• "Time Inc. has selected Stockholm's Bonnier Group as the winner of the auction for the right to buy 18 of Time Inc.'s magazines. There was no immediate word on the price that Bonnier will pay, but the terms are in place and a deal should close within a month." That's what AdAge said, but then they pulled it. So who knows? [AdAge]
  

Noted without comment.

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  

• Dean Baquet wins the coveted Observer Media Mensch of the Year award. This follows hot on the heels of a bunch of other bullshit made-up media awards by organizations you've barely heard of, and comes a day in advance of our naming Chris Mohney's right testicle Gawker's Blog Ball of the Year. [NYO]
  

• The Chandler family, former owners of the Los Angeles Times, are unhappy with the way Tribune is selling itself off. [NYT]
  

• A group of Columbia journalism students allegedly cheated on an ethics exam. There go those cushy Voice gigs. [Radar]
  

• We think it's kind of tacky to mock a Parkinson's patient for writing a doddering, fogeyish column about the Internet. So we'll let Wonkette do it. Anyway, our guess as to the mystery journalist is Kaus. [Slate]
  

• Is Rupert Murdoch losing it? Surprisingly, a rival paper thinks yes. [Telegraph U.K.]
  

• Guy who told Murdoch to buy MySpace quits. [Guardian]
  

Over the last few months on certain blogs, Marketwatch media transcription service has been called a "douchebag," compared to a child molester, mocked about his appearance, chided for his inflated sense of importance, and even taunted about his writing style. Not to mention the repeated assertions that he essentially peddles conventional wisdom and rarely says anything of interest. Well, in a piece about Men's Health EIC Dave Zinczenko, (and isn't that an innovative choice of topic), Big Jon gets his revenge. It's a subtle dig, and he utters under the guise of defending the Zinc man, but we can tell it's really all about him. How does Friedman dispose of the derision so frequently flung his way?

Today's Jon Friedman column concerns Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who appeared at this week's American Magazine Conference. It's the platonic ideal of a Friedman column, regurgitating the conventional wisdom while offering the meaningless on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand assessments (he actually uses the phrase "on the one hand") that have become his stock-in-trade. Our favorite part, though, comes when Friedman meets the man himself at a dinner:

• You ever get so incapacitated by the incredible number of jokes that you could possibly do about a story that you just bury it in a linkdump? Because sometimes we do. [FBW]
• The dog ate the Times' and the Trib's homework. [NYT]
• Network television as we know it is apparently dead. This is what happens when you put Jeff Zucker in charge of things. [WSJ]
• Mean Dan Abrams won't answer sweetie Rachel Sklar's questions concerning long overdue canning of Crosby, Carlson. [ETP]
• Jesus Christ, Crown will buy anything. [NYP]
• Did you know that the magazine industry is starting to embrace the Web? Of course you did. But confirmation from Jon Friedman always makes it seem a little more legitimate. [Marketwatch]
• Sheryl Stolberg is gay for Tony Snow. [NJ]

• Music industry decides that illegal downloaders are people too. Which means they can be marketed to. [WSJ]
• Or sued. [Reuters]
• "By contrast, I don't know anyone who comes to a Web site out of a feeling of obligation. People gravitate to the Internet because they want to, not because they need to. The public's rallying cry might well be, in Nirvana's memorable words: 'Here we are now, entertain us.'" Okay, now Jon Friedman is starting to freak us out a little bit. [Marketwatch]
• Time Warner Cable files for $100 million IPO. The company will be listed on the NYSE some time in the next three weeks between the hours of nine and four. [Reuters]

• That Cathy Horyn correction? It was a big "fuck you" to Styles editor Trip Gabriel. [WWD]
• Time is an important magazine that must innovate if it wants to stay relevant. This burst of obviousness brought to you by, yes, Jon Friedman. [Marketwatch]
• Friends of Janice Min want you to know that putting Whitney Houston on the cover of Us Weekly was Jann Wenner's idea. Jann Wenner's bad idea. [Radar]
• Jack Shafer wants more and better rowbacks. [Slate]
• Fired Fox news baseball analyst Steve Lyons isn't racist against Hispanics; it's the Jews he can't stand. [USAToday]

• Dick Parsons to GooTube: "Good luck. Also, we're going to sue your socks right off your ass." [Guardian]
• LBO speculation sends Times stock soaring. [NYP]
• Jon Friedman discovers David Remnick, an obscure editor who toils in the service of a literary New York magazine one rarely hears about. [Marketwatch]
• Newsweek knows your ignorant American ass doesn't want to deal with complexity. [Wonkette]

Talented media reporter/secretary Jon Friedman plays it close to the vest this week with a cagey, contemplative piece on an oft-overlooked player's comments at a classified event: Jon Stewart's chat with David Remnick at the New Yorker festival. (God only knows what sort of deep cover Friedman had to undergo to nab that score.) The intrepid reporter goes out on a limb, declaring that Stewart has "an uncommonly sophisticated understanding of journalism" — but it takes one to know one. Friedman's so sophisticated that he effectively conveys Stewart's impact within only the first few words of every paragraph! You don't even need to read a whole sentence to get the point:

• The blood will continue to spill at Time; Jon Meacham shakes things up at Newsweek. [NYP]
• In another attempt to emulate Esquire, Radar looks to move into their old space. Up next: A piece on how sexy Scarlett Johansson is. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman met Jimmy Carter once! Also, Jon hates the media. We feel ya, bro. [Marketwatch]
• Are we the only ones getting a little tired of hearing about Roger Ailes? [Romenesko]
• Jes s D az Jr. resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald after a power struggle with columnist Carl Hiaasen. How come no one resigned back when Dave Barry made his 5,000th booger joke? [Miami Herald]

Actually, the fact that this assertion comes from Jon Friedman should put everyone at ease. We love how he refers to himself as a "sneaky journalist" for waiting six months to ask a question ("Arianna, do you think that you are the left-wing's great media hope?") the affirmative answer to which Arianna herself has been pushing forever. Pretty sneaky, Jon! We're sure Michael Isikoff is pissing himself in fear of the competition right now.

• You'll find a lot of information in this David Carr piece on how journalists are forced to act like C.I.A. agents, "encoding files, shredding notes and switching cellphones." What you won't find is any mention of the Observer, which reported essentially the same story two Wednesdays ago. [NYT]
• Nancy Grace, desperate to wrest the title of World's Most Vile Human Being from Ann Coutler, adds plagiarism to her list of sins. Ann Coulter is 45. [NYDN]
• Chris Wallace was stunned that a non-confrontational question suggesting that Bill Clinton was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 American citizens might have been taken the wrong way. [FishbowlDC]
• James Truman, footloose and fancy free, is learning to live without Conde cash. Culture and Travel launches Friday. [NYT]
• Jon Friedman wonders why H-P never tapped his phone. Maybe it's because when you write columns like "The media world is in convulsions" you're pretty much identifying yourself as someone who has no new information. [Marketwatch]

Yesterday Jon Friedman wrote a column about Katie Couric that began, "Katie Couric, at first, lived up to all the hype surrounding her move from NBC's "Today" show to "The CBS Evening News." Couric's show finished first in the much-followed television ratings on her first few nights after her ballyhooed debut on Sept. 5. In a remarkably short time, even by American television standards, Couric has slipped and her program fell back to a position that CBS unhappily knows all too well — third place, trailing NBC and ABC."