Mediagazer: Demand Media Beats Expectations Slightly in Q4 Report; Buying Back More Stock; CEO: “Turbulent Year” (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

2:50 AM ET, February 17, 2012

Top News:

Rick Gladstone / New York Times:

Anthony Shadid, A New York Times Reporter Dies in Syria — Anthony Shadid, a prize-winning newspaper correspondent whose graceful dispatches for both The New York Times and The Washington Post covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack …

Margalit Fox / New York Times:

Anthony Shadid, Reporter in the Middle East, Dies at 43 — Anthony Shadid, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who died on Thursday at 43, had long been passionately interested in the Middle East, first because of his Lebanese-American heritage and later because of what he saw there firsthand.

Discussion: Politico, LA Observed, Washington Post, @pjtobia, The Huffington Post, @adamweinstein, @andrewphelps, @sultanalqassemi, @trdeghett, @nirrosen, JIMROMENESKO.COM and Poynter

Julie Bosman / Media Decoder:

HarperCollins Is Said to Pay Nearly $4 Million for Amanda Knox Memoir — Updated — Four months after being freed from an Italian prison and cleared of charges that she murdered her roommate, Amanda Knox has sold her memoir to HarperCollins, the publishing house announced Thursday.

Discussion: newsfeed.time.com, ABCNEWS, The New York Observer, Mediaite, Hollywood Life, Jezebel, Gawker, GalleyCat and Vanity Fair

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:

Stephen Colbert Suspends Production of His Show … Stephen Colbert has suspended production of his satirical comedy show temporarily because of an emergency in Mr. Colbert's family, according to people familiar with the show. — The show is expected to resume production soon, perhaps as early as next week, the people added.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, NY Daily News, @producermatthew, Politico, Forbes, CNBC, UPROXX, Rolling Stone, Yahoo! News, The New York Observer, Media & Entertainment, Media Decoder, Mediaite and The Raw Story

Tim Mak / @timkmak:
POLITICO confirms Colbert will not air Wed/Thurs “due to unforeseen circumstances,” per response from Comedy Central. No further deets

Discussion: @producermatthew, @timkmak and @timkmak

James Crugnale / Mediaite:

Pat Buchanan Is ‘Departing’ MSNBC: I Was ‘Blacklisted, But Not Beaten’ — Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan is out at MSNBC, writing in The American Conservative that “My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.” MSNBC confirmed the news.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Deadline.com, The American Conservative, The Wrap, Inside Cable News, TVNewser and Media Matters for America

Brian Cathcart / Guardian:

News International needs to decontaminate the Sun brand — Newspapers presenting themselves as victims caught in a storm whipped up by the Leveson inquiry won't wash with the public — If you had told me just a few weeks ago that these five things would come to pass, I would have laughed in your face.

Discussion: Press Gazette and totalpolitics.com

The Huffington Post:
Neville Thurlbeck, News Of The World Reporter, Uses Blog To Launch NUJ Recruitment Campaign

Discussion: Neville Thurlbeck

Lena Groeger / ProPublica: Murdoch's Circle: The Growing News International Scandal

Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
Murdoch Set to Face Sun Newsroom After Arrests

Discussion: @tom_watson, Guardian, @michaelwolffnyc, Company Town, The Independent, Capital New York and Deadline.com

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
‘Journalists’ employers must protect sources'

Discussion: Jon Slattery

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter + Robots = Instant Stories, No Humans Required — Hey, how's Newt Gingrich doing on Twitter? — You could try answering this question yourself by combing through Twitter and looking at what Newt says there, and what people are saying about Newt there. But that would take time and effort.

Discussion: WebProNews and Just to Clarify

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Demand Media Beats Expectations Slightly in Q4 Report; Buying Back More Stock; CEO: “Turbulent Year” — Demand Media, which has suffered from stock weakness and worries about its traffic and costs, beat Wall Street expectations in its fourth quarter earnings report, which was released after the market closed today.

Discussion: StreetInsider.com, Business Wire, Reuters and paidContent, more at Techmeme »

Reuters:

Murdoch arrives in London to quell staff backlash — (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch flew in to London on Thursday to address growing anger at his newspaper business and seek to reassure journalists of his commitment to their work. — Murdoch arrived at Luton airport on Thursday evening …

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

A Newark funeral home braces for the last rites of Whitney Houston, the media event of its career — The city of Newark, N.J. is swarming with reporters and camera crews now that the body of Whitney Houston has been transported there from Los Angeles, where Houston died of as-yet unknown causes Saturday afternoon.

Discussion: Multichannel, Mediaite, Forbes, Speakeasy and Broadcasting & Cable

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Jeremy Lin Is Shopping a Memoir. Start the Bidding! — Jeremy Lin. Image by Getty Images via @daylife — There aren't a lot of 23-year-olds who could get a million dollars for writing a book about a life mostly spent studying and playing basketball. But Jeremy Lin isn't just any 23-year-old.

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire and Forbes

Robert Rosenthal / Center for Investigative Reporting:

CIR receives $1 million MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions — The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today that the Center for Investigative Reporting is one of 15 organizations in six countries that has received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Discussion: Poynter and macfound.org

Stu Woo / Wall Street Journal:
Bay Citizen Aims to Regroup, Turn Page

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest and San Francisco Chronicle

Erik Wemple:

Politico TV coming to a station on your dial? — TV Newser reports that Politico late last year filed a fresh application to trademark “Politico TV.” The filing, reports the site, indicates that Politico “has intent to use it.” — Politico isn't commenting on the matter.

Discussion: TVNewser and FishbowlDC

Peter Lauria / Reuters:

For The Economist, the uncommercial pays off — (Reuters) - The Economist Group's chief executive, Andrew Rashbass, says the problem with most magazines today is that they have traded the courage of their convictions for commercial interests. — To illustrate this, Rashbass pulls …

Michael Grotticelli / blog.broadcastengineering.com:

Five states propose ending support of public television — Right-wing politics and tough economic conditions have combined to threaten public television systems in at least seven states—including North and South Carolina, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Idaho, Kansas and Maine.

Andrew Wallenstein / On The Air:

CBS producing for Netflix? Oh, the horror! — If it's not too late for CBS to take pitches for original series it's cooking up for Netflix, has CEO Leslie Moonves considered a story based on the classic character Frankenstein? — Because if Moonves follows through on the deal he indicated …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
CBS May Produce New Show for Netflix

Discussion: Inside TV and The Wrap

Dylan Byers / Politico:

PolitiFact without the ‘Truth-O-Meter’ — PolitiFact, the Tampa Bay Times fact-checking project, has come under fire this week for a ruling that seems to contradict common sense. Yesterday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow — PolitiFact's most vocal critic — went to town on the group for claiming …