In your brash Tuesday media column: News Corp gets its balls back, the WSJ gets shorter and shorter, Katie Couric picks up odd jobs, Mary Pilon poached, and blog buys newspaper.

  • Big News Corp shareholders want to purge the company's board of Rupert Murdoch loyalists. News Corp's response thus far has been a barely polite "fuck you." Let's see if they can keep that up!
  • A new CJR survey of the WSJ's content since being bought by News Corp shows that the paper has dramatically decreased the number of long stories it runs. Still a good paper, though! Just somewhat less intellectual. Like America itself.
  • Since she's in between shows at the moment, Katie Couric is keeping herself "out there" by, like, cohosting with Kelly Ripa and MCing events and crap like that. Get a real job, hippie.
  • WSJ writer (and, more importantly, former Gawker intern!) Mary Pilon has been poached by the NYT sports section. Check out this quote from Ron Lieber circulated in her hiring announcement email: "She's a blazing, explosive life force of energy - the kind of talent that only The Times can put to highest and best use. I look forward to working for her someday." Okay! Mary Pilon is the most successful Gawker employee present or past! Newspaper wars!
  • Small little Albany paper The Albany Journal is being bought by a "political blog called Laws-N-Sausages." WORLD ENDS.

[Photo: AP]