Is anyone confused by all the fuss over freelancer benefits in the Viacom mess? Freelancer, permalancer, part-time employee, full-time employee: What's the difference anymore? Why are Viacom's independent contractors complaining about having their benefits cut when the general impression is that freelancers don't qualify for benefits in the first place? Where does the actual, you know, law come down on this issue? And do most media companies abide by it? Let's learn more!

The New Republic has finally concluded its investigation into its "Baghdad Diarist" scandal. (The magazine ran a series of articles by a TNR staffer's friend and then husband, Scott Beauchamp, who happened to be stationed in Iraq, and who may have invented or fudged some of his stories.) Franklin Foer, the magazine's editor, pens the magazine's apology, which doesn't really sound like much of an apology in the first place. Instead, the nostra culpa comes across as petulant and bitter, which pretty effectively defeats the point of the 7,000-word piece.

Does Julia Allison have an Electra complex? "He is gregarious, a consummate networker, and one of the best public speakers I have EVER seen... Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you!" wrote Star Editor at Large Julia Allison on her blog. She also posted this picture of her pops, circa 1979. We put that next to a picture of her boyfriend, Jakob Lodwick. And, well. Hmm! [Julia Allison]

What does EchoStar's $380 million deal to buy Sling Media mean? In some ways, Sling's decision to sell out seems odd. Satellite TV is on the downswing, most people believe. Rupert Murdoch, after all, sold News Corp.'s stake in DirecTV, in part to raise cash to buy Dow Jones — favoring content, in other words, over distribution. But Charlie Ergen, the obstreperous entrepreneur behind EchoStar, may have a larger plan for Sling's Net-connected set-top boxes. "This is just the beginning," says Sling founder Blake Krikorian in an interview with PaidContent. He's not kidding. The rich EchoStar buy, I believe, is a move by Ergen to prepare his company for life after satellite TV.

After three months of stalled talks, reports the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is still nowhere close to buying Facebook. the real question is no longer "when will Yahoo buy Facebook" but "why hasn't Facebook walked away?" And the answer is that Facebook must be more desperate than they pretend.

Okay, we didn't see this coming. We thought that if anyone bought YouTube, it'd be a content company looking for some young bucks to drag it into the future of video distribution. We had no idea a tech company like Google, which is still pimping its own video service, would double up (even though it did this with Urchin and Measure Map for web stats). What did we miss?

So now that Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, which YouTube employees, managers and investors can cut and run, and who has to work another year before leaving a millionaire? An old-school dot-com journo explains the windfall to Valleywag.