Mediagazer: Singaporean government bureaucracy effectively closes news site (Daniel Reimold/Poynter)

12:20 PM ET, December 20, 2013

Top News:

Jim Kennedy / News Corp:

News Corp Acquires Social News Agency Storyful — Accelerating News Corp's digital transformation and video strategy, the company has acquired Storyful, the world's first social news agency. — Building on Storyful's skill in finding verified news amidst the noise of social media …

Discussion: Storyful Blog, CNNMoney.com, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, Guardian, Journalism.co.uk, FishbowlNY, Gigaom, The Wrap, @rupertmurdoch, Mashable, @adamostrow, Poynter, @fieldproducer, RTÉ, Variety, @amzam, The Next Web, @catanify, @raju, National Updates and @maryfitzger

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

News Corp Pays $25M For Storyful, Which Digs Up And Verifies News From Social Sites Like Twitter And Instagram — News Corp is raising its game in digital news again: the company has just announced that it is acquiring Storyful, a Ireland-based “village square” for social media news …

Discussion: @coreypein, @raju and @erichippeau

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Storyful CEO: ‘We want to be in every newsroom in the world’ — So what does a giant media corporation like News Corp get from a boutique social-media news agency like Storyful, which it bought Friday? Reached by phone, News Corp Senior VP of Strategy Raju Narisetti said that Storyful's ability …

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Pledging Clarity, The Times Plunges Into Native Advertising — After months of preparation and scrutiny, “native advertising” is about to arrive at The Times. That practice, much discussed in media circles, has been the subject of a recent Federal Trade Commission public workshop under the appropriate name, “Blurred Lines.”

Discussion: Capital New York, @jswatz, @heathat, @counternotions, @peter_tl, counternotions.com and @edmundlee

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:
Publisher's Letter Explains Limits on Branded Content at The Times

Discussion: AdExchanger, FishbowlNY, Poynter, Digiday, @carrollbogert and @romenesko

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
Buyouts as Times sales chief charts her course

Discussion: Capital New York and @joepompeo

Michael Sebastian / AdAge: The New York Times Is Going to Label the Hell Out of its Native Ads

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

Guardian editor contrasts the U.S. public debate after NSA leaks with Britain's apathy — Obama's NSA review gives the lie to Britain's timid platitudes: a debate is possible — In the US, the official response to Snowden's revelations celebrates journalism and calls for real change.

Discussion: Press Gazette, @glynmoody, @ggreenwald, @antloewenstein, @robobr7, @juliansimpson1, @jeffjarvis, The Daily Caller, Wired and Crikey

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Maxim magazine sale to Darden Media reportedly collapses — Darden not Alpha enough to nail Maxim mag — Negotiations by Darden Media to buy Maxim and its parent, Alpha Media, have collapsed, sources tell Media Ink. — Cerberus Capital Management, Alpha's majority owner …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Between a quarter and a third of everything on the web is copied from somewhere else — There's a lot of junk on the web. There is also a lot of good stuff on the web. And then there is the stuff that's been lifted from the good and dropped amid the dross—the aggregation, the block-quotes, the straight-off copy-paste jobs.

Discussion: @lmirani and @kathrynschulz

Cory Haik / Nieman Journalism Lab:

News that anticipates the reader's needs — The year 2014 is going to be all about you. And me. And him and her. It's going to be all about all of us — and what we are doing on all our devices. The job in news is to be exactly there for people, no matter what they're doing or where they're doing it …

Discussion: @mims and @sclary

Erik Wemple:

Politico's Mike Allen avoids addressing questions about advertisers — A little Mike Allen fact-check here. — Last month, a passage in Politico's “Playbook,” the daily newsletter that goes out under Allen's byline, alerted viewers to some good news:

Discussion: @pykea, @erikwemple and Salon

Daniel Reimold / Poynter:

Singaporean government bureaucracy effectively closes news site — I am in Singapore at the moment, by chance witnessing the death and dismemberment of a popular online news outlet. — I have seen scant outside coverage of this rather strange, censorious saga, so I'm writing a tiny bit about it in hopes of helping spread the word.

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed:

Rep. Waxman expresses concern about LA Times future — Rep. Henry Waxman posted a letter today to Tribune CEO Peter Liguori asking for more information about the company's intended spinoff of its newspapers and how it will affect the Los Angeles Times. “I am writing on behalf of my constituents …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, The Wrap and Columbia Journalism Review

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Amazon Pulls Access to Purchased Christmas Videos During Christmas — One of the best ways to deal with online piracy is to make content available legally. — This is common knowledge by now, but copyright holders still believe that exclusivity can earn them more in the long run, even when it hurts legitimate customers.

Discussion: @thathurtabit, @horrorgeek, @mikeloukides, @stevelitchfield, @jamiew and @tkingdoll

Patrick Frater / Variety:

Li Ruigang's CMC Buys Stake in Caixin Media — HONG KONG - China Media Capital, a RMB5 billion ($833 million) venture capital fund with connections to Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has bought a stake in Caixin Media, one of China's leading independent news organizations.

Discussion: VCPOST, South China Morning Post and China Money Network

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Media coverage of Saatchi and Lawson evidence flirted with contempt — The frenzied dissection of the witnesses' testimony in the Grillo sisters' fraud trial held up all concerned to public mockery — The trial of the Grillo sisters was covered by the media with a greater intensity …

Discussion: Softpedia News and Latest News & Headlines

Vladimir Kozlov / Hollywood Reporter:

Russia's Largest Social Network Signs Content Deal With Local TV Producer — In another step towards a legitimate online video market in the country, the two companies will share ad revenue linked to the content, which could reach $30 million in 2014. — MOSCOW — As Russia moves further towards …

Khoi Vinh / Medium:

What streaming music lacks: the metadata of analog days and the personalization of now — What Streaming Music Can Be — Getting past the breadth of Spotify's catalog to more meaningful connections with the music — One gift that I won't be giving to loved ones this holiday season is music, sadly.

Ann Marie Gardner / Modern Farmer:

Magazine Eats World: The Ever-Expanding Edible Empire — If you have lived or traveled in the United States or Canada in the last 10 years and have any interest in local food, there's a good chance you've come across a copy of an Edible magazine. The magazine franchise has grown like kudzu.

Norman Solomon / Common Dreams:

Under Amazon's CIA Cloud: The Washington Post — News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper's CIA coverage are left in the dark.

Discussion: The Nation

Patrick Frater / Variety:

Ricky Wong Hits Back With 5 Channel Launch — HONG KONG - Ricky Wong, the Hong Kong businessman whose Hong Kong Television Network, was surprisingly denied a free-to-air TV license in October says he will launch five new channels via the internet. — At a press conference on Friday afternoon …

Discussion: The Standard