• Oh, bad job, Keller and Sulzberger. Finally public editor Barney Calame grows a pair and decides to write about something interesting and relevant — why you chose to hold the domestic-spying store for a year — and you guys promptly snip them off. Now he'll never work up the nerve again, alas. [NYT]
• The Elizabeth-and-Bob show starts at ABC News tonight, and we're pretty sure the senior citizens who still watch the evening newscasts are aquiver with excitement. That, or Parkinson's. One of the two. [USAT]
• Last week Forbes said WashPostCo would be the Journal. Now Jim Cramer says Murdoch will. [NYM]
• Joel Stein and Maureen Dowd are feuding. God knows who to root for. [LAT]
• 2005 was, essentially, Vanity Fair's very bestest year ever. [WWD]
• Rumor has it the Underneath the Robes dude is set to become the new Wonkette. Hmm. Interesting. [WSJ; NYO]
• NYT lurves NY1. [NYT]
• Chung and Povitch have a new show and think they're Hepburn and Tracey. Which is sort of cute, in a deluded way. [NYM]

• Judge rules that Stallone's Sly magazine won't be confused for a shoe-fetishist rag. Which is kind of too bad. [E! Online]
• Reuters: "Men want facts, women seek relations on Web." Clearly the reporters don't know any gay men, who we're pretty sure seek all sorts of deviant "relations" on the Web. [Reuters via Yahoo]
• Breaking: Reporters like to drink. [NYT]
• Jossip presents his 2005 media awards, though we don't quite understand why "Graydon Carter's Deep Throat discovery" is a nominee for "biggest newsmedia mishap." [Jossip]
• Bossman's stuck in London, and WWD clearly has absolutely no real news to report. [WWD]

• Time Inc. is likely to cut as many as 400 jobs next year, maybe as early as the end of January. There is no joke to be made here. [NYP]
• How much did Mort Zuckerman want to hang onto to the News's Les Goodstein? Enough to — perish the thought — interrupt a vacation to try to convince him to stay. [WWD]
• In the crystal ball: Yahoo and Google will build news divisions in 2006, and the Bancrofts will finally sell the Journal — to an alliance of WashPostCo and Warren Buffett. [Forbes]
• Mag circ shit continues hitting the fan. [BW]
• Jon Friedman spent the strike watching NY1, and he developed a crush on the stations — and on transit reporter Bobby Cuza. [MW]

• Media observers make predictions for 2006, and prove that everyone — not just us — loves a good Radar punchline. [MB]
• Magazine editors make resolutions for 2006, and remind us that no one — not even us — is amused by a Blackberry joke. [WWD]
• Monday Night Football is dead. Long live Monday Night Football. [NYT]
• Bossman Nick is, apparently, a sexy geek. [Wired News]

• Megalomaniacal Jann Wenner is now picking on Us editor Janice Min, which doesn't seem like a smart thing to do. [WWD]
• Now The Washington Post has a staff blogger, too. [Washingtonian]
• Jon Friedman visits an EW focus group and finds that subscribers really, really love the magazine. Freakishly so, to be honest. [MW]
• Daily News readers overwhelming think Bob Schieffer should stay on permanently as the CBS Evening News anchor, according to Richard Huff's "highly unscientific" poll. [NYDN]
• If you look really closely, you can find Warren Buffett's hand in Time's Person of the Year issue. No, it's not holding cash. [NYP]

• The strike's overlooked victims: Those freebie papers you don't really want to read but grab anyway when the dude shoves them at on your way into the subway station. [NYP]
• CBS Evening News will — finally — be No. 2 within a few months, and Katie Couric will eventually be its next anchor, outgoing EP Jim Murphy predicts. [Phil. Inquirer]
• Now Al Sharpton says he won't do the proposed Al in the Family sitcom. This sort of breaks our heart, not least because we spend all that time a few weeks ago Photoshopping his head onto Carroll O'Connor's body. [AP via USAT]

• Bush summoned Sulzberger and Keller to Washington earlier this month in a last-ditch attempt to get them not to run the domestic-spying story, reports Jon Alter. [Newsweek]
• And, says Greg Mitchell, as the Times's handling of the domestic-spying story increasingly seems to be another major management fuckup at the paper, George W. Bush proves he is the true Teflon president. [E&P]
• Bigtime journalists aren't paid enough, argues Slate's Daniel Gross, who, charmingly, hasn't yet realized that of course we'll never make enough to live like real human beings anywhere in New York City. [Slate]
• Redesigned TV Guide, which now looks basically nothing like TV Guide, is doing great numbers. But they may not be great enough. [WWD]
• Carl Icahn, who hasn't been happy with Time Warner management in a while, ain't at all happy with the proposed TW-Google deal. [NYP]
• Radar published what might have been the best sentence of magazine writing this year: "In 2004, a man playing Pluto was run over and killed by a 'princess float' in the Share a Dream Come True parade at Disney World's Magic Kingdom." Plus Peter Carlson's other "wild and wacky" magazine moments from 2005. [WP]

• More cuts are coming at Time Inc., according to David Carr. [NYT]
• Time Warner picks Google search over Microsoft for AOL, and sells the the search company a 5 percent stake in AOL — which means Parsons ain't selling off the whole thing. [NYT]
• The Times gets it from two sides on wiretapping story: Some media folks don't like the paper held the story for so long, while Bush doesn't like that the paper pointed out he's spying on citizens. [USAT]
• Jon Friedman thinks the new Nightline sucks. [MW]
• Media Guy Simon Dumenco looks back at the 10 big media-news stories of 2005 — nearly all of them bad for the biz — and realizes where it'll all end: Google Hunting and Gathering. [Ad Age]

• Jann Wenner finally gets his reality TV show, and Mort Zuckerman won't let the de-Radaring interfere with his ski vacation. [WWD]
• NBC's tanking. Fire Jeff Zucker? No, promote him! [NYT]
• The good, bad, and ugly of medialand in 2005. [MW]
• After 148 years in Boston, The Atlantic boards the Metroliner and sets off for Washington. [Boston Phoenix]

• Arianna: "The qualities I look for in a man are the qualities I look for in a blogger: passion, relentlessness, risk taking, and a light touch." [Esquire]
• Mags remake Katie Couric's life. Because she could never afford to do it on her own, of course. [WWD]
• Valerie Plame is a MacGuffin, says Frank Rich. [LA City Beat]
• Ford cannot say no to the gay mafia. [NYT]

• 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]

• Ken Auletta is right about Pinch Sulzberger, Timesmen tell Keith Kelly. [NYP]
• George Stephanopoulos named ABC's chief Washington correspondent. And he doesn't even have to share the title. [B&C]
• Frank Rich is a New York celebrity, speaking pitch-perfect Manhattan liberalism, and that's his problem, says Bryan Curtis. [Slate]
• Atlantic publisher David Bradley to back 02138, a "Vanity Fair-like alumni magazine for Harvard students," which, we imagine, will increasingly be littering the 100TKs. [Boston Globe]

• Bob Woodward, Judy Miller, Mitch Albom, and Newsweek had the worst media years this year, says Jon Friedman. We can't help but think that's not quite fair to Newsweek. Or, really, to Albom. Or even, ultimately, to Woodward. But Judy? Yeah, her year sucked. [MW]
• Time's Viveca Novak tells her Plame tale. Are we the only ones a little amazed at how long she kept her bosses in the dark? Weird. [Time]
• Hollywood gives the press a bad name, says David Carr. We'd argue the press doesn't help, either. [NYT]

• Time's Viveca Novak testifies to Plame grand jury, and — eschewing Judy Miller's wait-a-few-weeks model — she'll write about it in next week's Time. [NYT]
• MPA figures out what'll save magazines: This crazy new thing called the Internet! [Mediaweek]
• Actress won't get naked for VF, and fires publicist who set up the shoot. We're a little bit in love now, to be honest. [Radar]
• Salon.com "wants to be known for more than polemics." Who knew. [MW]
• In Touch runs "Exclusive: Jessica's Breakup Diary." Which is great — except, of course, that Jessica had nothing to do with it. [WWD]

• ABC's Vargas and Woodruff announcement, says Tina Brown, proves that Norma Desmond is still big, it's the networks that got small. [WP]
• Newspapers! Not in as bad shape as you think they are! (Not yet, at least.) [NYT]
• Last week, the Today show hit 10 straight years — 520 weeks — as the top-rated morning show. Which we're sure will somehow be construed as further evidence of Katie Couric's divaness. [NYT]
• BusinessWeek to shutter overseas editions. [NYT]

• Does Jann want to sell off Wenner Media? [WWD]
• And does Time Warner no longer want to sell off part of AOL? [NYT]
• Former Regan Media flack Paul Crichton could be considering suing his old boss Judith over her characterization of his departure. Oh, the fun never stops over there. [Radar]
• Washington Post Magazine Reader Peter Carlson discovers the charms of erstwhile New York Presser and onetime Spicoli gondolier Matt Taibbi. [WP]
• ABC went with Vargas and Woodruff only after the network couldn't reach a deal with Charlie Gibson. [NYT]
• And apparently there's this cool blog revolutionizing Hollywood coverage. [LA Mag]

• The latest magland roman a clef is by Jane Pratt's former assistant. But this time this boss is the heroine — and her boss is the bad guy. What an interesting twist. [NYP]
• Maureen Dowd says the Times is over the Judy Miller fiasco and now "everything's fantastic." She also says the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes, and that U.S. forces have turned the corner there. [Texas Monthly]
• It's not just Maxim; Housewife Nicollette Sheridan will appear on any magazine that'll have her. [Folio: (second item)]
• Blogger book deals continue apace: Dan Radosh's Rapture Ready! TK in 2008. (Yeah, we know he does a lot more than only blog, but why let facts get in the way of a good generalization?) [Radosh.net]

• This year's Conde Christmas lunch welcomed Fairchild and Golf Digest editors and publishers, too. "It's gotten too big," one vet sniffed to Keith Kelly, reminding us all why we love to hate the Nasties. [NYP]
• Did Martha Stewart's gang steal the idea for Blueprint from Time Inc. Well, no. It just seems like they did. [WWD]
• Rightwing loons from WSJ editorial page move their TV show from PBS to the far more hospitable Fox News. [LAT]
• Tina Brown believes Bob Woodward. And she would know, being something of an expert at becoming intoxicated by proximity to powerful sources. [WP]
• Oh good. It looks like there might be buyers for Knight Ridder newspapers, which is being forced to sell itself by the soulless private-equity group that owns a big chunk of the company. The likely new buyers? Private-equity groups! [WSJ]
• How do you know the Bushies have really gone too far in their payola gimmicks? When Richard Edelman — as in Edelman PR — blasts them for giving the flackery business a bad name. [Edelman.com]

• Hey, maybe newspaper readership isn't actually declining, if you count all those people who read papers on the web. Which would seem to make sense. [E&P]
• Syd Schanberg points out that old media will have to stick around in some form, because someone has to do the original reporting. To which we say: Duh. [VV]
• Jack Shafer says Daily Newser Lloyd Grove was right to piss on Time Warner's allegedly off-the-record Scalia event. Just like we said yesterday afternoon. [Slate]
• Judith Miller might put Lewis Libby in jail, but Time's Viveca Novak is key to keeping Karl Rove out, apparently. [WP]
• Tom Friedman sued for copyright infringement over World Is Flat cover art. By someone right here in the United States, no less. [E&P

• Simon Dumenco doesn't buy the revisionist history that Jann Wenner pushed out Kent Brownridge, but he knows the often-incompetent mag business will miss the man Dumenco dubbed Dr. Evil. [AdAge]
• New Plamegate wrinkle: Now the prosecutor wants to talk to Time's Viveca Novak, who's so far cooperating with the investigation. It's nice to officially know that at least one Novak is, even if the wrong one. [NYT]
• Bad news for our favorite gray-haired boytoy: Anderson Cooper's rating are down 19 percent relative to Aaron Brown's last week as anchor. [Mediaweek]
• It's hard being Bob Woodward these days. [WP]
• For its 1,000th issue, Rolling Stone to go 3-D on its cover. Because flashy sales gimmicks are always a sign of a strong, vibrant product. [NYT]
• Another reason you can never leave the city: Newly hired report at Manchester, N.H., newspaper is fired for having "a New York attitude." [Boston Phoenix]
• Hearst's new Quick & Simple simply ain't selling very quickly, suggesting the women's-mag market is cooling — or even cooled off. Also: Maxim learns to appreciate older women. [WWD (second and third items)]
• Four years later, the de-anthraxing of American Media's former HQ in Florida is nearly complete. They're still working on how to de-Bonnie. [Jossip]
• Kazakhstan takes four-page ad in New York Times to refute allegations made by Ali G's Borat. Next week, USPS will take four-page ad to refute allegations made by Seinfeld's Newman. [E&P]
• Good editors protect their staffers. Except, you know, when they don't. [MB]
• Forthcoming New York mag article on Hasidic sect ruffles feathers even before its published. [Canonist]