"Jay Leno" issues his response to Conan's letter.

We haven't done one of these alumni reports in a while, so why not? Today we have Defamer's former founding editor scoring a new gig and a former Gawker editor imploring her freelancing colleagues to put some pants on.

In today's famous people Twitter stunts, talk-show lesbian Ellen DeGeneres wanted a million Twitter followers by today. She's almost 13% there! Meanwhile Jon Favreau has taken celebrity Twitter posting to its logical conclusion.

[Mood: Unsettling mix of trouser-soiling fear and misguided hope. Song: "The One Where Everyone On 'Six Feet Under' Dies" by Sia]

Signing off from Yahoo!. Fade to black... about 3 hours ago
Celebrating unemployment with a giant margarita at Chevy's. 5 minutes ago [Silicon Alley Insider] (Semi-related: soon-to-be-former Defamer editor Mark Lisanti already started his Tumblr!)

NICK DENTON — I am, says Jacob Weisberg, doing a "Cheney" — heading the search committee for a new managing editor of Gawker, and choosing myself. Thanks for that. Yes, Brian Stelter had the story right. The site won't change much: it will remain focused on media gossip and pop culture; Alex Pareene will blog the breaking news; Maggie Shnayerson will continue to embarrass the magazine industry and permalancer-abusing media conglomerates such as Viacom; and Sheila McClear will cover book publishing. We'll be adding some new contributors over the next few weeks. To begin: Richard Morgan, who'll focus on the TV networks; Nick Douglas, a Gawker Media veteran, as our early warning antenna for Youtube clips and other pop culture phenomena on the web; Richard Lawson, better known as the commenter lolcait, will be running the site's new photo caption contest. Oh, and there's a surprise guest, this afternoon at 2pm, in the comments. After the jump, other new year changes at Gawker's sibling titles, if you're interested.

I don't know about you but when I search Facebook for "Neal Pollack," I get two Neal Pollacks, neither of whom are the Neal Pollack that I want to find. (I'm looking for the Alternadad writer and blogger Neal Pollack who writes about his son so much!) But when I search from my friend's account, I get three Neal Pollacks, the last of whom is the Neal Pollack I want to find. How could we tell? Though we couldn't view his profile, we could view his friends. They include Timedouche columnist Joel Stein and his lovely wife, Cassandra Barry; Biblically-living author AJ Jacobs; Defamer editor Mark Lisanti; Gawker's once-upon-a-time editor Elizabeth Spiers; and Sloane Crosley, the indefatigable publicist. Come on, Neal! We want to poke you so hard!