In your finally Friday media column: Jay Carney is an absolute firecracker, big changes at Ebony and Essence, Michael Calderone moves to HuffPo, Jay Rosen opines at length, and Bill O'Reilly does something good for once in his miserable life.

  • Former journalist and current White House press secretary Jay Carney really made a deep and lasting impression on his close friends from college. He was a "he was a "really regular, really nice, really smart guy," says one. "He is a funny guy with a good sense of humor, but singling out Jay, I can't honestly think of any story that sticks out." Crazy, crazy times. But what do his more recent coworkers say? He's "a fundamentally nice guy" who "liked to get his work done." You haven't changed a bit, Jay!
  • Ebony is rolling out "its first cover-to-cover redesign since its introduction in 1945." And Essence has finally hired a new permanent editor-in-chief: Constance C.R. White, who's worked at Elle, and Talk, and uh, eBay.
  • Media reporter extraordinaire Michael Calderone is leaving Yahoo to go work for the Huffington Post. Which Arianna Huffington helpfully announced, in public, on kind of whim, before Calderone had a chance to tell anyone. Haha! Welcome to HuffStyle™! We kid, seriously, he'll class the place up.
  • "Jay Rosen think piece on bloggers vs. journalists." That's how you say "Interesting stuff, but could you do me a favor and cut 1500 words from it?" in modern English.
  • Remember that awful, disjointed, inarticulate and forced interview Bill O'Reilly did with Barack Obama right before the Super Bowl? Well it raised $750,000 for charity. Eh... still not worth it.

[Photo via Getty]