Mediagazer: AOL Beats Low Expectations, Increasing Ad Revenue and Slowing Total Decline in Q4 (Plus Charts!) (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

12:25 PM ET, February 1, 2012

Top News:

‘Gasland’ Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans — In a stunning break with First Amendment policy on Capitol Hill, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice.

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

AOL Beats Low Expectations, Increasing Ad Revenue and Slowing Total Decline in Q4 (Plus Charts!) — AOL said it earned 23 cents a share for the fourth quarter on revenue of $576.8 million, compared to 65 cents per share on $596 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Discussion: TechCrunch, AdAge, NetNewsCheck Latest, David Thier, Betabeat, VentureBeat, Forbes, Business Wire, mediabistro.com, Future of Journalism, TechJournal South and paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Is AOL Retreating on Its Patch Profitability Promise? — For quite some time now, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has been telling investors that parts of Patch, the company's network of hyperlocal news sites, would cross over into the black by the end of 2011 in a “rolling thunder” of profitability.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
AOL's Armstrong: Some Patches DID Turn Profitable in 2011

Discussion: Forbes, more at Techmeme »

Tom Espiner / ZDNet:

Assange's Supreme Court extradition appeal kicks off — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has begun his Supreme Court bid to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about allegations of sexual coercion. — Assange appeared relaxed as the two-day hearing began in the Supreme Court building opposite …

Discussion: WebProNews, Chicago Tribune and Guardian

Jana Winter / Fox News:

EXCLUSIVE: Wikileaks to move servers offshore, sources say — Julian Assange's investors are in the process of purchasing a boat to move WikiLeaks' servers offshore in an attempt to evade prosecution from U.S. law enforcement, FoxNews.com has learned. Multiple sources within the hacker community …

Discussion: CNET, FT Tech Hub, PC Magazine and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Robert Booth / Guardian:

Julian Assange extradition breaches legal principle, lawyer claims — First day of hearing into extradition of WikiLeaks founder to Sweden centres on issue of Swedish prosecutor's impartiality — The arrest warrant for Julian Assange should not stand and breaches “a matter of fundamental legal principle” …

Discussion: newsfeed.time.com

David Kravets / Threat Level:

Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’ — Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required. — Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic.

Discussion: MediaNama and Mashable!

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Yahoo News hires Olivier Knox as its first White House correspondent — Yahoo News has hired Olivier Knox, Congressional correspondent for Agence France-Press, to be its White House correspondent—the first in Yahoo's 16-year history. — Knox—who has spent more than a decade with AFP covering politics …

Discussion: FishbowlDC, FishbowlNY, ABCNEWS and JIMROMENESKO.COM

John Stevens / Daily Mail:

Email to James Murdoch telling him hacking was rife at NotW was deleted days before police launched investigation — An email warning James Murdoch that phone-hacking was ‘rife’ at the News of the World was deleted from his inbox days before police started an investigation into the newspaper, it was revealed last night.

Mark Hughes / The Telegraph: Glenn Mulcaire ordered to reveal who told him to hack phones

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Andrew Beaujon joins Poynter in February as Senior Online Reporter — I'm happy to announce that Andrew Beaujon will join The Poynter Institute later this month as Senior Online Reporter. Andrew comes to the Institute from TBD, where he has been arts editor since May 2010.

Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:

YouTube could introduce a subscription service of its own — At the D:Dive Into Media conference Tuesday, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar gave his views on how the video marketplace is evolving both online and off. While much of the company's efforts have been based on advertising …

Discussion: AllThingsD and Business Insider, more at Techmeme »

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Amazon: Print Book Unit Sales Up; More Content For Prime — Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) says unit sales of print books grew by “double digits” in Q4 compared to last year. That “is impressive given the shift to Kindle,” said CFO Tom Szkutak in the investor call following this afternoon's disappointing earnings report.

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Amazon: Big Kindle sales, but sales and outlook fall short

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, AllThingsD and ReadWriteWeb

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:
Amazon Blows Q4, Stock Plunges 9% After Hours

Discussion: New York Times, Bookseller news, Amazon.com, @laurahazardowen, Reuters, Publishers Weekly, CNBC and Tech Trader Daily, more at Techmeme »

Press Gazette:

Up to 75 more journalists to go at Mirror titles and People — Trinity Mirror has announced proposals to cut up to another 75 editorial jobs across the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People. — The company has announced a restructure that will see it integrate newsrooms across all three titles …

Discussion: Guardian

Alexander Abad-Santos / The Atlantic Wire:

Time to Ask if Vanity Fair Is Racist (Again) — Vanity Fair has released its annual Hollywood cover, and now it's time for the fun though often futile, exercise of determining if the magazine has slighted minority actors and actresses based on their numbers and placement.

Discussion: Jezebel, Business Insider and LA Observed

Enrico Campitelli Jr / The700Level:

Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer Sports Desks to Work Together — The beginning of the end of Philadelphia being a two newspaper town seems to be here. We're told guild members were informed via email about management's plans to align the Daily News' and Inquirer's sports staffs along …

Lauren Lloyd / LAist:

Former L.A. Times Employee Warns Of Impending Massive Writer Layoff — A freshly fired Los Angeles Times pressman shared some shocking details about the publication's termination policies, recent employee suicides and impending layoff of writers with The Frying Pan editor Steven Mikulan.

Matthew Fleischer / FishbowlLA:
Suicides and Sabotage at the LA Times

Discussion: Future of Journalism and WebProNews

Steven Mikulan / Frying Pan News: LA Times: Layoffs, Sabotage and Suicides?

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Barnes & Noble faces setback in Microsoft antitrust complaint — Microsoft may have scored an early victory in its legal tussle with Barnes & Noble. The two companies are engaged in parallel battles, one via the Department of Justice, another via United States International Trade Commission.

Discussion: FOSS Patents, Engadget and PC Magazine, more at Techmeme »