Mediagazer: When the Yellow Press Got Color (J. Hoberman/The New York Review of Books)

4:25 AM ET, January 2, 2014

Top News:

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 …

Re/code:

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: The Wrap, New York Times, @laurengoode, @kvox, @dannysullivan, @waltmossberg, @mat, @startupljackson, The Next Web, @karaswisher, @kenli729, @kabster728, @jtemple and @ranimolla

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: Variety, @sdkstl, @vivianschiller, The Verge, Inside Cable News and Bloomberg

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: TVNewser, NBC Universal, @mikeisaac, @alexweprin, NBCNews, @karaswisher, @mikeisaac and Deadline.com

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, @nbj914, @mathewi, @nbj914 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

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, @codinghorror and Scientific American …

J. Hoberman / The New York Review of Books:

When the Yellow Press Got Color — On October 18, 1896, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst went to war—not with Spain in Cuba but with Joseph Pulitzer in New York. His opening salvo was The New York Journal's five-cent color supplement, The American Humorist, which Hearst called …

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 …

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.

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 …

Andrew Sullivan / The Dish:

Time Inc.'s move to make newsrooms report to business execs is the surrender of journalism — Journalism's Surrender … I should end the year on an upbeat note, shouldn't I? But Time Inc. ruined it. The surrender of journalism to advertizing and public relations - not alliance with …

Discussion: @david_dobbs, @erikvance, @betheleri and Rehak/Stuebing Mostly Media