• Apparently Maxim really is looking to go upscale; "subtle transformation" to be completed by October with debut of Chris Wilson's monthly art appreciation column, "Paintings That Will Get Their Pants Off." [FBNY]
• Fox News broadcasts hostage video of kidnapped Fox News journalists, immediately criticizes Fox News for undermining war effort. [Fox News]
• Jon Friedman "ashamed to be a journalist." Rest of profession ashamed about exact same thing. [Marketwatch]

Humility is a character trait in short supply among the media; confidence much less so. Put the two traits together, however, and you find a rare sort of dignity. The merely confident man, when proven right in a prediction he's made, will shout it from the mountaintops. The man of humility is secure enough in his judgment that he has no urge to trumpet his correctness. What makes the humble man so admirable is his restraint: "Yes," he says, "I was right this time. Next time I may be wrong. I see no need to brag."

• Wenner Media buys out Disney's share of Us Weekly. We're not sure why this is important, but the folks at WWD thought it merited an e-mail alerting us to it, so what the hell. [WWD]
• Asking a quarter for Keith Kelly's work always struck as a stretch; $950 is too much for even Kelly himself. [NYP, third item]
• When Jon Friedman says it's time to give someone her due, well, it's time to give her her due. Okay: Maria Bartiromo is both cute as a button and a well-known business journalist! Just out of curiosity, how does this shit keep getting linked on Romenesko? [Marketwatch]

Dear Jon,

We read your column "Why I stopped reading Gawker," this morning with deep sadness, and not a little hurt. While we're thrilled to see that you've finally stated an opinion about anything, we're sorry that that opinion is about us, and is that we're "going for shock value and cheap laughs." (We disagree; do you know how hard it is to wring humor out of the word "twat" twelve times a day? There's nothing cheap about it.)

• Is it sexist to call Nikki Finke crazy? Either way, we're about five minutes from a batshit rant in our inbox. [Cathy's World]
• All of alleged plagiarist Ann Coulter's alleged plagiarisms in one convenient spot. Ann Coulter is 45. [TPM Muckraker]
• New York Times writers: always wanting more. [E&P]
• Jon Friedman thinks bloggers are loudmouths who resort to name-calling just to be heard. Douchebag. [Marketwatch]

If you've got grandparents, you may have heard about Time magazine, a stapled-together collection of pages that tell you what happened last week.

Yesterday, as you may have seen but probably did not, Marketwatch's Jon Friedman published a short profile of LA Weekly columnist and Deadline Hollywood Daily blogger Nikki Finke. Friedman had contacted us — or, at least, half of us — for a quote about Finke, whose work we admire. We obliged with this: "I think what makes Nikki so compelling is that she's clearly at least a bit crazy — and you can never quite figure out if it's good crazy or bad crazy. She's a great reporter and a fun writer, and God knows I wouldn't want to be on her bad side." We intended that as a lighthearted and complimentary appraisal, and we know that Friedman, among several others who've mentioned it to us, took it that way. But Finke, who has written on her blog about her contempt for Friedman's entirely positive article, had a different read. She thinks we have defamed her, and she has repeatedly demanded a correction and apology. So here it is: We're sorry, and we in no way meant to suggest that Finke is actually, clinically crazy. Indeed, after the jump, please find our entire email exchange with her on this matter, which will show that she's not crazy in the slightest.

• Tyler Green asks the hard questions about NYT art critic Grace Glueck's relationship with the Clark Art Institute: "[W]ho at the NYT knew? And why wasn't it flagged as an obvious conflict of interest?" Our question: Grace Glueck? Clark Art Institute? Should either of these names ring a bell? [Arts Journal]
• Boobies + alcohol + college kids + Internet = $. If you've never read a piece about CollegeHumor.com, today's the day to smack yourself in the head and say, "I coulda done that!" [Fox News]
• Majority of English hacks privately educated, owe their jobs to school connections. Thank God things are different here in the U.S.A. [Guardian]
• Blogger-turned-Time columnist sticks it to The Man, gets fingered. [The Nation]
• Acting like a hyperventilating batshit loon who's one step away from the bughouse is one thing, but when you add props to the occasion, you're crossing the line. [Marketwatch]

• Reporting the war in Iraq isn't exactly the cushy assignment you'd expect it to be. [NYM]
• Jon Friedman, Gawker reader, thinks it'll be tough for Time to toss Jim Kelly overboard. [Marketwatch]
• Mark Cuban prefers newspapers to the Internet. Particularly the ones that report on his billion dollar penis. [Blog Maverick]
• Simon Dumenco cracks wise about Suri Cruise, Rosie O'Donnell, and Shakira's hips (SPOILER: they don't lie). He doesn't care WHO he pisses off! You can catch more of Simon's cutting edge humor later this week at the HaHa Hut in Totowa, N.J. [AdAge]
• New Republic editor says the magazine devoted an entire issue to the subject of Darfur because a) the situation calls for crusading journalism, b) TNR should be more assertive in its coverage, and c) there's only so many pages you can fill with slavish encomia to Joe Lieberman.[NPR]

• Times happily runs advertising section from Sudan, whose leaders — as Times columnist Nick Kristof likes to point out — are encouraging genocide. [NYDN]
• Lewis Lapham, as he steps down from Harper's editorship, will keep working. And keep smoking. [WP]
• One Park, a reality show about life at AMI, moves closer to happening. Except that the lawyers are against it, chief David Pecker is against it, and the company doesn't have the rights to the name "One Park." But, you know, otherwise things are good. [WWD]
• CJR disses Marketwatch media writer Jon Friedman. Hard. [CJR Daily]

We asked a bunch of media folks why they're thankful on this Thanksgiving, and many of them told us. Here, the media reporters. We start with the Observer boys, and, first, Gabe Sherman: