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ABC Scores Overnight Beat With Zarqawi Death Story (AP via USAT)
Thanks to a reporter jolted out of a vacation — if not sleep — ABC News scored a significant beat on its competitors Thursday when it was the first on the air to report the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq. TVNewser: ABC overnight producer calls it a "fantastic morning." Baltimore Sun: Some American news organizations yesterday covered the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with marked enthusiasm, verging on inappropriate glee. E&P: Newspaper sites feature graphic Zarqawi pics.

CBS to Sell Prime-Time Shows on iTunes (Reuters via FoxNews)
The network announced that prime time shows including reality series Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and NCIS will be available for download at $1.99 per episode.

NYT's Carr Sells Addiction Memoir (NYP)
New York Times media columnist David Carr has sold his memoirs of drug addiction and redemption to Simon & Schuster. One industry source said that the heated auction had fetched a price north of $300,000. [Second item.]

Deal Speculation Helps Lift Tribune Stock (NYT)
The Tribune Company says it is sticking to a stock buyback plan, but investors reacted as if the company might be in play. Shares of Tribune rose 4 percent on speculation about the company's future after its second-largest shareholder made public its dissent to the buyback plan. LAT: A sale of the company's television business could set the stage for selling Tribune's 11 newspapers or more likely taking them private. BusinessWeek: Jon Fine on how Tribune got itself in its current fix, and how its vaunted management let the company down. Marketwatch: Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski thrives even amid business and corporate challenges, writes Jon Friedman.

CNBC Switches Gears (NYP)
Jonathan Wald, the former producer of NBC's Today show, was tapped yesterday for the top editorial post at business news network CNBC. Wald will take on the title of senior vice president of business news, a position formerly held by David Friend, a long-time CNBC employee who resigned yesterday.

Court Upholds Ovitz' $130M Severance (LAT)
Closing a long-running legal saga that galvanized critics of corporate boards, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that Walt Disney Co. directors acted properly in giving a fat severance in 1996 to former president Michael Ovitz after a little more than a year on the job.

News Corp. Trims Stake in Hong Kong (Reuters)
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will sell a 19.9 percent stake valued at $185 million in a China-focused TV broadcaster to the parent of China Mobile Ltd., in a setback to its ambitions for the country's tough media market.

ABC Prepares to Battle Today (WSJ)
ABC'S Good Morning America has been trying for 11 years to race past NBC's Today show. But just as Today is showing some signs of vulnerability, Good Morning America is having engine trouble. FBNY: Has the Today Show become the tipping point for outspoken media figures?

Youthful Anchors Give China's TV News Jolt of Personality (WSJ)
The addition of two nightly news anchors reflects the reshaping of China's media and the government's approach to propaganda as new, livelier avenues of information flourish. The duo is part of a broader but cosmetic effort by the state-run broadcaster to add personality to its programs.

Pentagon Getting Into MySpace Spying (New Scientist)
The National Security Agency is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves online. It could eventually combine data from sites like MySpace with banking, retail and property records, to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Google Researchers Propose TV Eavesdropping (Information Week)
Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja have proposed using ambient-audio identification technology to capture TV sound with a PC to identify the show that is the source of the sound and to use that information to immediately return personalized Internet content to the PC.

'Deep Throat' Co-Author Lashes Out at NYT Over Dean Review (Rush and Molloy)
John O'Connor, who helped Mark Felt write G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington, blasted The New York Times for hiring Nixon counsel John Dean to review it. "It would be hard to imagine a reviewer more biased."

Press Still Unable to Deal With Bush Administration's 'Lying' (The Nation)
Eric Alterman: Because the mainstream media make a fetish of a particularly brainless form of objectivity, the Bush Administration has been able to deceive the American public on a dizzying array of issues, from war to economics to science to, well, you name it.

Wen Ho Lee Case a Lesson to Reporters: Beware of Bogus Info (CSM)
Daniel Schorr: Sometimes the Ship of State leaks bogus information intended to influence public opinion. Such a leak was the planting of information that Wen Ho Lee had been identified as a spy for China. At least five news organizations were favored with that scoop of disinformation.

Author Blackballed by Miami Herald? (Independent Women's Forum)
Catherine Seipp: The Miami Herald's "Tropical Life" section is apparently withholding coverage of a new chick lit novel set in Miami because of bad blood between the book's author, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, and "Tropical Life" columnist Lydia Martin.