Mediagazer: The New York Times' About.com: From All-Star To Albatross (Jeff Roberts/paidContent)

4:30 PM 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, @michaelwolffnyc, @michaelwolffnyc, @romenesko and Future of Journalism

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

The New York Times' About.com: From All-Star To Albatross — About.com is in free fall. The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) revealed yesterday that its network of information sites suffered a 67% drop in profits and that revenues had fallen by a quarter. — The new figures come …

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire

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, @mathewi, Newsonomics and The Awl

NPR:
How Online Paywalls Are Changing Journalism

Discussion: TechCrunch and NetNewsCheck Latest

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Where to watch the 2012 Super Bowl live online — Super Bowl weekend is upon us, and this year, the big game is going to be streamed live online for the very first time. Who wants to see the game between the Giants and the Patriots on a tiny laptop screen, you might ask?

Discussion: VentureBeat, Forbes, blog.chron.com, @nfl, Mashable!, Mashable!, AllThingsD and Shazam

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, ClickZ, The Big Lead, Media Decoder, MediaFile and ReadWriteWeb

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: Future of Journalism, 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

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 and FishbowlLA

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

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

Discussion: Future of Journalism, The Digital Shift and Melville House Books

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

topheadlin.es: Aggregating both news and news judgment — top headlines: — There's a morning routine that seems to unite almost everyone in the media world: that first, groggy glance at the smartphone before leaving bed. It's a universal experience born out of a basic need: Tell me what I need to know right now.

Discussion: The FJP and Gawker

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

How Trump's non-endorsement of Gingrich made the news — For about 15 hours Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Donald Trump was going to endorse Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination. The news media — or at least several highly respected parts of it — said so.

Discussion: Chickaboomer

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.

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.