• Don Imus' contract with CBS said: "Services to be rendered are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial, and personal character." Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks that makes Imus's $40 million lawsuit against CBS a bit more plausible. [CNN]
  

AdAge reports on the celebrity weekly wars (didja hear about that one?) and, in turn, reveals that Us Weekly plans to give their website a makeover. Wenner has brought in former Maxim EIC Keith Blanchard as launch editor for the site's "major revamp," which seems to have been conducted late yesterday:

• Bob Woodward's in truh-ble. [NYT]
• WP's Walter Pincus set to go the way of Judith Miller in the Wen Ho Lee case. Except without the everyone-hates-him-at-the-end part. [WP]
• Need your dose of softcore porn more frequently than once a month? It's looking like Keith Blanchard's prototype for a weekly lad book might see life at Bauer. And thank God for that. [WWD]
• William T. Vollman, Joan Didion win National Book Awards. [USAT]
• Hotshot founders of Penguin's Riverhead imprint bolt for Random's Doubleday Broadway group and a new, yet-to-be-named imprint. [NYP]
• The lucky winner of that fundraising lunch with Rupert Murdoch? Learning Annex chief Bill Zanker. Be you're even happier now that you overpaid for that mediocre lecture. [Guardian]
• HBO still confident it owns Sunday night, Lisa Kudrow's dreadful Comeback notwithstanding. [NYT]
• Speaking at the University of Texas, Maureen Dowd — who, apparently, has a new book out — speculates that Judy Miller will end up with a Fox News talkshow. [Daily Texan]
• Bad things often happen to Time Persons of the Year. [The Media Mob/NYO]

The Farkers are referring to the "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue from the NY Press as a list that "includes cocaine and 49 people you've never heard of." Some choice comments:
· Yoko Ono should have been WAY higher than that. I'm thinking in the "Woody Allen" area at least.
· "New York Press"? I'm guessing this is a paper that you get for free, largely underwritten by ads from phone-sex lines, booby bars and tatoo parlors. Am I wrong?
· Whoever submitted this link is an idiot. And may God have mercy on the soul of the moron that posted this link.
· How dare they insult Keith Blanchard? He's a solid man, and damn funny. The thing everybody gets wrong about the Maxim staff is thinking that they take their job seriously. They realize just as much as anyone how dumb their mag is, but they love the fact that they get paid to write about farts, beer, and boobies. It's the life. Pretty much everyone else on the list can go suck it, though.
Fark forum: 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers [Fark]

The NY Press has released their list of "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers," insinuating that the entire thing was based on reader preferences. So who do New Yorkers hate more than anyone? Keith Blanchard, apparently. Raise your hand if you know who Keith Blanchard is. Yeah, you don't count; you work in media. If you work in media, put your hand down. (Your co-workers are staring at you, by the way. Sitting there in front of your monitor with your hand in the air like that.) So none of the rest of you know who Keith Blanchard is, right? He's the editor of Maxim. This list should be re-titled "50 People NY Press Editor Jeff Koyen Hates." It includes pretty much everyone who was at one point considered an outsider or an artist and has since enjoyed some sort of mainstream success. But some of them really do deserve to be on the list: Carson Daly, That Guy in the Huge Calvin Ad on Houston and Broadway, Cocaine, Jack Grubman, David Rabin, Leona Helmsley, and Henry Kissinger in particular. (And why aren't we on their silly little list? We feel left out.)
50 most loathsome New Yorkers [NY Press]

Rival editors make suggestions about where the newly editorless GQ should go from here: Keith Blanchard, Maxim Editor: "I d change the title to LPFQ: Lesbian Pillow Fight Quarterly." Greg Gutfeld, Stuff Editor: "First I'd invite it over for a slumber party. Then I'd do its hair! We'd stay up talking about boys and call Esquirebut get nervous and hang up!"
Man's work [NY Mag]