• Remember how Women's Wear reported last week that Mort Zuckerman's doesn't like how he's characterized in onetime News editor Ed Kosner's forthcoming memoir? Well, he still doesn't. And now he's demanding corrections. [NYP]
• OK! America is now apparently doing OK in America. [Guardian]
• Charlie Gibson knows he's old, and he hopes he doesn't get hit by a truck. [Newsweek]
• Ellen Levine got to pick her Good Housekeeping replacement: Prevention's Rosemary Ellis. [WWD]
• Obligatory Romenesko-isn't-working-today-but-we- still-are post. [Romenesko]

• Networks sue FCC to make it stand up to Parents Television Council right-wing nutjobs. One can dream. [WSJ]
• Joanne Lipman wants to steal James Stewart from The New Yorker for her new Conde biz mag — which nearly has a name. [NYP]
• More books were sold in 2005 than 2004. A sales uptick for a print medium? How unusual. [NYT]
• Former Conde editorial director James Truman has a prototype for his new Culture & Travel, which is not — not at all, he says — the art mag Si wouldn't let him do. [NYP]
• Mike Wallace once tried to kill himself. [NYDN]
• Hachette to launch Shock mag next week. It's "Life magazine for the new millennium," says founder Mike Hammer, formerly of Maxim and Stuff. We suppose this means its gross pictures — such as one of a rotting human head in the first issue — are shot by Margaret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. [WSJ]
• In his forthcoming bio, Ed Kosner is not very nice to Mort Zuckerman. We're just shocked. [WWD]
• Jack Shafer, de facto Times ombudsman, doesn't care for Howell Raines' new memoir. [Slate]
• NYTer Sharon LaFraniere wins $25K Michael Kelly Award. [Kelly Award]

From "Mort Bids for Philly Papers," by Janet Whitman, in today's Post:

[Click to enlarge.]

Mort Zuckerman is quickly realizing that the media business is much more fickle than real estate. The Times dissects The Daily News publisher's track record in media and paints a sobering picture of how the News is faring under his reign: a dip of 40,000 in circulation, a surging New York Post and a lack of "cachet" in the tabloid wars. The Times also points out Zuckerman's other media failures: the "struggling" U.S. News and World Reports, a failed attempt to resuscitate Radar and the fumbled launch of a Daily News gossip magazine. Yet, it appears a crumbling media empire is best kept in the family and Zuckerman still hasn't lost his sense patriarchal generosity:

Today's Daily News warmly — even sycophantically — welcomes the latest top executive Mort Zuckerman has lured to the paper, Marc Kramer. He joins as as CEO to replace recently defected COO Les Goodstein, who, apparently lacking any sort of meaningful non-compete in his contract, skedaddled to the Post and News Corp just last week. Kramer was at the News previously, as a labor lawyer in the '90s, before he decamped to The New York Times, from which he now returns.

• 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]

Presented without comment, the email Radar assistant editor Jed Heyman sent this afternoon to his fellow 2004 alumni of the Columbia Publishing Course:

• Ashlee Simpson is currently in a Tokyo hospital; the popster collapsed yesterday after her MTV Japan performance. The official line will likely be "exhaustion." Yeah, because trying to legitimately squeak out a note or two can really drain a girl. [Us Magazine]
• Did Mort Zuckerman pull the plug on Radar because the magazine refused to halt unflattering coverage of powerful suits like David Pecker and Mike Ovitz? Related: Is water wet? [Page Six]
• At the Church of Scientology's fundraiser for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project (exhale), Tom Cruise schmoozed while Katie Holmes sang Christmas carols. If that's not a war against Christmas, nothing is. [R&M]
• Vanity Fair refuses to pay the legal fees for columnist Dominick Dunne, who was sued by Gary Condit after suggesting the congressman was responsible for the death of Chandra Levy. Understandably, lending cash to Dunne would've deeply cut into editor Graydon Carter's cigarette budget. [Page Six]
• Perhaps in an effort to make President W. seem normal, former prez Jimmy Carter tells GQ that he once used a woman in a trance to locate a downed plane. [Lowdown]

Can't quite figure out why someone would sign on to fund on a nascent magazine then decide to pull that funding after only three issues? Can't understand why the investor would say he's willing to spend up to $25 million but then give up after only shelling out $10 mill? Unclear on why he blames poor advertising sales for the surrender when people within the mag say the next issue had the best sales of any?

You have no idea the opportunities in life that are closed to you when people mistakenly think you're the daughter of a multimillionaire developer and newspaper publisher. There are so many perks — so many interesting people to meet, so many freebies to be snagged — that are available to average folks like us but suddenly become off-limits when people think you're boldface spawn. And so we can understand why New York magazine contributing writer Alicia Zuckerman felt compelled to send this email to her colleagues today:

A reader writes: