Following WWD's speculative article about the state of her contract (up at the end of the month), rumors festered yesterday evening that AMI editorial director Bonnie Fuller had left the company. AMI CEO David Pecker had called a smoke-filled meeting with the company's brassiest balls, fueling the chatter that the Canadian Fury had left the building, no doubt in an imagined fit of shin-kicking and ceramic-mug throwing. AMI flack Lisa Dallos says, "Nothing could be further from the truth."

WWD reports today that AMI editorial director Bonnie Fuller's juicy contract expires at the end of the month and has not yet been renewed. With AMI pinching pennies to the tune of sacking 5 Star staffers last week, some believe that there's no way in hell AMI chairman David Pecker will renew Fuller's contract for the $1.5 million she currently receives. In fact, Star's lackluster circulation has Pecker wanting to reduce her salary by much too much too much, dropping her Bonnie back down to the six-figure barracks:

• Charlie Rose — with a new pig-heart valve — returns to TV Monday. [NYDN]
• Congress boosts TV indecency fines, ensuring the Parents Television Council can continue its reign of puritanical terror over the nation's broadcasters. [WSJ]
• CBS's Kim Dozier returns to United States, still in critical condition but "in great spirits and was talking animatedly." [CBSNews.com]
• Fashion editor Angela Jones and reporter Kelly Will are among the five Star staffers we reported yesterday were being laid off. [NYP]

This just in from American Media's spokespeople: Star magazine, Bonnie's little tab-turned-glossy that could, is doing a "minor restructuring" of its operations to devote more resources to its L.A. office. Which means fewer resources for the New York office. Which means five staffers — a reporter, a designer, and a few editors — were laid off this afternoon. We don't have names, though. A little help?

• Philly guys officially snag KR's Philly papers from McClatchy. [NYT]
• Al Siegel has left the Times Building. [NYO]
• Despite AMI noncompete, Star vet Mark Coleman to become deputy editor at Bauer's Life & Style, setting off various other staff moves too mundane for you to care much about. [NYP]
• Magazines want more readers, who are younger and richer. And some even got what they wanted. [WWD]

Freelance photojournalist Greg Mathieson has filed suit against American Media Inc., home of Bonnie Fuller and her rag collection, for stealing his photo archive of some 1,400 photos. The archive was contaminated with anthrax through a letter sent to the company's Boca Raton offices in 2001; AMI then filed an insurance claim for "valuable papers" worth $250 million and, alleges Mathieson, included his collection in their lost property. By including his archive in the losses, Mathieson claims that the company falsely claimed ownership over his photos — and that's how we get to the whole "stealing" angle.

• Jacob Bernstein reports that ineffectual Times public editor Barney Calame is considered either: "[L]ike Kenneth Starr," unable "to step back and ask what any of it means"; unable to see the forest for the trees; like a "mosquito," always biting but never wounding; an "umpire," merely calling balls and strikes; or "a judge, not a prosecutor." None of these are compliments. [WWD]
• CBS Evening News wasn't in third place last week for the first time in years. To reward Bob Schieffer for this significant accomplishment, naturally they're replacing him. [USAT]
• Bids are in to buy Knight Ridder's two Philadelphia papers from McClatchy, and Mort Zuckerman and his Daily News crew are among them. [NYT]
• Alessandra Stanley is no more accurate when covering politics than when covering television. [Wonkette]
• AMI loses a top exec, and faces circ trouble across its titles. Fun! [NYP]
• Jack Shafer is tired of magazines' anniversary issues. [Slate]
• To be clear: Endeavor agent Ari Emmanuel is not backing Radar. [WWD (last item)]

• Bonnie's rich AMI contract is up at the end of June, and — as one of her mags gets shut down and another's redesign is more or less undone — negotiations are underway. Great timing, eh? [NYP (second item)]
• Newspapers execs met in Chicago, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons. Sexy Jon Fine enjoys that metaphor, as he should. [BizWeek]
• Who does Spin hire to replenish its now-virtually-empty staff ranks? An alt-porn auteur and star, naturally. [FBNY]
• Injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff sends note to colleagues, releases photo. We're very pleasantly surprised to see that he does, in fact, still look like an anchorman. [AP/USAT]
• Forward politics writer E.J. Kessler to move to New York Post op-ed gig. Because people jump from socialist to conservative papers all the time. [Forward]
• All the standard kvetches about media? Wrong, wrong, and wrong, says Bill Powers. [NJ]
• Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the son of Pinch who we've attempted to saddle with the nickname Prince, to leave the Providence Journal for The Oregonian in Portland. Wonder where he'll end up? [Providence Phoenix]
• NYT Congress reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg to become paper's White House reporter. [Media Mob/NYO]
• The Voice loses another, this time investigative reporter Jennifer Gonnerman. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Are Conde Nast editors being shut out of Devil Wears Prada screenings? Um, no. [WWD]

• Yesterday's American Media bloodletting will cut the mag publisher's workforce by 9 percent. [WWD]
• And will save the company about $10 million. [NYP]
• With Katie Couric heading to CBS, NBC is days away from a deal to bring Meredith Vieira to fill her clickety stiletto heels. [NYT]
• Gabe Sherman agrees: Times Discovery Channel might be on its way out. Plus Hearst in the new tower, Lapham at Michael's, and Raines at Harvard. [NYO]
• The New York Times has finally done something to make Jack Shafer happy. So now he'll cancel his subscription. [Slate]
• The Week names Nick Kristof Columnist of the Year. We imagine Andrea Peyser is devastated. [E&P]

And the next AMI shoe to drop: The National Enquirer is headed back to its old stomping grounds in Florida. Along with the move, it gets a new editor-in-chief as David Perel replaces Paul Field, who was imported from London a year ago. So much, it seems, for CEO David Pecker's year-old plan to consolidate all his pubs — tabloid and non-tabloid (less-tabloid?) — in a Manhattan headquarters. More TK from AMI this afternoon?

There've been rumors for the last few weeks, but now it's true: AMI is shuttering Celebrity Living, sources within the company tell us. And we hear more bad AMI news might be on its way. Updates as we know more.

The board of directors of American Media — the publishing company that brings you such joys at National Enquirer, Star, Bonnie Fuller, and a CEO named David Pecker — is meeting in New York today, and apparently there's all sorts of financial tension going on: New board members, problems with bondholders, even commercial flights (gasp!) for the execs. Of course, all this we had to learn from Nat Ives' Ad Age story on AMI. In the Post, we got no further than Keith Kelly's subhed:

Damn Bonnie Fuller for writing that massively titled book of hers — over ten years since her initial rise to legendary monsterhood, the release of The Joys of Much Too Much : Go for the Big Life—The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted is the only justifiable reason that we're still subjected to profiles of AMI's queen bee. And so today brings yet another she's-a-tough-bitch article from the Sun, in which she divulges, "As a child, I liked to be bossy." How totally surprising. Also surprising is the revelation that Fuller just doesn't get it:

• Times happily runs advertising section from Sudan, whose leaders — as Times columnist Nick Kristof likes to point out — are encouraging genocide. [NYDN]
• Lewis Lapham, as he steps down from Harper's editorship, will keep working. And keep smoking. [WP]
• One Park, a reality show about life at AMI, moves closer to happening. Except that the lawyers are against it, chief David Pecker is against it, and the company doesn't have the rights to the name "One Park." But, you know, otherwise things are good. [WWD]
• CJR disses Marketwatch media writer Jon Friedman. Hard. [CJR Daily]

Like manna from heaven, the image at right appeared in our mailbox this morning (click to enlarge). It appears to be a misplaced receipt for a $400 order of flowers sent to AMI editorial director Bonnie Fuller from her loving husband, Michael.

You might recall that Ad Age's Media Guy, Simon Dumenco, had his Calvin Kleins in a twist Monday about a speech — or, as he'd probably prefer, an abomination of a speech — Bonnie Fuller recently delivered to Columbia Journalism School students last month. Fretted Simon, with his own extensive capitalization:

• Things we never thought we'd say: Iranians have a delightfully level-headed reaction to the Mohammed-cartoons brouhaha; the country's biggest paper will run a contest for best Holocaust cartoon, which is an entirely reasonable response. [Reuters via WP]
• We're not quite sure how we forget this yesterday, but sullen Simon Dumenco is even madder than usual, this time at Bonnie Fuller. Which seems sort of a waste of energy. [Ad Age]
• AOL gossips say Meredith Viera is now the top choice to replace Katie Couric on Today, should Katie take her clickety stilettos to CBS. They also say Today might go to four hours, with Campbell Brown anchoring parts, and that there's a 70 percent chance of a Katie-to-CBS switch. Which seems an really oddly specific. [TMZ]
• Out magazine is so desperate for a new EIC five months after allegedly pro-baseball-player-dating Brandon Lemon left that now it's even considering straight candidates. You should know better, Out: Sure the straight guys will have the drink, and be a little flirty, but it's just too much work to get them to finally put out. [WWD]
• 90.7 million watched the Super Bowl, making it the most watched TV show in ten years. [THR]
• The increasingly touchy-feely WSJ is like "your boss at work — smart, well-connected, highly respected, passing judgment from afar — who suddenly asks you to hang out on the weekend," says Hamilton Nolan. [PR Week]
• AMI adopted new ABC circ rules early, and realized it would miss rate base on half its titles. The other publishers ain't taking the risk. [Ad Age]

We confess we were a bit taken aback by James Brady's fawning Forbes column on Bonnie Fuller today, "Queen of the Tabloids." He goes on and on about what wonderful things Bon-Bon has been doing with Star, and we were pretty sure the CW was that the Star makeover hasn't been a huge success, that Bonnie wasn't making her bonuses, and that things were looking grim, too, for AMI boss David Pecker. (Indeed, we were cocktailing last night with a media commentator much cleverer than us, who suggested we start a David Pecker Death Watch.) Also, we thought Monday's announcement that six of AMI's dozen titles, including Star, would miss their rate base wasn't so much a good thing.

Inspired by Us Weekly's entertainingly cruel "Who's Older" game (which may have originated at Amy's Robot), Media Orchard turns the tables:

It's not the best of weeks for American Media Inc., the publisher of all your favorite supermarket tabloids and a whole bunch of fitness books you never look at. Head honcho David Pecker told Mediaweek yesterday that the company will reclassify some of its circulation in anticipation of new audit rules, and that change means six of its dozen titles — including Bonnie Fuller's Star — will miss their rate bases, the circulation guaranteed to advertisers.