Only some local hobos will use your credit card for unauthorized booze orgies when given the chance, while others will actually be honest, according to a Toronto Star study confirming research in peer reviewed journal the New York Post.

After "rather lengthy negotiations" to sell pictures for captioning by the users of I Can Haz Cheezburger, the Associated Press pulled out, citing concerns over "journalistic integrity." Replied the Cheezburger Network, "Oh plz, dey juss wanted moar moneys."

Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily has weighed in with another one of its animated re-creations, this time of a fat and angry Al Gore roughing up that masseuse in Portland. Bill Clinton even makes a cameo.

"'When I saw that on the news I thought he looked like one of the people from Star Wars,' the detective said. He was referring to Tusken Raiders, also known as Sand People."

Shepard Smith, America's best newsman, had one of the finest broadcasts of storied career today on Studio B. There was a puppy, stuck in the LA river. It was rescued by a helicopter. Shepard Smith talked America through it.

Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily has struck again, this time digitally re-creating the feud between Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and Jeff Zucker as an animated superhero caper. NBC needs to option this immediately.

Luckily for lazy journalists, there is a permissible way to "crowdsource" the hard work of reporting to the Twitter masses. But there are many more wrong ways to slack. After the jump, a collection of microblogging "don't"s.

Today's governments are inventing tons of new ways to repress free speech. But there's a hero standing up for civic-minded journalism: The company that digitally re-enacts Tiger Woods spanking a porn star.

Popular Mechanics just named TechCrunch publisher Mike Arrington's tablet computer one of its top ten products of 2009. Which is amazing — amazingly ridiculous — given no one outside TechCrunch has even held one.

Steve Jobs "appeared thin and spoke with a scratchy voice" on his return from medical leave, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Apparently we had no idea!

The economy may wax and wane, but overheated tech rhetoric lives forever. Today's how news: The internet apps for Apple's internet phone will soon be bigger than the internet. What?

Bloomberg's been bragging it suddenly tripled its number of scoops in the first quarter. How did the financial wire do it? A company mole forwarded along one particularly egregious example.

Too busy partying in Austin, Dennis Crowley never replied to our questions about whether Foursquare was built on code owned by Google. He's denied it to other press, but we hear he's telling buddies otherwise.

CNBC, the cable business network, claims to have "policies and guidelines" that are "strictly followed." One of them appears to be presenting company flacks as secret "sources." Tech reporter Jim Goldman adheres to it religiously.

CNBC tech reporter Jim Goldman blew the biggest story on his beat by insisting his "sources inside the company" said Apple's Steve Jobs was in tip-top shape. Do these sources even exist?

There's a reason why CNBC viewers get shortchanged on their tech coverage: Jim Goldman, the network's Silicon Valley bureau chief, is not very tall. It's the kind of thing polite people don't talk about here.

After telling CNBC viewers for weeks that Steve Jobs is "fine," the network's Silicon Valley bureau chief Jim Goldman tried a novel experiment in journalism: Talking to a source who wasn't an Apple flack.

First clip: A CNBC reporter dishes outsidery snark about Apple's supposedly botched iPhone launch. Second clip: CNBC's Silicon Valley bureau chief guzzles the Apple Kool-Aid. Is this the same network?

Two years after he left, the ghost of TV executive Lloyd Braun still haunts Yahoo. Which is why a report of lost perks in Yahoo's L.A. office turned into an evisceration of the ex-exec.

In theory, pro journalists can climb to the top of their fields without sacrificing their built-in urge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In practice, even the loosest cannons find themselves battened to the hatch, or whatever the right sailing metaphor is. One of my role models, former Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons, seems to have been forced by his new employer to undo his own writing. Here's what happened.Dan Lyons is a cruelly funny man. He's been a journalist and fiction writer for decades, but Lyons is best known for the anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog he launched in 2006. Writing from home at night, Dan vented his frustrations as a Forbes writer by inventing a fictional Steve Jobs character. Fake Steve said everything about the tech industry's titans that Dan wasn't allowed to print in Forbes. (Check out "I love to fuck with car salesmen" and "Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer.") Today, it seems Dan has taken down a post, for the first time any of us can remember. From most reporters, I'd consider this typical pointy-haired management, what can ya do, etc. But seeing Dan Lyons self-censor his own honest work makes me wonder if I'll be able to stay true to my own after I leave Valleywag's free-fire zone next month. What's changed for Lyons? Simple: This past summer, Newsweek hired him away from Forbes. After a long series of talks with both old and new editors, Lyons shut down Fake Steve Jobs and started a new blog, Real Dan Lyons. Yesterday he blogged a potty-mouthed, Fake-Steve-style rant about Yahoo's PR people yanking his chain in his official Newsweek reporter role. Today that post is gone. Dan's not answering his cellphone or email today, so I have to presume it was his Newsweek editor who made him take it down. Certainly, I've never seen Lyons wake up in the morning and rush to undo his previous night's typing. Here's the timeline: