In your lustrous Thursday media column: Jon Meacham switches teams, the Harman family offers soothing Newsweek assurances, the NYT pays, Arianna Huffington doesn't pay, and Miss Beasley is a multiplatform phenomenon.

  • Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek, wrote the latest cover story for Time. Our collective boredom with this fact says everything about newsweeklies in 2011.
  • Nevertheless, we are compelled to keep on reporting about the future of Newsweek! In the wake of owner Sidney Harman's death, the alleged word is "The Harman family is totally committed to Newsweek and its future." Sure. We'll set the over/ under timetable on another Newsweek sale at one year.
  • Here's the inside scoop on making a fabulous living by submitting freelance op-eds to the New York Times: "Public figures, politicians and the like, get nothing. Other writers get various amounts depending on who they are and what the work is, how long, etc." The high life!
  • Besieged populist Arianna Huffington is fighting back against the huge dumb lawsuit filed against her company by Jonathan Tasini, who wants all the HuffPo's unpaid writers to be paid a lot of money, even though they all agreed to work for free. Look, this is all very simple. Arianna: just be quiet. Unpaid writers: stop writing for free. Jonathan Tasini: slink away silently, better luck next time.
  • Miss Beasley—the influential wizard-behind-the-curtain French bulldog owned by NYT Baghdad bureau chief Tim Arango—is on the Twitter. You call yourself a "media reporter" but you don't follow Miss Beasley? There's a lot you don't know about this business.