In your mordant Monday media column: News Corp pays up for Milly Dowler, Janet Robinson tweets in secret, Ted Koppel could head to NBC, Americans think Fox News is "the best," and a Senator's wife finally resigns from a newspaper.

  • Reuters is reporting that News International, the most scandalous division of News Corp, will pay $4.7 million to the family of murdered child Milly Dowler to apologize for hacking her phone when she was still missing. Sorry! The revelation of the Milly Dowler hacking spawned the entire Hackgate scandal that's terrorized the company for months now, costing it, probably, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in lost profit, all told. Perhaps that is more consolation than the direct payout.
  • New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson has a secret Twitter account, according to Jeff Bercovici. All that we need to do is figure out her Twitter handle. (JRob? No.)
  • Good ol' Ted Koppel could be headed to NBC to work on the new 60Minutes48Hours type show there, "Rock Center with Brian Williams." I just can't get over that name, "Rock Center." Is this a news show or a discount-price strip mall guitar outlet? Amirite?
  • A new poll (from a polling company run by a former CNN executive) out today asked Americans which TV news network is best. And the winner, of course: Fox News, with 36% of the votes. Americans are a stupid, inferior race of people.
  • Connie Schultz, a longtime columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has resigned from the paper—because, you know, her husband Sherrod Brown is a senator in Ohio (and has been for years). About time! Trying to pretend like that wouldn't erode the paper's objectivity is as ridiculous as, I don't know, giving Al Shartpon a political "news" show.

[Photo: AP]