @ali, @joepompeo, Kirk LaPointe's …, New York Magazine and @tracewall

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Federal Judge Rules Against N.S.A. Phone Data Program — WASHINGTON — A Federal District Court judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans' phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, and he ordered the government …

Guardian:
Edward Snowden says judge's ruling vindicates NSA surveillance disclosures

Discussion: TechCrunch, @miriamelder and TIME

Richard Johnson / New York Post:

60 Minutes reporter John Miller currently negotiating new intelligence job with NYPD — CBS newsman John Miller is negotiating his exit as a senior correspondent to join his old friend Bill Bratton back at the Police Department, a reliable source tells me.

Discussion: TVNewser, Deadline.com, @antderosa, @csoghoian, Business Insider, @dailynewshack, TVWeek.com, NewsMax.com, Gothamist, Talking Points Memo, @jeffreycarr, @antderosa, @onekade, @dandrezner and @moorehn

Sara Morrison / The Wire:

‘60 Minutes’: NSA Good, Snowden Bad — As if that whole retracted Benghazi report and the Amazon commercial/drone reveal didn't undermine 60 Minutes' credibility enough in the last few weeks, here's another gem: a report on how the NSA has simply been misunderstood by all those Snowden leaks and is a good guy, really.

Discussion: Guardian, The Huffington Post, CBS News, The Nation, Gigaom, Hit & Run, dissenter.firedoglake.com, @paulxharris, @carr2n, @ggreenwald, @martin_u, @carlmalamud, @davechensky and @jeffjarvis

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
‘60 Minutes’ reporter didn't want NSA story to be ‘a puff piece’

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Almost Half of The Huffington Post's Traffic Comes From Overseas — The Huffington Post is fast becoming an international media brand. It now publishes eight editions outside the U.S. and expects to export its celebrity, news and aggregation model to Brazil, South Korea, India and possibly the Middle East in 2014.

Discussion: @niemanlab, @aoladvertising, @justin_b_smith and @muckety

Meg Graham / Chicago Grid:

Comcast could resurrect community news site EveryBlock starting in Chicago — EveryBlock is back from the dead — Ten months after being shut down and left for dead, community-news website EveryBlock is being resurrected. — Comcast, which owned EveryBlock when it was shut down in January …

Discussion: @abillionsuns, @lyzidiamond, @me3dia, @the_fjp and @antderosa

Brian R. Fitzgerald / Digits:

WSJ hires editors from ABC News and NBC News as gadget reviewer Walt Mossberg leaves the team — WSJ Announces Personal Tech Reviewing Team — Today we are announcing expanded Wall Street Journal coverage of personal technology, to help readers everywhere understand and choose among …

Discussion: @gregbensinger, @scottmaustin, @geoffreyfowler, @linecook, @joannastern, @reckless, @ohnorosco, @fmanjoo, @shiraovide and Talking Biz News

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Lara Logan to return to ‘60 Minutes’ — Lara Logan and Max McClellan, the ‘60 Minutes’ journalists who were put on a leave of absence following their now-retracted report on Benghazi, are set to return to the program early next year, POLITICO has learned. — Logan and her producer …

Discussion: TVNewser, Mediaite and @tvnewslab

Matthew Keys / The Desk:

Exclusive: Twitter working on “edit” feature for tweets — Twitter is working on a new feature that would allow users to edit tweets once they are published, three sources close to the project have confirmed to The Desk. — Those sources, who asked to be identified only as Twitter employees …

Discussion: @stevebuttry, @craigsilverman, @politwoops, @ksablan and The Next Web

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Guardian U.S. C.E.O. out after short stint — Guardian Media Group's U.S. boss is leaving the company after just a little more than a year on the job. — Michael Bloom, C.E.O. of Guardian U.S., The Guardian's American-facing digital website, “will leave the company to pursue other opportunities …

Discussion: Media Guido and @joepompeo

Lara O'Reilly / Marketing Week:
Guardian promotes chief commercial officer David Pemsel to deputy chief executive

Discussion: @marketingweeked and Guardian

Capital New York:

The ‘Times Magazine’ problem — New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson had given herself until the end of the year to name a new editor for The New York Times Magazine to replace Hugo Lindgren, whose imminent departure was first reported by Capital last month.

Discussion: @capitalnewyork, @joepompeo and @drmabuse