Jay Leno will stay at NBC and move to 10pm weeknight slot after Conan O'Brien takes over his Tonight Show in June, Broadcasting & Cable and Nikki Finke are reporting. Everyone thought Leno was probably going to end up at ABC after he said in a July interview "I am definitely done next year - with NBC." But NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker persuaded him to stay! Probably with wheelbarrows full of money. The big loser in all this? That would probably be embattled NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who just survived a major corporate bloodletting but suddenly finds himself with five fewer hours a week to program. And to think he was having so much fun skiing in Utah this weekend!

The Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, has filed for bankruptcy. Bummer. Pretty much everyone saw this coming. The company is $12 billion in debt, its revenues are going steadily downward, it's been having round after round of layoffs, and it's run by an angry (but honest!) billionaire gnome and a Ron Jeremy doppelganger of questionable sanity. Its papers will keep publishing, but working journalists are sure to get even more royally screwed before this is all over—their pension plan actually owns the company. Key details below:

Our long national nightmare of not seeing justice done in one high-profile crime is over! OJ Simpson was just sentenced, and now journalists across the nation are trying to figure out all the fancy law talk to see just how much time OJ will spend in jail. The judge was very disappointed in the Juice, even though he was very very sorry, and OJ will be in jail for 5 6 years before he can make parole. The full sentence is 15, we think, though hopefully the AP or someone will let us correct that soon (oh hey). This means the world will finally get closure on a 14-year-old circus. We finally get to see OJ in prison! We never thought we'd see the day!

Former Buffalo Bills star running back O.J. Simpson has been out of the spotlight since retiring from football in 1979 (he's been playing a lot of golf), but fans of "The Juice" will be saddened to hear that he's run afoul of the law. Apparently Simpson was involved in a bit of armed robbery last year, taking back his own memorabilia from some questionable characters with the help of his trusty gun. So. He's been convicted of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, assault, robbery, and using a deadly weapon. It's sentencing day! Simpson faces between 6 years and life in prison. Click for video of him being very, very sorry. We'll let you know what the sentence is shortly.

Alberto Gonzalez's replacement at the Justice Department, Michael Mukasey, stuttered and slurred his words before collapsing during a speech at the conservative Federalist Society Thursday night. The attorney general soon regained consciousness and is said to be "in good spirits," though Justice declined to comment on fears he suffered a stroke. The dramatic footage, caught by several different cameras, will no doubt be replayed frequently Friday — and given far more airtime than the thorny but tough-to-dramatize questions on surveillance, interrogation, political patronage and corporate fraud that Justice regularly grapples with. Video after the jump.

Barack Obama, during the Democratic primaries, cited as influential to his thinking the book "Team Of Rivals," about Abraham Lincoln's opponent-stocked cabinet. It would appear this was more than mere campaign puffery: Obama's former presidential rival Hillary Clinton has accepted an offer to join the president-elect's cabinet as Secretary of State, according to a report in Britain's Guardian, carried on the front of Drudge Report. Rather than a thorny problem outside of the Obama administration, in the senate, Clinton will now be on the team, and focused on international problems where political disagreements with the president are less likely to erupt into public view. Of course her appointment could still go spectacularly wrong.

Vivian Schiller, the General Manager of NYTimes.com, is leaving the Times to become the president and CEO of NPR. National Public Radio, people! This is a huge announcement for lovers of the liberal media. Schiller has overseen lots of evolution at the paper's website—including the rollout of comments—which is the single best thing the Times has going for it. She became famous for her weekly memos and her devotion to slideshows. The Times had better choose her replacement very carefully. Her going-away email to the staff is after the jump:

What's the deal Sarah Palin? Is Alaska too small-time for you to bother dolling up your hair all nice like you did for the media elites? The former Republican VP nominee's locks are, in case you didn't notice, way messy since she got back to Alaska; see the photos above, taken at her Anchorage gubernatorial office and at the Anchorage airport. Why is this terrible thing happening and how do we stop it from destroying us all?

As Barack Obama delivered his presidential acceptance speech, Oprah Winfrey prominently led the nation in a good cry. But when the cameras caught her, she was leaning heavily up against some white guy. Who was that?? Oprah basically owns Chicago, so the Sun-Times promptly deployed an investigative team to find out. The man is Sam Perry of California's Silicon Valley, he is an Obama volunteer and contributor, a former wire-service reporter, and basically one of the nicest guys ever, according to his wife, who should know. Her quote and a clip of the Daily Show making fun of Perry, after the jump.

In the first election of the 21st century decided by the end of Election Day, Democratic Senator Barack Obama was elected President, beating Republican Senator John McCain. Obama, 47, is the United States of America's first black president. Despite his race, despite his being a liberal Midwestern Senator running with an east coast Democratic Senator, despite running against an incredibly well-respected and admired Republican with great independent voter appeal (at least back in the day), Obama took it decisively. It was a good year for Democrats, what with the economy melting down and the last dying breaths of the miserable presidency of universally despised Republican president George W. Bush, but it did look, for minute, like it might be another close one. If, for example, Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination, as it was predicted she would last year, we probably would've seen a repeat of the "50+1" strategy of fighting the election only in two or three "swing states" (Kerry states + Ohio = victory!), and probably another 49/48 popular vote split. But Obama fought in "red states" like Indiana and much of the mountainous southwest. The map expanded, and stupid Ohio and Florida were justifiably stripped of a great deal of their terrible importance. Obama finally won with more than 50 percent of the popular vote, the first time a Democrat managed that feat in a generation. Obama ended up a much stronger candidate than even his early partisans could've predicted, with a calm, intelligent, cool demeanor. That demeanor got him labeled a stuffy egghead early on, especially when contrasted with Hillary Clinton's newfound fiery populism, but in a time of great upheaval, "appearing presidential" suddenly looked good. And he looked presidential in three debates, while his opponent, John McCain, sputtered and shouted and, in Joe Biden's memorable words, "lurched" around the stage of the town hall. Thing got completely fucking crazy in the last days, as the Republican dead-enders began trying, surprisingly without efficacy, to appeal to the basest instincts of the electorate, painting Obama as a Marxist Socialist (and quietly encouraging people to think he was a DANGEROUS MUSLIM TERRORIST), but every time voters saw the candidate he looked like a rational, moderate, smart family guy. It was a half-hearted use of identity politics by a Republican who always hated the rabble of the Religious Right but it did intensify to uncomfortable levels in the end. The high point, weirdly, was a crazy young white woman in Pittsburgh filing a false complaint to the police claiming she was mugged and robbed by a huge black man who carved a B in her face. The self-inflicted B was, of course, carved backwards, and soon she was off for mental health treatment. It was a nice little microcosm of the state of the race nationally—the race-baiting didn't work! He inherits a nation utterly fucked to it's core by the venal incompetents of the Bush years, and lord knows it's idiotic to invest all your hopes in one guy egomaniacal enough to want to be president at all, but we have secret hopes in our tiny heart that he'll be a decent success. And, of course, we all get fucking unicorns. Seriously. Check your mail next January. Unicorns and cocaine for all! Image: (c) Jana Kohl and Robert Sebree, www.ararebreedoflove.com, used with permission from (c) holder.

Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died today of cancer. Dunham, 85, largely raised Obama, from the age of 10 on, while his mother worked in Indonesia. She's a huge figure in his book, in his speeches, and in his campaign—the campaign he suspended to visit her just last week. Obama issued a statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng:

Madonna supposedly has the "World's Most Exhausting Workout Routine," because, among other things, she does "dancerobics," yoga, pilates, and even "jogs in the morning while fasting." No jogging with hot dogs for the Material Girl! [MyHogtown; A better way.]

Roll Call reports: "The juror who was dismissed from the criminal trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to attend the funeral of her father in California admitted Monday that her father had not died, and that she went to California to attend a horse race." Everything about the Ted Stevens trial was and is hilarious. [Roll Call]

It was inevitable that the Huffington Post would somehow end up sullied by recruiting such a massive army of unpaid contributors. But few would have imagined something this awful: Valued HuffPo political blogger Carol Anne Burger shot herself Friday, and police now believe she was responsible for the brutal murder of her former lover two days earlier. Burger was a scuba-diving instructor who brought an amateur's zeal to her work, and in this sense embodied the best of HuffPo's democratic approach, calling to mind fellow contributor Mayhill Fowler, who broke the "Bittergate" story. But the website will not be eager to associate itself with Burger's energy in dispatching Jessica Kalish.

Granted, the headline number is a shocker: 600 people losing their jobs starting two weeks from now at Time Inc. The cuts, reported this evening by the Times, will further hurt morale among magazine workers who once had the nearest thing to lifetime employment in American journalism. But put in proper perspective, the cuts look less draconian than one might have speculated after rumors started circulating earlier this month. For an organization with 10,200 staff, the layoffs amount to six percent of the workforce — a shave rather than an amputation, by the standards of endemic newspaper layoffs and the Great Magazine Die-Off. And they should come as no shock: Time Inc. has been contracting for years now.

OK, who's sending all the white powder to New York newsrooms—and can you snort it? Reuters evacuated their newsroom today due to a powder-filled envelope. Last week, the New York Times had to seal off some elevators and evacuate one floor after a similar incident—which, as we reported, was scary, but no reason to stop working. Nothing to see here, folks. (We hope.)

This is the worst Friday we can remember since the last terrible one. Darnell Hudson, mother to almost universally loved Oscar-winner and American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson, was murdered in Chicago today. "Investigators said two shooting victims were discovered inside a home belonging to Hudson's mother just before 3:00 this afternoon," local TV reports. The other victim: her brother Jason. Police are releasing no details except to say it was "domestic," which means... not a robbery, we suppose. Just sad.

As rumored, AMI has bought the website RadarOnline.com, just as the print version of Radar folds. That, incongruously, puts the site under the same corporate umbrella as the celebrity mags Star and the National Enquirer, which may now become off-limits for mockery. The site will be "relaunched" in 2009. Judging from the tone of the press release alone, the site may well be repositioned to be far more credulous in its celebrity coverage, and consequently less funny. The effect on the RadarOnline staff is not clear yet; we'll fill in details as they come. Full press release from AMI below: American Media Inc. and Integrity Multimedia Company form joint venture to launch a new and enhanced RadarOnline web site

BREAKING: We hear that Radar, the smart-shallow magazine and website, is laying off "EVERYONE." Repeat: "EVERYONE." Including some beloved former Gawker editors. This will be everyone's last day at the office, apparently. The New York Observer says that "there might a business arrangement to keep the web site afloat and that it will be sold to AMI," although we've heard no confirmation of that [UPDATE: It's true]. It appears that Radar chief Maer Roshan has, indeed, killed trees until all the money is gone.

This is fun. Whenever the crazy culture wars heat up, someone starts mailing dangerous white powder to senators, newspapers, and banks. A New York Times human resources exec just sent an email around to the office staff warning of a suspicious white power found in an envelope addressed to the newspapers. The cops are there and the lobby is closed. Click through for the email. From: NYTIMES MAIL Date: Oct 22, 2008 12:24 PM Subject: Note from Dennis Stern re the Building To: NY TIMES NOTES Folks, At about 11:30 a.m. today an employee on the 13th floor of our headquarters building in New York opened an envelope addressed to The New York Times. A white granular substance was in the envelope. The New York City police were called and are now on site investigating. The 41st Street side of the lobby is closed but people are able to get in and out of the building. We will keep you updated on any developments. Dennis