In your substitute Friday media column: Christiane Amanpour eyes George Stephanopoulos' old chair, the Los Angeles Times wraps itself in Johnny Depp's handsome mug, the New York Times does teevee, and a Star is unborn.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour is among the candidates ABC News is looking at to take over This Week, according to Politico, which is interesting because she's "not the first person one would think of to analyze the 2010 horse race." She'd still be much better than Bush/Cheney lie-crafter Matthew Dowd, who's filling in on Sunday.


Hey look! The cover of the Los Angeles Times today is a fake newspaper front page obscured by a picture of Johnny Depp in a stupid hat, instead of news. The sooner we stop thinking there's something wrong or unusual about this, the better we'll all feel.


The New York Times is preparing to launch a daily mid-day webcast, because the paper has long worried that it was wasting the good looks and chiseled physiques of its reporters on a print format. Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici thinks the move may be an attempt to horn on on the TV news business, which is just going gangbusters these days.


The New York Post's editors still can't bring themselves to admit that the blogs they read for Chuck E. Cheese-related story ideas exist.


Bonus Media Crack scoop: Martin Gould, the executive editor of Star, has left the magazine, we hear.