• NYP's Tim Arango becomes only reporter in last month not snapped up by Portfolio; he's going to Fortune. [NYO]
• NewsCorp buys up a bunch of metropolitan-area newspapers. Expect them to be rebranded as Queenist and Only the Paper Knows Brooklyn any day now. [NYT]
• If David Geffen buys the LAT will the paper be able to cover his friends fairly? Speaking as the employees of a gay media magnate ourselves, we're gonna say no. [DHD]
• About 200,000 people have actually shelled out fifty dollars for TimesSelect. Men may not be necessary, but Maureen Dowd's money apparently is. [E&P]
• What was new H-P CEO Mark Hurd doing during the whole "let's spy on journalists" affair? Ratting out his co-directors. [WSJ]
• Troops stand down at LAT amid temporary truce. [NYT]
• Chad Hurley: Business hippie. [NYP]
• LAT editor sticks it to The Man; refuses to make cuts requested by Tribune overlords. [NYT]
• Member of CBS Evening News' elderly demographic likes Katie Couric. [AP]
• City claims recycling has declined because no one buys newspapers anymore, but that fails to explain where people are putting the eight million Metros shoved at them as they enter the subway. [NYS]
• Dick-licking victim Mandy Stadtmiller wins "Funniest Reporter in New York" contest. The jokes, they write themselves. Or at least they're gonna have to for this one, because we've got nothing. [NY1]
"I've been anally raped over and over by the media."
• Ron Burkle wants to buy the L.A. Times, and the Chandlers are finally willing to talk to him. And we're sure he'll continue to care deeply about Radar if he buys a real — well, real enough — media outlet. [WSJ]
• Bushies hate the Times even more than usual these days. [WP]
• AMI might be holding on to Bonnie, but a different bigwig will hit the road at week's end. [Ad Age]
• New editor Steve Garbarino to add an advice column to BlackBook by Siberia owner Tracy Westmoreland? [NYO]
Yesterday the L.A. Times delivered its own let's-go-visit-Jared-upstate-and-hear-how-he's-been-wronged piece. And what does the paper tell us about the Stern homestead?
• Not New York news, but kind of huge: Former Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler — the guy who made it actually a good paper, then got pissed off when Times Mirror CEO Mark Willes did his best to undo that — died today at 78. [LAT]
• Walter Cronkite thinks CBS should keep Bob Schieffer as Evening News anchor. Which we're sure matters not a whit to CBS execs, who could care less about attracting octogenarians. [SJMN]
• Simon Dumenco is angry, as always, and now he wants apologies, from Graydon Carter, Tom Ford, Carl Icahn, Atoosa Rubenstein, NBC, and others. Good luck with that one, Simey. [Ad Age]
• No one likes White House press briefings. Who knew? [NYT]
• Dow Jones reorg combines print and online editions of WSJ. [AP via Yahoo]
• New Meredith editorial director Mike Lafavore fires Fitness EIC Emily Listfield and then gives himself the job, at least for now. How very Wennerian. [NYP]
• Carl Icahn's Time Warner breakup plan had a 37-page chapter on why Time Inc. doesn't fit with the rest of the company. How does John Huey react to that? "I didn't find it a very compelling chapter." Of course not. [NYO]
• Jack Shafer prefers his newscasters brunette. [Slate]
• Maxim redesign to remove "a layer of goofiness"; Graydon promises his next car will be a hybrid. [WWD]
• Breaking: Newspapers sometimes create sections as vehicles to attract advertising. [NYO]
• LAT NYC bureau chief to take on book-publishing beat, too. Because there's just not enough going on in the city itself to keep a reporter busy. [LA Observed]
• Eleven mags missed their rate base in the last half of 2005 — and that doesn't even court the half-dozen AMI titles set to miss in the next go-round. [BW]
• Murdoch, Newhouse, Philbin, and friends: Meet the city's media Power Geezers. [NYO]
• CBS wants Katie so badly that they're offering her a pay cut. [NYP]
• Food and the City: HBO buys rights to Ruth Reichl's memoirs for a new memoir. [WWD]
• A new front in the War on Christmas: Plano, Texas, where the school district bans kids from wearing red and green, according to Defender of the Faith O'Reilly. Except for one thing: It's not true. [Dallas Morning News]
• LAT to shutter national edition, ending its print presence in Washington and New York. Yeah, we're as surprised as you are to discover it had a print presence in New York. [NYT]
• Nikki Finke profiles new LAT opinions editor Andres Martinez, who defected from our Times to theirs, and shockingly, doesn't tear him a new one. [LA Weekly]
• Fired ABC London correspondent says Peter Jennings wielded "hugely disproportionate" influence, without clarifying what exactly would be "proportionate" for the man with his name on the show. [Guardian]
• Slutty sis Wonkette comes to New York for a panel on — what else? — blogs and journalism, and she doesn't so much as say hello. [WWD]
• The Times wouldn't hire Slatester Tim Noah because they don't like white people. We thought it was because they don't like Jews. [Slate]
• FCC indecency complaints dropped by factor of 20 from first quarter to second. The copier must have broken at the Parents Television Council. [B&C]
• Martha Stewart to launch fashion mag. Oh, the endless opportunities for orange-jumpsuit jokes. [NYP]
• New Orleanian Doug Brinkley, who made his pundit name on his pal JFK Jr.'s death, unsurprisingly signs first Katrina book deal. [MSNBC]
• Hearst and Hachette — gasp! — work together on an ad deal. [NYT]
• What's new about the new Paris Review? Um, what isn't? [NYO]
• Michael Kinsley leaves LAT editorial page after a little more than a year; no one was considerate enough to leave news of his firing in a Xerox machine so he could learn about it in advance. [NYT]
• Wenner Media redecorates, and Jann isn't happy with the paint colors. [NYO, second item]
• NYT, WP give each other sneak peaks of their front pages. Sputters E&P's scoopy Joe Strupp: "Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? They'll see everything, they'll — they'll see the Big Board!" [E&P]
• ASME barely slaps The New Yorker on the wrist for Target single-advertiser issue, and crazy columnist in Chicago bursts a blood vessel. [CS-T]
• The lowest blow: In wake of Katrina, public dislikes Bush more than it dislikes press. [E&P]
It's time for the latest edition of The Black Table's Rock and a Hard Place, A.J. Daulerio's notoriously disgusting column devoted to offending journalists as best he can (which is probably what prompted his recent adoption into our perverse family as editor of Oddjack). Today Daulerio takes on Time graduate, talking head, and LA Times scribe Joel Stein. Things, as they often do, turned to the topic of LA Weekly's resident fury, Nikki Finke, who would likely roast Stein on a spit if she had the chance.
• Former Timesman Dean Baquet continues to be newly crowned LAT editor, as Tom Scocca goes west to confirm. [NYO]
• And Michael Kinsley did "a pretty horrible job" at LAT, says Nikki Finke. Come on, Nikki, what do you really think? [L.A. Weekly]
• RIP, Post's Hamptons Dairy, more or less. [Media Mob]
• Syd Schanberg teaches the right way to read the paper and watch TV. We can't believe we've been so woefully undertrained all these years. [VV]
• More virgins in Manhattan: Richard Branson considers free NYC daily. [Forbes]
• Michael Kinsley likely to stop running Los Angeles Times editorial page. Displaying his legendarily razor-sharp analytic skills, Kinsley says: "This living in Seattle and editing the editorial page is not an ideal arrangement." [NYT]
• TV Guide to slash rate base, pull back on listings, increase lifestyle and entertainment coverage — that is to say, to become like every other magazine. [AP via Newsday]
• In terms of prison fabulosity, Judy Miller's no Martha Stewart. [Newsday]
• Two Source execs charged with attempted murder. Oy. [Vibe]
Forgive us a moment of non-smartass, non-Manhattanite comment, but we wanted to stop and tip our Romenesko bookmarks to David Shaw, the Los Angeles Times's magisterial media critic.
Timesian TMI in Howie Kurtz's coverage of Dean Baquet's promotion to editor of the Los Angeles Times:
