In your sizzling Tuesday media column: the future of the media is paid, Newsweek fights the power in Iran, another mag mogul kicks BusinessWeek's tires (made of paper), and Dan Rather's madder'n a lake trout with fiery testicles, at CBS.

Every year, Veronis Suhlers Stevenson issues a big report which basically tells you everything that will happen in the media industry in the near future. This year's is coming out soon! VSS says overall ad spending will fall almost 8% this year, and won't tick back up until 2011. Also interesting: "[In 2008] for the first time, consumers spent more time with media they paid for, like books or cable television, than with primarily ad-supported media, like newspapers and magazines." What are you people made out of money?!?


Iran has been "detaining" a journalist by the name of Maziar Bahari since the protests there in June. Now Newsweek is going all out in calling for his release, which is probably the most useful thing Newsweek's done this week. Cause there's really no "news" to be found, trust us.


Jon Fine reports that Joe Mansueto, owner of Inc. and Fast Company, "has expressed interest in pursuing a deal for BusinessWeek." Others interested include Bruce Wasserstein and several PE firms. You can afford this magazine, people! Let's get some competition here.


Dan Rather's hobby, in retirement, is tending to his little $70 million lawsuit against CBS, like lesser retirees tend to gardens. Now he's filed a new lawsuit trying to get CBS execs Les Moonves and Andrew Heyward personally attached to the suit, so he can legally claim their testicles as part of the settlement. Old age is treating Dan Rather well.