Mediagazer: Why Is The New Republic Taking Money from an NSA Contractor to Run Defenses of the NSA? (Rick Perlstein/The Nation)

6:45 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: Wired, @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’

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: Broadcasting & Cable, NetNewsCheck Latest, Bloomberg and TVSpy

Meg James / Los Angeles Times: FCC approves Tribune Co. purchase of 16 stations from Local TV

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, @thestalwart and City Desk

Matthew Hendley / Valley Fever:

Joe Arpaio Loses: New Times Co-Founders Win $3.75 Million Settlement for 2007 False Arrests — The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors this afternoon voted unanimously to approve a $3.75 million settlement for New Times' co-founders, whose false arrests in 2007 were orchestrated by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Discussion: @clarajeffery

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, @mims and The Public Editor's Journal

Free Press:

A Sorry Moment in the History of American Media — We just experienced a shameful milestone in the history of U.S. media — and barely anyone noticed. — There are now zero black-owned and operated full-power TV stations in our country. — This sorry state of affairs is the culmination …

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
Report: No black-owned full-power TV stations remain in U.S.

Discussion: St. Louis Post-Dispatch and TVSpy

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

Rick Perlstein / The Nation:

Why Is The New Republic Taking Money from an NSA Contractor to Run Defenses of the NSA? — The landing gear on a mockup of a Northrop Grumman X-47B long-range, high endurance unmanned aircraft (Reuters). — The National Security Agency has a friend at the Harvard Law School. And at the Brookings Institution.

Discussion: Lawfare and TheHill

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

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, Reuters, Latest News & Headlines and Variety

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

New milestone: Amazon stock surpass $400 for first time ever — This summer, Amazon.com's stock hit $300 for the first time. — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″. — Now, five months later, it has reached a new milestone: $400.

Discussion: VentureBeat

Aditya Kishore / Guardian:

Battleground Britain: who will dominate UK video streaming? — Aditya Kishore analyses the battle for video streaming dominance in extremely competitive UK market place — Clearly, Netflix dominates the US home video market: More than 30 million households subscribe to the service …

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