Mediagazer: More Free Web TV Disappears: Some March Madness Games Will Go Behind Paywall (Peter Kafka/AllThingsD)

9:40 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: NPR, Poynter, Washington Post, The New Yorker Blog, JIMROMENESKO.COM, JSOnline, Politico, Guardian, LA Observed, @pjtobia, @nirrosen, @sultanalqassemi, @adamweinstein, @trdeghett, @andrewphelps, The Huffington Post and Poynter

Jack Mirkinson / The Huffington Post:

Rupert Murdoch Announces Sun On Sunday, Says Suspended Employees Can Return To Work … The Sun , News Corp Bribery Scandal , Phone Hacking , Rupert Murdoch London , Rupert Murdoch The Sun , Sun Bribery Scandal , Sun On Sunday , Media News — Rupert Murdoch, in London to calm a staff revolt …

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian, Press Gazette, Jon Slattery, @dansabbagh, Mixed Media, Media Week, @sophyridgesky, Gordon's Republic and Telegraph

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk:

Murdoch: Sun on Sunday will be launched ‘very soon’ — News Corporation chairman reportedly sends internal email to staff also announcing that the suspensions of all staff will be lifted — News International will launch its new national Sunday tabloid, The Sun on Sunday, “very soon”, it was reported today.

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

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 …

Discussion: Press Gazette, Time and Guardian

Brian Cathcart / Guardian:
News International needs to decontaminate the Sun brand

Discussion: Deadline.com and Press Gazette

Matthew Creamer / AdAge:

Reuters' U.S. News Push Signs on Yahoo, AOL, MSNBC.com — Reuters introduced its general U.S. news service, Reuters America, in late 2010 with one client, the Tribune Co. Now three major portals — Yahoo, AOL and MSNBC.com — have signed on to Reuters' U.S. news push.

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, The New York Observer, ABCNEWS, Mediaite, Hollywood Life, Jezebel, Gawker, GalleyCat and Vanity Fair

Michael Grotticelli / Broadcast Engineering:

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.

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Apple Is Going To Anger A Lot Of Big Media Companies With AirPlay On The Mac — One of the coolest features in Apple's new desktop operating system, Mountain Lion, is AirPlay. — AirPlay already exists for the iPad and iPhone, but this version appears to be extend what AirPlay can do.

Discussion: Macworld, FT Tech Hub, MacStories and GeekWire, more at Techmeme »

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Apple and the New York Times not meshing — The Wall Street Journal's Jessica Vascellaro scores the access coup of the week, maybe month. An exclusive interview with Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook yields insight on how the company is migrating iPhone functionality to boxes.

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Pogue's Posts, Business Insider, Poynter, TUAW, Fortune, App Advice, 9to5Mac, Wall Street Journal, Apple, Daring Fireball and CJR, more at Techmeme »

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: St. Petersburg Times, Speakeasy, The American Conservative, Inside Cable News, Media Decoder, Hollywood Reporter, Inside TV and Media Matters for America

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 …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

More Free Web TV Disappears: Some March Madness Games Will Go Behind Paywall — If you've gotten used to the idea that you can watch March Madness on the Web, for free, without breaking the law, you may be in for a surprise next month. — Some of the college basketball tourney's games …