• Judging from her Golden Globes appearance, actress Hilary Swank is not taking her impending divorce from Chad Lowe all that well. [Go Fug Yourself]
• Before you sacrifice your soul and take that i-banking job, know your banks and the types of assholes they employ. [Brooklyn to Harlem • Jared Leto takes his craft so damn seriously, he'll eat 2847145 Twinkies if need be. [Popsugar]
• Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's sonogram made its way to eBay; the site has since removed the auction seeing as, well, even we think that shit is mildly sick. [CourtTV]
• Bucky Turco of Animal has managed to find himself in our local tabloids oh, like, 600 times now. But if they can't spell your name right, it just doesn't count. [NYDN]
• Admit it: You're totally staying in tonight to watch Skating With Celebrities. It's like Dancing With the Stars meets The Cutting Edge, and you dare to pretend that this doesn't matter? Uh, TOEPICK, bitches! [Slate]

When we saw the front page of today's Post, we were a teensy bit horrified by the juxtaposition of Golden Globe non-winner Eva Longoria (ensemble wins are for individual losers) with a headline regarding poor little Nixzmary Brown, the 7-year-old girl who was tortured and beaten to death by her own parents. Watching the Globes wasn't that bad — that Steve Carell is such a doll. How can someone even place these two items on the same front page?

• The Post and the News, after years of fighting a circ war, will now be fighting a real ad-sales war, too. Fun! [Ad Age]
• OK! isn't so much, so price drop TK soon. [Independent (London)]
• It's a shitty time to be a journalist. Or, at least, to be a real journalist, the kind of who writes shit the government cares about. [NYer]
• 60 Minutes suddenly likes sports stories. Which we're sure nothing to do with ratings, at all. [NYT]

At least they had different headlines this time, and our refined eye appreciates the ever-so-slight adjustment to the visual angle. Baby steps, darlings, baby steps.

• Lindsay Lohan admits to Vanity Fair that she's used drugs and struggled with bulimia. When we blow rails and boot our brunch, we usually go to Graydon Carter for confessional, too.
• Zeta Graff sues Paris Hilton for being a big, fat liar — but, as it turns out, her paid liar/publicist Rob Shuter might be just as bad.
• Peter Braunstein pleads not guilty to charges of sexual assault; guilty on all charges of looking incredibly frightening.
• Left befuddled by the state of the odd-amounted Metrocard, we fall victim to the strange intricacies of the card machine, only to find eventual redemption.
• Jon Stewart attempts to save the Oscars from total irrelevance.
• Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann and his wife, Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliot House, leave the company, but not without a handsome payoff.
• Marc Kramer is hired as CEO of the Daily News. Les who?
• Observer editor Peter Kaplan looks to save the precious pink paper with the power of Bruce Wasserstein.
• West Virginian miners die in tragic explosion; media runs inaccurate, opposite story in tragic miscommunication.
• And in more bad news: the health of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is not looking good .
• But cheer up, because Real Simple will soon suck on a tv near you!

It's Longhorns in a Texas Twist [NYDN]
A Vin-Stant Classic Win [NYP]

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.

• Go forth, little mischief makers, and make your own subway sign — just because you can. [Subway Fun]
• If you read that Times article about a month ago about the magically irritating converted schoolhouse shared by a bunch of creatives in Bushwick and thought, "Hey, that's neat," now's your chance to move in. You're an idiot, but, hey, we're not judging. [Craigslist via Lindsayism]
• How she gets the scoops: Daily News gossip girl Jo Piazza is a kissing bandit. [NYO]
• Three of the top seven most emailed Times articles pertain to macaroni and cheese, and yet we wonder why America is the land of the obese. [NYT]
• Only the brave should listen to the new Kevin Federline track. We, as we've noted before, are total pussies. Knock yourselves out, though, and tell us how it goes. [Yahoo! Music]
• Whether or not author JT Leroy is real, at least the experience of figuring him out is decidedly surreal. [Guardian]

• One Big Miscommunication
• Miscommunication Behind Mine Deaths Mix-Up
• Miscommunication Causes Emotional Outcry at Mining Site
• 'Miscommunication' Led Families to Believe 12 Miners Had Survived
• Miscommunication Provides 'Daily News' With Triple Power Wood Opp

You all know Dawn Eden, right? Former NY Post headline writer canned for being too vocal on religious issues, rescued by the Daily News, and eventually got a book deal because that's what publishing houses eat for lunch these days? OK, she just made my day. I may never post again. (Hold your applause.) When I asked for tips earlier I was desperate enough to ask for pics of your mom. She did not fail.

Let's clear up this whole Hanukkah business before more space is wasted in a major daily. (For crissakes, two-year olds are getting drunk on Long Island way before the summer rental season and that shit doesn't report itself!) Helen Kennedy of the NY Daily News tries to wrap her hands around the ball of candle wax that is the sticky mystery of Hanukkah's accepted spelling. Variations offered are:

• 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]

You've got to hand it to the New York Post. Not only did Rupert Murdoch's scrappy tab pull off a major coup yesterday by hiring away the top business exec at the rival Daily News, but in so doing the Posties also pioneered an entirely new recruiting technique. Usually, companies seeking new talent make sure to lavish them in praise and compliments. The Post, however, managed to lure Les Goodstein with insults.

The Daily News has an exclusive interview with Angele Braunstein, mother of alleged pervy firefighter Peter Braunstein. 71-year-old Angele visited her son in Bellevue yesterday and then spoke with the News, prompting them to run "He's Still My Boy" and "He Broke His Mom's Heart" headlines. You have to feel sorry for her, really: like a good mother, she has unflinchingly loved her son in the face of crisis (while only slightly selling him out to the press when appropriate).

It's not been the most wonderful time of the year for the poor children of the Daily News, as EIC Michael Cooke departed earlier this month, leaving editorial director Martin Dunn to play editor in the interim. And because you always kick 'em when they're down and fetal, News Corp has proudly announced the hiring of Les Goodstein, formerly the COO and president of the Daily News, as their shiny new Senior Vice President. We do admire Rupert Murdoch's restraint, however, in not stealing columnist Lenore Skenazy's lunch money.

The Daily News gets today's Smarty Pants Award: While today's news may indeed be the transit strike, most of us are still hungry for Peter Braunstein. It was a wise choice, then, to include a front-page photo of former Women's Wear Daily reporter and sexual assault suspect Peter Braunstein in handcuffs and scrubs. When we're at the newsstand, we always opt for the paper that features humiliating imagery. And those jailbird slippers certainly are a far cry from the glory days of stiletto molestation.

It's bad enough when the newspaper misspells your name. It's worse when your own newspaper misspells your name. And it's even worse when your own newspaper misspells your name on your own column.

• Mort Zuckerman pulls the plug on Radar; hearts are broken, dreams are shattered, and business cards are destroyed.
• The Transit Workers' Union goes on half-strike, which means we'll continue to wait for news on when shit gets really inconveniencing.
• Now that Michael Cooke has ditched the Daily News, editorial director Martin Dunn is so inconvenienced to act as editor-in-chief. Meanwhile, Orla Healy returns from the Post and Lloyd Grove finds himself an innocent, new fluffer.
• There's no time like the holidays for some serious, ass-kicking lay-offs.
• We never thought we'd see the day, but Andrew Krucoff is finally, technically, a man.
• MediaLand continues to celebrate the season with boozy staff parties; New York magazine goes so far as to bring out the Karaoke torture device.
• Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. gets a gentle spanking while Judy Miller hits the high seas.
• PETA continues to cheerfully annoy Anna Wintour.

Oh, those media companies are really full of the Christmas spirit.

To compensate for your short-term memory loss, a recap of some major shifts at the Daily News: Colleen Curtis recently left her position as Managing Editor Features for the warmth of Diane Sawyer's lap at Good Morning America. Even more recently, editor-in-chief Michael Cooke left — after a mere ten months at the helm — to return to Chicago, where he'll hopefully get his shoe fetish under control.