• Everything you need to know about Conrad Black, whose fraud trial starts this week. [Maclean's]
  

• Real estate magnate Sam Zell will probably buy Tribune, which would be nice because it'll finally put an end to this fucking story. [LAT]
  

• Wal-Mart is really, really sorry that they taped a Times reporter's calls. They don't want you to think they're Hewlett-Packard or anything. [NYT]
  

• Murdoch (James, but you take what you can get) vs. Branson. RELATED: This Times summary. [NYT]
  

• Surly Maer Roshan only talks to Yusef Jackson. Yusef talks to Ron Burkle. It's called plausible deniability. You know, allegedly. [NYO]
  

• This guy made a fake Gucci ad using himself as the model, and a Swiss weekly ran it. The bill went to Gucci. Now he's M.I.A. [BoingBoing]
  

• Holy crap, Ian Urbina did a lot of work in this piece on kids who just want to sell magazines but wind up hanging out with meth-addicted prostitutes. Only 11 months and one week until the next Pulitzer deadline! [NYT]
  

NBC News daddy Brian Williams is profiled in the March/April Men's Vogue, and we have to admit that even our dirty hearts were touched. It made us think that Williams is that anchor we've been waiting for—someone to really love. He's like the anti-Couric!

• Melissa Lafsky gets her chilly paws on an actual! print! copy! of Radar, and finds that our new helmsman is represented within. Also within: a timeline about cocaine, and a guide to which celebs have "Inner Fatties." We're drooling like Tinsley Mortimer over a burger. [ETP]
  

In his highly entertaining Daily Nightly blog (from which Katie Couric could learn a thing or two about a thing or two), NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams today waxes poetic about various topics, including retiring NY Giant Tiki Barber, who has announced he wants to become a news anchor (Williams: "Later this afternoon, I will announce my intention to 'join the New York Giants backfield'"). Then there's his take on the NYT's Vows column:

[Blogs] can't be a lesser standard than you would use for page 1 of The New York Times.

• Washington Post shrinking. Yes, yes, "tightening up the paper's news hole," is a funny phrase. [WaPo
  

• So, important election results: Which anchor won? The general consensus seems to be Charlie Gibson, although Tom Shales gives it to Brian Williams, with Katie Couric getting an "affably in command." Meanwhile, the kids at Fox News were kinda bummed. [WaPo]
  

It's catnip. It's crack. It's the best, and I cannot wait.

Such is the aura of NBC anchor Brian Williams that even in what was meant as a puff piece on SNL cast member Seth Meyers, Williams shines through.

We won't lie, we really like Brian Williams. With the old troika of Rather, Jennings and Brokaw in varying states of gone, he's the only evening news anchor who really exudes that anchorness (no offense, Katie). The picture below, posted on the NBC Nightly News blog yesterday only reinforces our hetero manlove for Brian.

Last Friday, when meeting with NBC News anchor Brian Williams to help launch his latest messianic charity endeavor, U2 frontling Bono was waiting for an elevator with Williams next to a lightboard ad of the anchorman's face. Bono asked the crowd of handlers for a Sharpie, and one was instantly produced from the rectum of an NBC page (each page contains a complete desk set at all times). Bono then scribbled on the face of the Williams ad, fashioning a bandit mask or a pair of his signature bubble shades, or something. As a last straw, he "signed" the lightboard with his initial, thereby turning it from a piece of crap corporate furniture into a $50,000 collectible piece of crap corporate furniture. Williams was politely amused for the crowd, but this can only increase his well-known distaste for the Irish.

[via TVNewser]
Related: 'SNL' at 32: Cutting Edge Yields to Comfy Middle [WaPo]

• Are Jessica Simpson and John Mayer dating? Is Jessica's body a wonderland? Do daughters become lovers become mothers? Some other crappy innuendo-joke-laden John Mayer lyric? [People]
• Meanwhile, Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo appear to be getting more serious about their relationship. Individually, they remain ridiculous. [Page Six]
• Brian Williams and Katie Couric have a competition to see who can have the biggest billboard. We can't wait to see who cares? [Page Six]
• Michael Lohan offers a detailed analysis of his prison-made editorial cartoon. That's funny enough. [Lowdown]
• Rush and Malloy say "The laughter has definitely gone out of Joe Piscopo's marriage now that the former Saturday Night Live star and wife Kimberly are divorcing." We say "Joe Piscopo was never funny." [R&M]
• "Rosie Drops Some pre-View Details." Retains all pre-View pounds. [TMZ]

Network news: it's the story that just keeps giving. Today the Times takes a long look at the increased level of network news competition in anticipation of Katie Couric's splashy-yet-deliberately-unsplashy debut as the anchor of the CBS evening news. NBC is hanging gargantuan banners of Brian Williams outside of the CBS studio (a technique taken straight from the New York Post) while Williams blathers on about the "anchor-viewer relationship"; ABC's Charlie Gibson is being marketed as "Your Trusted Source," which hearkens back to the late Peter Jennings, whose slogan was "Trust is Earned." Blah trust blah blah trust blah.