Mediagazer: Report: Chicago News Cooperative To Shut Down (Joseph Erbentraut/The Huffington Post)

4:10 PM ET, February 18, 2012

Top News:

Postscript: Anthony Shadid, 1968-2012 — Anthony Shadid's third book, “House of Stone,” is due to be published in several weeks. It is described by the publisher as a “a memoir of home, family and a lost Middle East.” The project, when Shadid talked about it occasionally …

Discussion: New York Times, host.madison.com, Poynter, Washington Post and JIMROMENESKO.COM

Erik Wemple:

Should the White House stay mum on Shadid? — White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today said the following in regards to Anthony Shadid, the New York Times foreign correspondent who died yesterday on assignment in Syria. From ABC's Jake Tapper: … All true. But proper?

Discussion: VOA, Speakeasy and Poynter

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:
‘Times’ staffers gather for bullpen memorial for Anthony Shadid; his final piece published today

Discussion: New York Times, WWD, msnbc.com, PRNewser and LA Observed

Joseph Erbentraut / The Huffington Post:

Report: Chicago News Cooperative To Shut Down — The Chicago News Cooperative, a non-profit public-interest journalism organization launched in the fall of 2009, will reportedly cease operation Feb. 26. — The Chicago Reader reported Friday that CNC founder James O'Shea …

Discussion: Chicago Business, Chicago Reader, Wall Street Journal, @jeffjarvis and Chicago Reader

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

Cops in the Newsroom — The News Corp. fiasco imperils press protections in the UK — I noted this yesterday about News Corporation's Management Standards Committee, set up over the summer to handle the company's internal investigation into the hacking scandal, but wanted to explore it a little more today.

Chris Greenberg / The Huffington Post:

ESPN Racist Jeremy Lin Headline: Network Apologizes For Insensitive Headline For Knicks Loss — The unexpected emergence of Jeremy Lin from the depths of the New York Knicks' bench has been a dream for headline writers and just about everyone who loves puns.

Discussion: Charles Apple, Forbes, SBNation.com, ESPN MediaZone, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Outsports, Deadspin and Bleacher Report

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

Microsoft mulls plan for new music service (exclusive) — The software maker has discussed with some of the major record companies about creating a music service to serve Xbox as well as an upcoming Windows-based phone. — Microsoft is in talks with some of the major record companies …

Discussion: Softpedia News, Gizmodo, Electronista, The Verge, The Next Web and The TechBlock, more at Techmeme »

Tim Carmody / Epicenter:

Qwikster Rebaptized: Netflix's Name Game With Disc-Only Subscriptions — Here's a new post title from Netflix's company blog that wouldn't have made sense five years ago, or even last July: “Now you can sign up directly for a DVD only plan.” — First, it's all true.

Discussion: Digital Media Wire, CNET, PC Magazine and Home Media Magazine

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Netflix (Still) Really Doesn't Want Your DVD Money

Discussion: Fortune, VentureBeat, VatorNews, WebProNews, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, The Official Netflix Blog and Gizmodo

Jim Romenesko:

NYT reconsiders Sunday Review cartoon solicitation — Earlier this month I posted an item about the New York Times “insulting” editorial cartoonists by asking them to submit spec drawings, for which they'd get only $250 if accepted. — This email was sent to the Times cartoon list this afternoon:

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Iran Nuclear Coverage Echoes Iraq War Media Frenzy — NEW YORK — Military strikes expected! Weapons inspectors called in! A murky al Qaeda connection! And Cheney says time's up for Ira... Wait. Haven't we seen this movie before? — It's already been a decade since …

Discussion: Salon, Mediaite and FAIR Blog

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Analyst: News Corp. Waited Too Long to Launch Sun on Sunday — You don't see a lot of media companies launching new, mass-circulation newspapers these days. But News Corp. is a special case: The paper it's launching, The Sun on Sunday, isn't really a new paper per se but a substitution …

John F. Burns / New York Times:
Murdoch Offers Reassurances to Sun Newsroom

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Dave Maass / San Diego CityBeat:

U-T outsources comment censorship — Move is expected to ‘refine the tone and content of the comments without hindering their flow’ — The new owners of U-T San Diego have been making a lot of changes at the city's main daily newspaper. The latest involves new policies for censoring monitoring comments on its website.

Discussion: FishbowlLA

Felix Salmon:

Gawker Media jettisons its porn blog — Back in November, Nick Denton put Gawker Media's Fleshbot up for sale. The official announcement, here, is NSFW due to the ads surrounding it — which pretty much explains why Fleshbot was being sold: its customers — porn sites — are very …

Callum Borchers / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The Boston Courant: Proud not to have a website until the owner sees “a profitable end game” — Eight years ago, David Jacobs, publisher of the weekly Boston Courant, paid a web designer in Ukraine to create a website for his newspaper. On that initial investment, and on subsequent research …

Discussion: mediabistro.com and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog