Mediagazer: US writers must take a stand on NSA surveillance (Dave Eggers/Guardian)

12:20 AM ET, December 21, 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 …

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: Online NewsHour and @raju

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
News Corp Pays $25M For Storyful, Which Digs Up And Verifies News From Social Sites Like Twitter And Instagram

Discussion: @coreypein, Wired, @raju and @erichippeau

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter: Storyful CEO: ‘We want to be in every newsroom in the world’

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, @trevortimm and The Raw Story

William Launder / Wall Street Journal:

Should Forbes Be Valued as Online Business? — Publisher Aims to Convince Bidders It Deserves to Be Priced on Digital Properties — The owners of Forbes Media LLC are hoping to convince potential buyers it should be valued like a fast-growing digital media business, but people familiar …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

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, @deggans and TVSpy

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

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, TVSpy, Bloomberg and NetNewsCheck Latest

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

Staci D. Kramer / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Connecting the dots — One of the most popular new games of 2013 was an addictive mobile app called Dots: A Game About Connecting from Betaworks. It's deceptively simple: a white board full of evenly spaced colored dots worth points when connected in a short amount of time.

Discussion: @niemanlab and Trust But Verify

Dave Eggers / Guardian:

US writers must take a stand on NSA surveillance — As the Obama administration responds to the NSA mass surveillance revelations, Dave Eggers reflects on the impact they have had on US writers, and asks if the prevailing sense of fear heralds an intellectual ice age

Discussion: @davidulin, @harikunzru and GalleyCat

Digg:

The Year In Digg — In the last year, we here at Digg have posted 21,303 stories, tweeted 25,088 times, and drank over 1,000 beers. But these numbers only tell part of the tale. That's why we've compiled the most noteworthy stats and stories from 2013 into something we like to call, “The Year In Digg.”

Discussion: @julesdwit

David Sirota / PandoDaily:

Entertainment wants to be accessible, not free — Remember a few years back when Hollywood studios tried — and famously failed — to ram the Stop Online Piracy Act through Congress? Well, two things have happened since a coalition of Silicon Valley companies, technology think tanks …

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

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

Tom Gara / Corporate Intelligence:

Details of the ‘Mega Conspiracy’ Behind Megaupload … Some lively new details arrived today in the long saga of Megaupload, the file-sharing site whose founder, Kim Dotcom, is currently suing the New Zealand police while the U.S. government attempts to extradite him to face charges of criminal conspiracy.