Mediagazer: Food Advertisers Cinching Belts (John Koblin/WWD)

4:50 AM ET, February 5, 2012

Top News:

The Incredible Shrinking New York Times — The New York Times just reported its fourth-quarter results to finish out 2011. — And it's still shrinking. — Despite the launch of an online paywall that has, by any measure, been a big success, the company's revenue for its core news business shrank again in 2011.

Discussion: @michaelwolffnyc, @michaelwolffnyc, @romenesko, @michaelwolffnyc, @michaelwolffnyc and Future of Journalism

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

The NYT needs a lot more than just a paywall — If there was a bright spot in the latest quarterly results from the New York Times, it's the fact that the newspaper's metered paywall has attracted almost 325,000 subscribers willing to pay a monthly fee for the site.

Discussion: Slate, paidContent, Newsonomics, @mathewi, The Awl and Paul McMorrow

NPR:

How Online Paywalls Are Changing Journalism … Read Clay Shirky's column “Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users” — Online media advocate Clay Shirky has long been a skeptic of newspaper paywalls. He now thinks 2012 could be the year that a critical mass of readers will be willing to pay for news online.

Discussion: TechCrunch and NetNewsCheck Latest

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Arianna Huffington's Vision of Interactive Video Journalism — The Huffington Post, which has galvanized a massive community of millions of content creators who engage via comments, “likes,” tweets and thousands of guest blog posts, will soon participate in an ambitious linear video network …

Discussion: FishbowlNY and TVexchanger.com, Thanks:@beet_tv

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:
Watch Out, TV: AOL and HuffPo Jump Into Live Video

Discussion: GigaOM, Media & Entertainment, The FJP, FishbowlLA and Future of Journalism

The Authors Guild Blog:

Publishing's Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory — [Update, February 2, 2012: There have been some comments here and elsewhere questioning the accuracy of a sentence in this blog post that we excerpted from Barry Lynn's “Killing the Competition” Harper's piece.

Discussion: O'Reilly Radar and Forbes

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
Random House Will Keep All Its E-Books In Libraries, With A Price Increase

Discussion: The Digital Shift and Melville House Books

Mark Thompson / BBC:

The harassment of BBC Persian journalists — For those working for the BBC Persian service, interference and harassment from the Iranian authorities has become a challenging fact of life. — I am hugely proud of how they deal with that relentless pressure, and their unswerving commitment …

Discussion: Committee to Protect …, @poynter and @brianstelter

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Sacramento Bee fires Bryan Patrick for photo manipulation — The Sacramento Bee fired award-winning photographer Bryan Patrick Friday after finding three cases, going back to 2009, in which he digitally manipulated photographs. — Patrick was suspended earlier this week when a reader raised questions …

Discussion: Sacramento Bee

Steve Myers / Poynter:
NPPA president: Sacramento Bee photo manipulation a ‘betrayal’

Discussion: FishbowlLA, Washington Post and KXTV

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Halifax lays off more than half of staff reporting to former NYT Regional HQ in Tampa — About 30 employees of the former New York Times Regional Media Group were notified Friday that their new employer, Halifax Media Group, has decided to lay them off and offer severance packages.

Mandy Jenkins / Zombie Journalism:

I'm more than a Twitter Monkey — So can I level with you guys? I'm relieved that I'm not going to be doing this same social media jam forever. — Not because I don't like it - actually, I still really love it. I live to send out a tweet and see a flood of reaction come in as mentions and retweets.

Discussion: The New York Observer, SocialTimes.com, @dancow, @niemanlab, @mathewi, @jeffsonderman and Poynter

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Reuters staff vote for first strike in 25 years — NUJ members ‘overwhelmingly’ back action over below-inflation pay offer of 1.75% — Journalists at Thomson Reuters have voted to strike - for the first time at the news agency in more than 25 years - over a below-inflation pay offer.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Apple Tweaks iBook Language: Your Content Is Your Content — A couple weeks after introducing its new iBooks Author app, Apple has clarified legal language about what happens to books users create with the software. Apple continues to insist that users can only sell electronic books in the iBook format via its iTunes store.

Discussion: The Next Web, PC Magazine, Softpedia News, The Verge, TUAW, Epicenter, ZDNet, CNET, MacStories, @jcstearns, Future of Journalism and paidContent

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

Before the Toss, Super Bowl Ads — The Super Bowl has long been the biggest day of the year for advertising, as more than 100 million Americans watch television's most expensive and daring commercials. Unlike years past, one thing will be mostly missing this year: surprise.

Discussion: BAGnewsNotes, Media Money …, iMediaConnection Blog, Media Decoder, MediaFile and ReadWriteWeb

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

How Dallas Morning News reporter got scoop that Komen was reversing its decision — When Dallas Morning News reporter Tom Benning called a Susan G. Komen for the Cure spokeswoman Friday morning, he got a heads up that something big was about to break. — “I literally called the person …

Discussion: The Scoop, Capital New York, Jezebel, The New Yorker Blog, Forbes, AdAge, New York Times, Mother Jones and Mediaite

John Koblin / WWD:

Food Advertisers Cinching Belts — The cover of Bon Appétit. — Photo By Courtesy Photo Photo By Courtesy Photo — In 2009, when the luxury market crashed and magazines were averaging 25 percent ad page declines, there was one part of the magazine world that looked relatively stable: food.