• James Risen's State of War — the impending publication of which forced the Times to finally publish the domestic-spying story — also makes Judy Miller's WMD excuses fall apart. [NYO]
• Still, the domestic-spying articles were better than the book is, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Lunatic talking head Bill O'Reilly promises to "get into the lives" of Bill Keller and Frank Rich if (perhaps imagined) Times attacks on him continue. We really hope he does, because Keller would be so much sexier if he were a little less earnest. [Media Matters]
• Yesterday was CBS's first day as its own company. Well, except for all those all days as its own company. [WP]
• New Oxygen show features middle-aged women partying with college guys. We're pretty sure we saw that same show on Cinemax once. [NYT]
• Not-quite-victorious — but still really good — GMA staffers get cheesy commemorative trinkets. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman is clearly smoking crack, as proved by (among other things) his prediction that MSNBC will beat CNN and Fox News in 2006. [MW]
• Latest Q-ratings study shows Katie Couric isn't as popular as she used to be. Clearly not in the polling sample: Les Moonves. [WWD]

• 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]

Slate's Jack Shafer has so much sympathy for New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller that he's returning to the well once again to shed more tears into a bucket and defend his honor. If you haven't been paying attention, this is the story of how the Times sat on a Carvel whale-sized scoop that the Bush Administration was tapping phone calls without a court order.

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:

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.

• American Press Institute launches $2 million project to figure out the future of newspapers. By all current evidence: Death. [E&P]
• How will Nightline survive post-Koppel? Standards, dammit, says Koppel. [USAT]
• Bob Woodward grew up and turned in his father, metaphorically speaking. [VV]
• Bill Keller has a "serious case of Judy Miller fatigue." Just like everyone else. [Daily Princetonian]
• Media transparency is busting out all over. Yay! [LAT]
• Liberals don't listen to the radio or watch much TV, says NBC chief. And it's for genetic reasons. [B&C]
• Aaron Brown is the king of lunch. Also, he'd take the ABC or CBS jobs, if they were offered. We would, too. [Phil. Inquirer]
• The Judy World Tour continues, last night at George Washington University. [FishbowlDC]
• Peacock to Martha: You're fired! [WP]

The Millerized weekend began Friday night, when Bill Keller menschily (and strategically, we suspect) sent a staff memo apologizing for his Plamegate screwups and distancing himself — and the paper — from Miller. It intensified Saturday, when Maureen Dowd pulled Judy's hair and slapped her silly, and when Miller made public her you're-full-of-shit memo in response to Keller's. When Sunday came — with all this buildup, with the biggest circ of the week, with seven days since the big post-testimony exposes — the conditions seemed right for an explosion.

It was, it seemed, the weekend when Millerpalooza finally, dramatically, exploded, leaving little bits of blown-about Judiana strewn everywhere: a torn bit of quilted Burberry jacket wedged into Friday night, shreds of a "Valerie Flame" notebook tossed like confetti onto Saturday, Sunday brunch haunted by St. Regis memories of Scooter Libby, a Barney Calame hangover lingering into Monday.

We suspect we're in the minority on this, but we continue to think Times chief Bill Keller gives great staff memo.

• David Frost, already on on shaky ground for general smarminess, will probably find that his new gig at Al-Jazeera will cut short any trips to the US he may have planned. [WaPo]
• Bill Keller makes fun of Fox News, Yahoo, and the Saturday Wall Street Journal. When asked about Judy Miller, he covered his ears, chanted loudly. There is an admission that the paper is preventing its reporters from writing in-depth about the story, which comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. [BusinessWeek]
• Did you know that there was a "bitter East Hampton newspaper war" going on? Right now, even? [NYM]
• The Times gets in on the advertorial action with a free movie magazine to be handed out and promptly thrown out at a movie theater near you. AdRants]
• We're guessing Time's beatific Hemingway-impersonator covers don't sell quite as well as the annual Jesus issue. [MediaMob]

To: NYT
Subject: MESSAGE FROM BILL KELLER
09/30/2005 02:20 PM

Judy Miller is deeply grateful to all the people on the staff for their support during her time in jail. She's eager to come in and say so personally — but we've ordered her to take the weekend off.

We expect her to come into the newsroom on Monday afternoon to give her personal thanks.

Bill

It didn't come our way till after we were done for the day, but we'd be remiss in not posting Bill Keller's memo to his Timesian troops from yesterday afternoon, responding to the earlier memo on company-wide staffing cuts and proving yet again that he is not Howell Raines.

We hate it when emails from our boss about something we've published start anything like this:

We like it when Times jefe Bill Keller channels Joyce for (largely incomprehensible) portions of staff memos:

Bill Keller's comment about new Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet's hiring techniques seemed vaguely familiar to us. So we took a quick walk down Nexis lane, where found an Observer article from July 30, 2000, when Baquet left our Times for the other one:

Timesian TMI in Howie Kurtz's coverage of Dean Baquet's promotion to editor of the Los Angeles Times:

It's been just over a week since Times reporter Judith Miller was handcuffed and dragged off to Alexandria Detention Center, serving time for her refusal to disclose her source in the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller went to visit Miller and reports on her conditions: