And at 4:30 in the afternoon, Arthur Sulzberger notices there've been changes to his website:

• Steve Friedman, former NBC and CBS morning guru, returns to CBS News. Just in case there weren't enough variables in the Katie-Diane-Charlie-Evening News-Wall News Tonight morning-show calculus. [NYT]
• Remember the big launch of the Discovery Times Channel? Yeah, us barely, too. Turns out the Times Co. has a chance to cash out its stake next month. Can't imagine why Pinch & Co. would want to back out of a venture no one watches. [RMN via Romenesko]
• It may not seem fair that Arthur and Janet got big bonuses while Times Co. stock was stagnant, jobs were being cut, and employee stock-purchase plans were cancelled, but it's in line with what bigtime execs should get, right? Well, maybe not, says a proxy watchdog service, which pays attention to things like what bigtime execs should get. [NYP]

Another Timesian spy, this one who attended the afternoon State of the Times session yesterday, reports that the second meeting was very much like the first. Except, apparently, a bit more polish on the why-I-get-stock-and-you-don't answer and a bit more explanation on the why-I-don't-want-you-reporters-to-report-anything request:

This turned up in our inbox soon after the first State of the Times meeting finished this morning:

• Penguin wins auction for Alan Greenspan memoir with an offer believed to be nearly $9 million. Obligatory question: Irrationally exuberant? [NYP]
• The dude behind the allegedly forthcoming mags Everything for Men and Everything for Women is a con artist and a felon. Unlike most mag people, who are merely con artists. [WWD]
• Arthur S. holds his State of the Times meeting; reporters question why he gets paid so much and they so little. [Media Mob/NYO]
• ABC's Bob Woodruff reportedly now conscious and talking, though heavily medicated. [ABCNews.com]
• Air America could lose its New York affiliate on April 1. We'd be bummed, if we ever listened to it. [NYP]
• The Jew and the gays brought Oscar his second-worst ratings since 1987. [WP]
• Does Diane Sawyer want to anchor World News Tonight? One gossip site says so. [TMZ]
• Candace Bushnell to launch weekly Sirius Satellite Radio show giving advice to women. First piece of advice we'd like her fans to hear: "They're just cupcakes. Stop waiting on a line around the corner for them." [NYDN]
• Will Nick Sylvester be a Stephen Glass, a Mike Barnicle, or a Janet Cooke? [Media Mob/NYO]

It's damned hard to find decent, interesting writing jobs these days, as we all know. And it's even hard for recent graduates of prestigious Ivy League schools.

The Times PR staff has notified us that the image above at right is the preferred headshot for chairman and publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Note the serious but pleasant gaze, the grown-up suit jacket, and the carefully groomed hair.

Got plans for March 7? Because we know now what we'll be doing: It's State of the Times time! From an all-staff email sent very, very early this morning:

Yeah, it's almost as though he was bred for it.

• ABC anchor, cameraman show improvement after surgery. [ABCNews.com]
• Ted Koppel is a sucky op-edster, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Even Dave Barry thinks newspapers are dead. [SFChron]
• Daily News TV editors doesn't get Jon Stewart's jokes, care much for the guy, or, it seems, care much for Stewart's fans. What was that, Dave, about newspapers being irrelevant? [NYDN]
• Syd Schanberg has misty water-colored memories of covering Donald Trump. [VV]
• Unsurprisingly, Pinch thinks everything at the Trib is just fabulous. When you're a scion, there is no rain on your parade. [AJR]
• Live like Anna: Vogue Living is on its way. [WWD]

• Everything at the Times is great, says Sulzberger! He loves Bill Keller! His job is totally secure! The staff is all happy! And he still believes, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart! [MW]
• Stephen Colbert, fake blowhard political pundit, to emcee annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, filled with real blowhard political pundits. Also, universe to collapse just a little bit further. [FishbowlDC]
• Finally, some good news: Magazines aren't necessarily going away. [National Journal]
• Hed: "'First-Ever' Urban Gay Men's Lifestyle Magazine to Get U.S. Debut." You know, except for Details. (And we won't even get started on its name.) [Folio:]

• Because there just aren't enough glossy mags about celebrity gossip: Page Six magazine, coming in February to a newsstand near you. [WWD]
• For the first time, Mr. Sulzberger goes to Switzerland. And various other Timesiana. [NYO]
• Also, Mr. Sulzberger has taken valuable lessons from all his fuckups. Really. [MW]
• Hell with Couric. CBS News should give Diane Sawyer the Evening News chair. [NYO]
• Steve Brill gives money to Yale to make more journalists. Because what the media business needs in more Ivy kids. [NYT]
• How a rant becomes a letter to the editor. [CJR]

It must suck when your company announces several hundred layoffs over the last few months. It must suck when your company cancels its discount-stock-purchase program. It must suck when your expense accounts are tightened, when hiring freezes are instituted, and when you learn you'll be getting a smaller bonus than you'd hoped. And it must really suck the most when these things have happened and then you wake up one morning, as New York Times employees did today, to learn from the Observer that your company nevertheless handed out a few million bucks' worth of stock to a half-dozen or so top corporate managers.

• Oh, bad job, Keller and Sulzberger. Finally public editor Barney Calame grows a pair and decides to write about something interesting and relevant — why you chose to hold the domestic-spying store for a year — and you guys promptly snip them off. Now he'll never work up the nerve again, alas. [NYT]
• The Elizabeth-and-Bob show starts at ABC News tonight, and we're pretty sure the senior citizens who still watch the evening newscasts are aquiver with excitement. That, or Parkinson's. One of the two. [USAT]
• Last week Forbes said WashPostCo would be the Journal. Now Jim Cramer says Murdoch will. [NYM]
• Joel Stein and Maureen Dowd are feuding. God knows who to root for. [LAT]
• 2005 was, essentially, Vanity Fair's very bestest year ever. [WWD]
• Rumor has it the Underneath the Robes dude is set to become the new Wonkette. Hmm. Interesting. [WSJ; NYO]
• NYT lurves NY1. [NYT]
• Chung and Povitch have a new show and think they're Hepburn and Tracey. Which is sort of cute, in a deluded way. [NYM]

B-b-breaking: Liberal wonky magazine American Prospect opens up a can of lefty whoop-ass on beleaguered New York Times editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger by imploring both of them to resign. The Prospect's executive editor Michael Tomasky brings up the usual lot of blemishes — Judy Miller, James Risen, et al — and says in order for the paper to restore its credibility, Keller and Sulzberger must go:

• Ken Auletta is right about Pinch Sulzberger, Timesmen tell Keith Kelly. [NYP]
• George Stephanopoulos named ABC's chief Washington correspondent. And he doesn't even have to share the title. [B&C]
• Frank Rich is a New York celebrity, speaking pitch-perfect Manhattan liberalism, and that's his problem, says Bryan Curtis. [Slate]
• Atlantic publisher David Bradley to back 02138, a "Vanity Fair-like alumni magazine for Harvard students," which, we imagine, will increasingly be littering the 100TKs. [Boston Globe]

Sunday afternoon we threw out our back. Did we do this the way most non-geriatrics do, in an athletic endeavor? No, we did not. Did we do it exercising? Nope. Having sex? Alas, no. So how, then? We threw out our back lifting a case of wine. Which, ultimately, seems about right.

Haven't read enough yet about Pinch Sulzberger? Then be sure to catch this week's New Yorker, in which you'll get 10,000 Ken Auletta words on the Ochs scion who has visited upon the world's greatest newspaper both Howell Raines and Judith Miller.

• Come on, Pinch, you're breaking poor Tom Scocca's heart. [NYO]
• Was Bob Woodward the first reporter to learn of Valerie Plame's identity? And why didn't he mention that to anyone till now? [WP]
• Ah, but at least Ben Bradlee says it's OK Woodward didn't tell his nominal bosses. [E&P]
• Turns out Bush-crony public-broadcasting chief Kenneth Tomlinson — you know, the guy determined to get more conservatives on PBS — broke all sorts of laws and regulations. [NYT]
• Who's to blame for Arrested Development's (latest) demise. America, obviously. [NYO]
• Rupert: This internet thing is gonna be huge! [Hollywood Reporter]
• What reference in a headline will conclusively show that boomer media dominance is over? [Slate]
• MSNBC's Chris Matthews name-drops, and Jon Friedman loves him anyway. [MW]

Dueling self-justifications on TV last night.