Mediagazer: Greenpeace Russia arrests: Kieron Bryan's family ‘emotional’ over release (BBC)

5:15 PM ET, December 26, 2013

Top News:

Matt Wilstein / Mediaite:

Greenwald Snarks at MSNBC: I Defend Snowden Like You Defend Obama ‘24 Hours a Day’ — Journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on MSNBC Thursday, one day after Edward Snowden delivered a Christmas address to television viewers in the UK and around the world from Russia.

Discussion: Mediaite, TVNewser, Business Insider, TheHill, Gawker and New York Magazine

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

Chicago startup Rivet News Radio echoes Zite and Pandora for audio news — Text-based journalism has Flipboard and Zite. Music has Pandora. Video has YouTube. Tapping into elements of all these services for a different form of media is Rivet News Radio, the first product …

Slate:

Tom Wheeler net neutrality: Is the new FCC chairman changing his tune? — This piece originally appeared in the New America Foundation's Weekly Wonk. New America is a partner with Slate and Arizona State University in Future Tense. — As the new Federal Communications Commission chairman …

Discussion: Gigaom

Neda Ulaby / NPR:

A YouTube Powerhouse Looks Beyond Its Gamer Base … One of the most popular channels on YouTube is aimed toward people who play video games. It's got tons of content — thousands of game reviews, how-to videos of people gaming away enthusiastically, even little homemade movies that people have made using video-game software.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon's best season saw 1M new Prime members a week, 426 items sold per second — Amazon Prime tops 20 million members as company touts its best holiday season ever — Amazon is exiting the 2013 holiday season with “tens of millions” of Amazon Prime members, according to a statement …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat and Businessweek

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Scores of Music Services Stream Into Crowded Field — Many of the New Models Will Focus on Genre — The number of music-streaming services is set to explode next year, as record labels have warmed up to the idea of renting consumers access to a vast collection of tunes, rather than selling them individual albums or songs.

Discussion: @zseward

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Patch's Biggest Blunder: Ignoring Cities — Guest post by Merrill Brown, director of the school of communication and media at Montclair State University. A member of the founding team of Court TV and the founding Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com, Brown advises digital media start-ups and is a Venture Partner at DFJ Frontier.

BBC:

Greenpeace Russia arrests: Kieron Bryan's family ‘emotional’ over release — The family of a video journalist held in Russia with Greenpeace activists have said dealing with his confinement was “something we wouldn't wish on anyone to experience”. — Kieron Bryan, 29, was among 30 people arrested …

Anna Nemtsova / Guardian:

Ukrainian activist-journalist Tetyana Chernovil in intensive care after beating — Protesters rally in Kiev holding photos of reporter, who says she was pulled from car after criticising minister's alleged corruption — The streets of Kiev were plastered with images of a young woman's bruised and swollen face on Thursday morning.

RT:

Saudi blogger may face death penalty for apostasy — Saudi blogger and activist, Raif Badawi, currently serving his 7-year prison term for “insulting Islam”, may soon appear in a higher court on graver charges of apostasy. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.

Discussion: CNN, MyFOX8.com, @rwwwb, carbonated.tv, @amani_lebanon and Journal Of Turkish Weekly

Nicholas Watt / Guardian:

Cameron warns UK press: sign up to royal charter or else — PM says UK press risks ‘hideous statutory regulation’ in future if it declines to seek recognition under terms of new royal charter — David Cameron has warned the press that it runs the risk of facing “hideous statutory regulation” …

Discussion: Spectator and The Huffington Post

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Migrahack brings together journalists, programmers and community — Immigration stories usually have numbers. But immigration numbers have stories of their own. Many journalists work with these numbers — they gather them, use them and report them. But while the numbers get told, the stories behind them often don't.

Discussion: @poynter