(UPDATED) Despite reports he was fired for reviewing a pirated copy of Wolverine, Fox News columnist Roger Friedman will have a chance to argue for his job, a Fox News source said.

Is Jared Kushner's family real estate business having trouble subsidizing the cash-bleeding New York Observer? Maybe: Editors told one writer about orders to delay freelancer payments.

The Associated Press is alleging copyright infringement by street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey, who based his famous Barack Obama posters on an AP image. Why now?

Time Inc. just laid off 600 people, but that didn't keep the flagship magazine from sending, we're told, four editors to the plutocratic playground of Davos. They're acting as obnoxiously as possible, naturally.

Why would you think that? Ty Inc., creator of the Beanie Babies, just happened to pick those names, since they are "beautiful." Here, let the flack sort this out for you:

Bob Dickey promised he would "be sharing the financial hardship" after furloughing his workers. He warned the Tucson Citizen might shut. Then he joined fellow Gannett bigwigs at a golf resort.

To discourage people from actually attending Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, the Democratic Congress is promising the ceremony will be hell on Earth, like Katrina, except planned by Congress.

Rolling Stone overlord Jann Wenner forgot to do some layoffs in his last round, two weeks ago, so he just fired some more people, less than a week before Christmas.

MTV claims checks are in the mail to the "citizen journalists" it really didn't want to pay, even though it got a big charity grant on their behalf. The network feels just terrible.

An MTV "citizen journalist," Erica Anderson, has gone public to describe "grueling" work conditions on a charity-sponsored project, and to confirm what anonymous coworkers told us Friday: The network isn't paying project staff.

Following our request for information yesterday, we heard from a good number of freelancers who said MTV was stiffing them on paychecks. Including people MTV got charity money to support.

Freelancers: Is MTV slow paying your recent invoices? Because one tipster tells us the Viacom subsidiary followed hundreds of layoffs with a policy to freeze outgoing payments October through January.

With this "holiday" card, Fox is again on the wrong side of the "War On Christmas" it's so worried about. And apparently this is supposed to totally make up for smearing all those reporters:

Bob Dylan's new album of outtakes, "Tell Tale Signs," has some great countrified blues numbers for coping with the coming depression. And in a seeming nod to the tough times, the folksinger streamed the album for free on NPR's website for a week ("Bob Dylan Understand The Weak Economy," said the Times). And yet when the compilation finally dropped earlier this month, aficionados had to pay $130 to get all 39 tracks. That you could buy a smaller, poor man's version for the usual $20 or so was no consolation to hard-core online fans, some of whom vowed to aid and abet piracy in an act of revenge. They shouldn't get too flustered at their hero, judging by Gustavo Turner's review in the Boston Phoenix. You can safely blame Dylan's "mafia" entourage.

You're the leader of a global jihad and spend all your time fleeing from cave to cave and plotting only the vilest of terror attacks (gotta stay focused!). But extremist Middle Eastern editors are burning up your satellite phone with urgent demands for a book on how one "dispenses money, logistical support and training to radical groups in over 50 countries." Decentralized management is so hot right now! What's a would-be martyr to do? If you're Osama bin Laden, the answer of course is to hire a ghostwriter. Per Pakistan's Geo TV (via Times of India):

Someone is lying at Nike. The only question is who. The mystery surrounds how the shoe company approached the thuggish Chinese dictatorship over online rumors about an athlete it sponsors. No one disputes that Nike, which recently claimed its shoes have "become an icon of self-expression and a symbol of Democratic style," ran to the repressive regime in a snit. Someone claiming to be close to Nike had issued an anonymous Web post claiming the company forced Liu Xiang, pictured, to exit the games because he was unlikely to win. This echoed tampering allegations Nike also faced in Brazil. Does Nike want the poster hunted down and thrown in jail? Hunted down and unmasked, so he can be sued? Or simply handled by the Chinese government in whatever manner it feels appropriate? No one has any idea, because Nike keeps changing its story — and digging itself into a deeper hole.

The Olympic Games have long promoted more than the amateur athletic spirit. Sponsors this year sell pharmaceuticals, laptop computers and luxury watches, among other things, mostly to consumers outside of China. But there's something particularly sad about the way the games have been co-opted to push sugary treats inside the host country. Mars Inc., for example, used street sports events and other Olympic gimmicks to help grow sales of Snickers bars 75 percent in China this year, the Wall Street Journal reports for today's paper. Then there's Coke, which spread its tooth-eroding product into China's impoverished, soda-deprived rural provinces by attaching itself to the Olympic torch relay. That and some other local uses of Coke's $400 million in global Olympic advertising helped erode Pepsi's lead in China, the Journal reported on its front page Tuesday. Both Mars and Coke seem oblivious to the moral issues raised by their campaigns amid heightened scrutiny, in the U.S. at least, of obesity-linked products. If they're not more careful, American sugar purveyors may find themselves shackled in the fashion of cigarette makers. After the jump, a look at a scene from Mad Men, in which tobacco executives begin to grapple with the regulatory noose begin to close around their own advertising in the early 1960s.

Right in sync with the meltdown of America's subsidized mortgage giants comes still more evidence the nation's vaunted free market is broken: Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes just took home a $4.5 million performance bonus, bringing his total annual compensation to $20 million. It's true, as Silicon Alley Insider points out, that Fox News retains a wide overall lead over CNN, with 1.5 million viewers per day. But annual bonuses are supposed to reflect performance over the past year, and by that measure this one is a bizarre waste of money.

"Brad says some bloggers have taken it upon themselves to keep writing, gratis. He stresses that those bloggers who have done it are doing so on a strictly volunteeer basis, and will start getting paid again for their work next week." [Silicon Alley Insider]

To pimp its sugary, 200-calorie iced coffees, fast food giant McDonald's offered to pay some local TV newscasts for product placement. And of course the newscasts went for it, since local TV journalism is where ethical standards go to die. Meredith Corporation is putting the drinks in front of anchors at the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas (pictured) and at two CBS affiliates elsewhere. Tribune Company has the coffee at its Fox affiliate in Seattle. Even national Fox News is playing ball, placing McDonald's product at the News Corporation-owned station in Chicago. Station operators offered the Times any number of excuses, but the best has to be from the news director at the Las Vegas affiliate: He argues the placement is ethically OK because it is restricted to the "lighter, news-and-lifestyle" portion of his morning news show. Sounds like the portion of the program that might normally be given over to, say, segments on weight loss, fitness or preventing kids from becoming obese. But these days, if the station wants to do any reports that might upset McDonald's, it is supposed to yank the lucrative cups: