Mediagazer: Washington Post Co. fourth-quarter earnings drop 22 percent (Steven Mufson/Washington Post)

11:40 AM ET, February 24, 2012

Top News:

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

With Promotion, NPR Signals Growing Prominence of Digital Media — NPR said Friday that its executive in charge of digital media, Kinsey Wilson, would start to oversee news and programming as well, effectively stitching together the organization's core radio divisions and its newer online and mobile division.

Discussion: Poynter, NPR, rbr.com, FishbowlNY, The Wrap, FishbowlDC, mediabistro.com and NPR

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Washington Post Tests Personalized News Program — If you're tired of seeing the same news as everyone else, The Washington Post is now experimenting with personalized headlines. — That experiment is called Personal Post, and it's available at personal.washingtonpost.com, where you'll see a river of content that you can customize.

Discussion: The Wrap, Thanks:@forrestkoba

Steven Mufson / Washington Post:

Washington Post Co. fourth-quarter earnings drop 22 percent — The Washington Post Co. reported Friday fourth-quarter 2011 net income of $61.7 million, or $8.03 a share, down 22 percent from $79.0 million or $9.42 a share a year earlier as its Kaplan education division and flagship newspaper operations continued to shrink.

Discussion: AdAge and Business Wire

Felix Salmon:

Matter's vision for long-form journalism — Yesterday morning, a very exciting new journalism project was launched on Kickstarter. It's called Matter, and it's going to be home to long-form investigative narrative journalism about science and technology. “No cheap reviews, no snarky opinion pieces, no top ten lists,” they promise.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, @jayrosen_nyu and Business Insider

Stephen Robert Morse:
Why I will not donate to this Kickstarter campaign that purports to save journalism and why you …

Discussion: Forbes and Boing Boing

John Biggs / TechCrunch:
Support Long-Form Journalism With This Online Kickstarter Project

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, The Next Web and 10,000 Words

Matthew Creamer / AdAge:

Jim Romenesko Talks Fox News, Ad Rates and How He Snagged 300,000 Page Views on a Saturday — Popular Media Blogger Answers Matthew Creamer's Questions — Jim Romenesko, the proto-media blogger who became a must-read for journos only to get lost in the din of algorithmic aggregators and social media, is back.

Discussion: CyberJournalist.net, Thanks:@matt_creamer

Mark Lisheron / American Journalism Review:
Romenesko Roars Back — Jim Romenesko is scrolling through …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Guardian:

IPCC to investigate new claims of police leak to News International — Allegations that senior Scotland Yard officer leaked information to newspaper executive during 2006 phone-hacking inquiry — The police watchdog has begun an inquiry into claims a senior officer who worked …

Discussion: Reuters

Telegraph:
Phone hacking: News of the World bosses ordered emails to be deleted

Discussion: Guardian, Crikey and Business Insider

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Theakston and Brazier sue NI

Discussion: Press Gazette, Guardian, The Huffington Post and Journalism.co.uk

Natalie Peck / Hacked Off: EXCLUSIVE: anonymous phone hacking victim HJK speaks to Hacked Off

Dan Primack / Fortune:

Tech media misconceptions — Journalism is rife with conflict. Get over it. — The tech media wars continued yesterday, with LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik basically accusing certain tech bloggers of being “influence peddlers.” — The whole issue has become fairly tired …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Uncrunched and Scobleizer

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

People don't care about scoops, they care about trust — We have written a number of times about how social media and the “democratization of distribution” has compressed the news cycle to the point where the half-life of a scoop is measured in minutes rather than hours or days.

Discussion: WebProNews, craigconnects, Talking Biz News, Kirk LaPointe's … and Poynter

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Risk level in Syria has media outlets in quandary over coverage — There was a tragic symmetry to the final dispatches of Marie Colvin, a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London who died Tuesday night on assignment in the Syrian city of Homs. In an on-air chat with CNN's Anderson Cooper …

Discussion: Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Huffington Post and Telegraph

David Carr / Media Decoder:
When Reporters Become Targets, War Coverage Is Reduced to a Stream of Videos

Discussion: World News Blog, New York Times, @ebisse, Committee to Protect …, Jon Slattery, City Room, At War and The Lede

James Crugnale / Mediaite:
Lara Logan: ‘I Feel Guilty, I Feel A Little Bit Responsible’ For Marie Colvin's Death

Discussion: TVNewser, New York Times, Yahoo News, Expatica, BBC, Reuters and Capital New York

Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC:

Females on Campaign Trail Go For Sexpot Look — Forget about SexyTwitPics. Washington has its own crop of would-be sexy females on the loose. And an unusual trend is developing among campaign and White House reporters of the XX persuasion. They're using provocative …

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, Vanity Fair, @attackerman, @annielowrey, @justinnxt, @kashhill, @ledbetreuters, @hamiltonnolan, @jeffbercovici, New York Magazine, @lheron and Poynter

Erin Gloria Ryan / Jezebel:
Concerned Female Reporter Can't Help But Notice Female Reporters Are Looking Awful Slutty Nowadays [Sluts]

Discussion: Guardian

Hunter Walker / Politicker: Is This Twitter Avatar Too Sexy for Politics?

Samantha Conti / WWD:

Condé Nast U.K. Launches Wired Consulting — WIRED FOR PROFIT: The U.K. edition of Wired magazine is getting into the consulting business — and the editors are doing the heavy lifting. Condé Nast U.K. said Thursday that Wired Consulting will be a bespoke business consultancy …

Discussion: One Man & His Blog, The Atlantic Wire and Wired.co.uk

BBC:

Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning defers pleas — Bradley Manning is accused of leaking 700,000 files to Wikileaks — The US Army private accused of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks has chosen not to enter a plea at the start of his court martial.

Discussion: The Next Web

National Post:
Bradley Manning formally charged with ‘aiding the enemy’ by giving files to Wikileaks

Discussion: Associated Press and Techdirt

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

John Paton to news execs: Abandon the gatekeeper model — If there was an Uncle Sam-style campaign to recruit media executives into the “digital first” movement, John Paton would probably win the role of poster boy in a landslide. Even before he became the CEO of the giant MediaNews Group chain …

Discussion: San Francisco Peninsula …

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Why Amazon's Kindle Battle With IPG Matters — Amazon's decision to yank almost 5,000 Kindle titles from distributor Independent Publishing Group after IPG refused to give the retailer better terms may be a harbinger of things to come. — A few thoughts: