Mediagazer: News that anticipates the reader's needs (Cory Haik/Nieman Journalism Lab)

3:10 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 …

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

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

Raju Narisetti talks about why News Corp. bought Storyful and founder Mark Little talks about why he sold — We've written before about how crowdsourced verification of user-generated content is a significant trend in new media, and Storyful has been at the forefront of that wave since before most people had even heard the term.

Discussion: @raju and Online NewsHour

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 …

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Washington Post's Ezra Klein Considering Starting New Venture — NEW YORK — Ezra Klein, a top Washington Post policy writer and editor of the paper's Wonkblog, is currently speaking to outside suitors about starting a new media venture, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Discussion: @mattgertz, @mathewi and @thestalwart

Gautham Nagesh / Wall Street Journal:

FCC Approves Gannett-Belo, Tribune-Local TV Deals — $1.5 Billion Gannett-Belo Deal Would Affect 20 Stations in 15 Markets … The Federal Communications Commission on Friday approved two major deals involving local television stations that will add to consolidation in the media market.

Discussion: Multichannel.com, NetNewsCheck Latest, Bloomberg and TVSpy

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: @sclary and @mims

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: Capital New York, Kirk LaPointe's …, @ggreenwald, Press Gazette, @glynmoody, @antloewenstein, @robobr7, @juliansimpson1, @jeffjarvis, The Daily Caller and Wired

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

Elizabeth Green / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The continued rise of single-subject sites — Five years ago, when I first started building the news organization that my colleagues and I now call Chalkbeat (then known as GothamSchools), a friend asked me an innocent question. “So you cover education now. But what will your next beat be?”

Discussion: @davidepstein and @niemanlab

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: Reuters, Softpedia News, Latest News & Headlines and Variety

Eric Jaffe / Co.Design:

Snow Fail: Do Readers Really Prefer Parallax Web Design? — You may not know the term “parallax scrolling,” but you've probably seen it in action. In the past couple years, parallax has become perhaps the most popular site design tool out there, embraced by commercial products and …

Discussion: Capital New York, @nbj914, @tomcarmony and @brianabelson

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.

Discussion: @poynter

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 …

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.”