In your thrashed Thursday media column: More Conde layoff rumors, Martha Stewart's evil company gets sued, media hair racism persists, and Choire Sicha declaims on the current technomedia foofaraw.

CNBC, the nation's preeminent financial news network, aired an investigative special last night! Did they venture deep into the Heart of Darkness to investigate the welfare queens at Goldman Sachs? Well, no, they investigated the porn industry, naturally.

Dan Abrams is soon launching Mediaite, his very own "Drudge meets Huffington Post," which he'll certainly use to promote clients of his endlessly shady PR firm. He's now looking for contributors who, like him, have no qualms about selling out.

Al Gore was at the 92nd St. Y earlier this week, making jokes about drug addicts. Meanwhile, as of this morning, imprisoned Current.TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee - Gore's employees - are facing further hearings in North Korea.

May 15 @ 135pm Washington Square Dog Run, being interviewed, all dark hair and a very orange (oompa-loompa) plumped face. [Submit your own Gawker Stalker sightings to stalker@gawker.com]

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and the AP was on hand at various newsrooms to capture the celebration. Even though winning one doesn't matter, we've put together a small gallery of the best photos.

Great news! Damon Weaver got press credentials for the inauguration! Yes!

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the most trusted names in journalism, sat down for a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly—and kicked everyone's asses all the time! For example: STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.'' More selections after the jump. So what do you think is the issue that people will end up voting on? STEWART: Whatever happens that week. It all depends on when that Michelle Obama ''I hate whitey'' tape comes out. If it comes out now, it could dissipate by the election. But if it comes out a couple days before, that could be dangerous. COLBERT: Jon? I have it. There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy. STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ''I can't believe we got away with it!'' Can you imagine if someone said, ''I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house,'' and the bank just said, ''All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.'' [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ''Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?'' ''No, it doesn't matter.'' ''Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as fucked up!'' COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn't get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ''Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.'' The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you fuck up? Can you fuck up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it's just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global fuck up to get any help. Can any [politician] break through this mess? STEWART: I worry that those people are there, but we won't recognize them — or we'll destroy them so thoroughly that their voice won't be heard. I just imagine Lincoln out there, and people throwing the gay stuff at him. ''And what about depression running in his family?'' ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys regularly make a mockery of the 24-hour news networks. Do you see anything good about the format? JON STEWART: It's Muzak now. You ever walk into a clothing store in New York City and they're not playing music? And you go, ''What's going on here? Did a virus hit? This doesn't seem right.'' Twenty-four-hour news now is this weird companion to my life. STEPHEN COLBERT: There's not more news now than there was when we were kids. There's the same amount from when it was just Cronkite. And the easiest way to fill it is to have someone's opinion on it. Then you have an opposite opinion, and then you have a mishmash of fact and opinion, and you leave it the least informed you can possibly be. STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ''I don't know!'' It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ''I don't know what the fuck is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?'' By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore. Read the whole interview here.

Be this guy he knew who got a newspaper column because he was a really funny bartender. Oh, and also be talented? [BigThink]

Robert Novak, the 77-year-old conservative Chicago Sun-Times columnist and political commentator, announced his retirement after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Last week, he ran his car into an 86-year-old homeless man and drove off; soon after that, he was hospitalized and the tumor discovered. Earlier, he said that he'd be "suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period." Today, though, the Sun-Times announced his "immediate retirement." His column ran for 45 years. [Sun-Times]

Writes author Tom Wolfe on New York magazine's late founder, Clay Felker: "One afternoon I came by to see Clay at his Xanadu on 57th Street and found him sitting at a desk going through a date book to put together some income-tax data. 'Look at this,' he told me, riffling through the date book, 'I only ate dinner at home eight times last year!' I don't think I can adequately convey the pride he took in this discovery. He had developed night vision for detecting new styles of life." [NY Mag]

New York Times media reporter David Carr-a former crack enthusiast-takes a look at Gonzo, the new documentary about legendary drugs-and-freedom-loving journalist Hunter S. Thompson. "Few writers have commodified narcissism so completely - his participatory style of journalism became its own genre and gives the film its title - but still we are invited to sit in the dark of the theater and have a flashback about his flashbacks. When the film opens on July 4, why will people, as Thompson would say, buy the ticket, take the ride?"

In what may or may not be an irony of some kind, but should probably not actually be noted, because it's sort of ghoulish and in poor taste, political journalism superstar Tim Russert went out today with a Friday newsdump, that hallowed Washington DC practice of burying news no one wants to see. Earlier today, June 13, 2008, Russert suffered a fatal heart attack. While working, obviously. Because he worked a lot, and he always looked like he loved it.

It was sneaky, unpaid, unidentified Huffington Post citizen "journalist" Mayhill Fowler who got Bill Clinton to call the author of that Vanity Fair slam piece a scumbag-and that's just not fair! Newsweek's Jonathan Alter weighs in: "'This makes it very difficult for the rest of us to do our jobs. [...] If you don't have trust, you don't get good stories. If someone comes along and uses deception to shatter that trust, she has hurt the very cause of a free flow of public information that she claims she wants to assist. You identify yourself when you're interviewing somebody,' Mr. Alter added. 'It's just a form of cheating not to.'" Opposing view?

One of Bill O'Reilly's slimy little producers tried to ambush PBS veteran newsman Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform yesterday, demanding to know why he wouldn't come on O'Reilly's silly Fox News shout-fest. Moyers turned the tables, demanding that O'Reilly set him up with an interview with Fox overlord Rupert Murdoch so that Murdoch can explain why we still haven't gotten the $20-per-barrel oil his network promised at the start of the war. And other things. See the exchange below.

Lushy journalists turned out in force for Jack Bryan's documentary on the storied, now-shuttered hole of a watering hole Siberia when the flick premiered last night at Soho House. Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers, former Page Sixer Chris Wilson, The New York Observer's George Gurley, publicist / bigtime author Sloane Crosley and a host of other party-loving media types showed up to watch themselves and their colleagues ramble nostalgically about the place that ruined so many young livers. Sadly, one member of that crowd was home with a mystery illness. "Former 'Page Six' reporter Ian Spiegelman opens the film: 'I don't even know how you could make a documentary about Siberia,' he says. 'I don't know how people have any memories of what happened there.'"

The dreamy beach warrior who rescued a drowning man and and made all other news irrelevant a week or so ago has been found! And he's "a humble hero who would rather sail off into the sunset than step into the limelight, his relatives said Saturday." Swoon! Could he get any dreamier? "Kevin Campion, a 30-year-old ship's captain from Seattle, doesn't mind if his lifesaving deed goes unrewarded, they said. 'He's a great guy and it's an amazing thing he did and actually I'm not surprised that he would do it,' said Kenn Christianson, the brother of Campion's stepmother, Sonya Campion. 'He's just not sure he wants the attention to be on him.'" Oh. Then I guess The New York Daily News wouldn't have another photo of him or anything. Wait, they do?

In yet another move that will likely piss-off Old Tyme-y newspaper types, The New York Times is shutting down a whole batch of its suburban outposts. One staffer writes in, "Big stuff. They are closing all of their suburban bureaus, packing up, giving up, going home to protect what is left of their base-seven 84 year-olds on the upper west side. White Plains, New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island-shuttered, reporters brought into Manhattan and reassigned, pretty much except for one dude in New Jersey, kept there so that tri-state doesn't have less correspondents than, say, Montana. If that's not a metaphor for their dire economic circumstances, I'm not sure what is-but it's a curious decision too. Their shrinking readership base in the city is smaller than the ring outside it. Maybe they want it to be bigger again…by shrinking what's outside of it. Ah, now I get it." But another source inside the Gray Lady has a less dire take.

The New York Times' Barry Bearak reports on his four-day stint in a Zimbabwe prison on charges of "committing journalism." It began when 21 policemen and detectives raided the lodge where he'd been staying. "The crowded room was hot. Already, I felt jailed. I needed a breath of air, but when I moved toward the door, Detective Jasper Musademba, a well-built man in a jacket and tie, stopped me. He had been the most threatening of the police. 'If you try to go outside...' he said sternly, stopping in midsentence. He made his hand into a gun and pulled the trigger. 'You'll kill me?' I asked. 'Good,' he remarked wryly. 'Then you've seen that movie.'"

The following email was sent by the deputy editor of The Straits Times, an English language newspaper in the only growing market for print papers left: Asia. Singapore, specifically. The editor would like to know if maybe anyone who is going to get laid off from the New York Times would like to go work in a country whose "press freedom ranks below Nigeria and just ahead of Russia." They are in dire need of copy-editors, apparently! The last couple were maybe caned? Email below, via Thomas Crampton.