In your merit-based Monday media column: Dexter Filkins gets his reward, magazine ad pages rise (a bit), Dan Abrams expands his empire, the AP shows dead Marines, and you didn't donate to your local public broadcaster, did you?

Dexter Filkins spent four years covering the Iraq War for the New York Times. Today, the paper's magazine has an excerpt of his upcoming book, The Forever War. Filkins is a beautiful writer, which only serves to enhance the enormous sadness of his story. The piece pulses not with political outrage, but with weariness over a steady diet of death. After the jump, one small excerpt: Filkins tells how his desire for a photo of a dead insurgent ended with a Marine shot and killed:

"Where friends and neighbors are also newsmakers, journalists must guard against giving them extra access or a more sympathetic ear," reads a section of the New York Times' online "Ethics in Journalism" document. "When practical, the best solution is to have someone else deal with them." Makes sense! Which is why we found ourselves stroking our nonexistent beard over Times war guy Dexter Filkins' review today of New Yorker war guy George Packer's new play, "Betrayed," based on an insanely long story Packer wrote last year for the magazine. Turns out the two of them are close pals, which explains so much about both the above photograph and Filkins' (left) review.

Today's New York Times Company annual shareholder meeting is expected to be, in the words of the Times itself, a "contentious" affair. What with "dissident investors" like Morgan Stanley's Hassan Elmasry calling for the Sulzberger family to change the dual stock-structure that allows them to control the paper, the stakes have never been higher - even though nothing is likely to change. But how will family head Albert Sulzberger Jr., address the controversy? Gawker has obtained a copy of his opening remarks.

A few weeks ago, Gawker Weekend had an idea. We had just read George Gurley's piece in the New York Observer, the one where he went to Bungalow 8 and asked the partygoers what they thought about the war in Iraq. It was a pretty funny article—the people all said really shameful things, and it made you realize how frivolous we are here in America and how stupid all our problems are.