Mediagazer: Public Domain Day 2014: bad times ahead, urgent action needed (Cory Doctorow/Boing Boing)

12:25 AM ET, January 2, 2014

Top News:

Happy Re/new Year! — We are thrilled to announce that we are forming our own new and independent media company, Revere Digital, with a pair of respected investors and partners — the NBCUniversal News Group and Terry Semel's Windsor Media. Revere will be operating news sites and apps, as well as a series of conferences.

Discussion: @mat, @ranimolla, @karaswisher, @kabster728, @waltmossberg, @kenli729, @laurengoode and @jtemple

Dan Primack / Fortune:

NBC and Terry Semel back new Swisher/Mossberg site — All Things D founders Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg launch Re/code with new investors. — FORTUNE — “Who are the investors?” — It's a question I've heard nonstop since we first reported back in August that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg …

Discussion: Bloomberg and PRNewser

Julia Boorstin / CNBC:

Swisher and Mossberg launch ‘Re/code’; NBC & Windsor Media are minority investors — Veteran technology journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are launching a new media company, Re/code.net, the new incarnation of the widely followed technology news operation and conference business AllThingsD.

Discussion: The Wrap, NBC Universal, @alexweprin, @mikeisaac, @mikeisaac, @karaswisher and Deadline.com

New York Times:

NYT editorial board calls for clemency or a plea bargain for Snowden — Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower — Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency's reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe …

Discussion: Washington Post, Business Insider, @glennf, @barryeisler, @astepanovich, @jasonleopold, @profkeithdevlin, @billmon1, @jbarro, @charlie_simpson, @fmanjoo, @astepanovich, @gregmitch, @gregmitch, Guardian and The Switch

Andrew Sullivan / The Dish:

The Dish ends 2013 with $851k in subscription revenue, 34,000 subscribers — The Dish Subscription Surge — One last note before the New Year begins. When I was asked a little less than a year ago what our ambition was for revenue in 2013, I grabbed a number out of the air.

Discussion: @pmarca, @mathewi and @jayrosen_nyu

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

Al Jazeera America Will Be ‘Envy of the Industry,’ Chief Says — Deep pockets make fledgling cabler a journalistic unicorn amid cost-cutting elsewhere — Al Jazeera America president Kate O'Brian has told staffers that the fledgling cabler is on its way to being “the envy of the industry” as it heads into 2014 with ambitious plans.

Discussion: TVNewser

Press Gazette:

Defamation Act comes into force today with ‘serious harm’ now needed for claims to succeed — The long-awaited Defamation Act 2013 comes into force today bring sweeping changing to the law of libel. — The act introduces a “new serious harm threshold” designed to help people understand …

Discussion: Guardian, BBC, OUPblog, Financial Times, Times Higher Education, Boing Boing and @johnston_press

Ben Smith / Playboy:

Social media: journalism's most important ally for distribution — How Twitter and Facebook will save journalism (mostly) — On November 4, 2008 I woke up slightly hungover at six A.M. in a Hyatt hotel overlooking the Chicago River. It was the morning of Election Day, and even at that small hour e-mails jammed my in-box.

Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:

Public Domain Day 2014: bad times ahead, urgent action needed — It's Public Domain day again — the day when music, books and movies enter the public domain in countries where copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 50 years (hint: not the USA). — But as John Mark Ockerbloom points out …

Discussion: Everybody's Libraries, Scientific American … and @codinghorror

New York Times:

How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience? — Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Mohsin Hamid and Anna Holmes discuss how technology affects the way we read. — In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle …

Sam Marsden / Telegraph:

Increase in BBC middle-managers as director-general vows to cut executives — There was a 14 per cent rise in the number of the Corporation's staff at the level just below senior management over a three-year period — The number of the BBC's middle-managers has increased despite …

Erik Wemple:

Are the U.S. media as transparent as the U.S. government? — Bob Schieffer of CBS News gave one of the great media quotes of 2013. He was asked by Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Post, about how the Obama administration ranked in terms of openness toward the media.