In your finally Friday media column: newspaper circulation wanes, a brilliant plan to avoid reporters, the News Corp board battle continues, Fox News people are bad liars, and Nancy Franklin's replacement.

  • Worldwide daily newspaper circulation fell by 2% last year, only the second recorded drop in history (the first was the year before). Print is dead.....ening, verrrryyyy slowly.
  • Lookit this guy, Lauderhill, FL mayor Richard Kaplan, who has unilaterally declared that reporters are "lobbyists," which is a convenient way to avoid talking to reporters. Smart man.
  • The investor campaign against News Corp's puppet board of directors is not a joke! In fact, it is being joined by more huge shareholders, despite a campaign by Rupert Murdoch to avoid this. This is kind of like Occupy Wall Street for pension funds! Occupy News Corp's Board!
  • This long WaPo story on "How Fox News changed the face of journalism" doesn't say much new. Just the obvious: "People like to label coming from a different viewpoint as conservative," said [Jay] Wallace, the vice president of news. "But I don't think there's anything wrong with asking questions that aren't being asked by other people. That doesn't necessarily make it conservative." Fox News employees do not know how to read.
  • You'll never guess who's replacing Nancy Franklin as the New Yorker TV critic: New York magazine's Emily Nussbaum. Well, you could have guessed that with only a small number of guesses, actually.

[Photo: AP]