The Morning Lowdown 12-12-11

»  BuzzFeed hires Politico writer Ben Smith (Media Decoder/NYT)

»  5 hopeful takeaways from the annual UBS media investment conference (Poynter.)

»  El Huffington Post: Arianna goes to Spain, partners with El Pais (paidContent)

»  Dallas Morning News special contributors come out from behind paywall (DallasNews.com)

»  Under fire, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) says Kindle Fire is getting an update within two weeks (paidContent)

»  Taking the shrill out of the SOPA piracy debate (paidContent)

»  Starz goes big on Facebook to promote Spartacus: Vengeance (Alex Knapp/Forbes)

»  Louis CK sells latest film, DRM-free, for $5 per download (TechCrunch)

»  The future of context: mobile reading from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to Flipboard to FLUD (Wired)