Longtime New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan has taken a job as creative director at Condé Nast Traveler, as expected. The gig gives the newsman time for cushy "reflecting":

Former New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan has landed at Condé Nast Traveler as the magazine's new creative director. [WWD]

• Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says he has no plans to take the New York Times Co. private, despite "brutal conditions" that threaten his paper's survival. [NYT]
• Meanwhile, Moody's has downgraded the NYT Co.'s credit rating. [E&P]
• A few theories on why Peter Kaplan departed Jared Kushner's Observer, and what's in store for Kaplan—and the paper—in the future. [WWD]
• Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta is the new CEO of MySpace. [WSJ]
• Is GE looking to sell NBC Universal to Time Warner? It's possible! [TDB]
• Ambushing the ambusher: Staking out the home of Jesse Watters, the Fox News producer who stalks liberals for Bill O'Reilly. [Gawker]

Longtime New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan is leaving the paper to, okay, "spend more time with the family," but why did he really quit? Perhaps...he'd had enough of rich young NYO owner Jared Kushner?

• Chris DeWolfe is out as the CEO of News Corp.-owned MySpace. [CNN]
• More on Peter Kaplan's split from Jared Kushner's Observer, and the rumor Kaplan is now heading to Condé Nast Traveler. [NYT, WWD, DHD]
• ABC has renewed 12 series, including Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. [THR]
• Viacom, the parent company BET, is planning to start up a new cable TV channel for middle-aged African-Americans. [NYT]
• Barry Diller is looking to shed his email newsletter Very Short List. Bob Pittman and Jared Kushner have taken a look; co-founders Kurt Andersen and Michael Jackson are considering a management buyout. [NYP]
• The New York Times Co. foundation is suspending its grants and no longer matching employees' charitable donations. [Gawker]

Following his departure as editor of the New York Observer yesterday, Peter Kaplan is set to land at Condé Nast Traveler, Women's Wear Daily reports. It's a cushy gig he's earned.

It's as impossible to imagine the New York Observer without Peter Kaplan as it is to imagine him without a paper to edit. As he told Gawker, "I love my paper and my staff desperately."

Peter Kaplan, the longtime editor of the New York Observer, is resigning from the paper on June 1. To spend more time with his family, he says.

Peter Kaplan, the Observer's long-running editor-in-chief, is stepping down effective June 1. "I wanted to take care of my family," he said, adding that "his next dream job is to get on the frontlines to figure how to save journalism." [DHD, Gawker, NYO]

New York Observer owner and boy wonder Jared Kushner just bought a ("sexy") new $3.2 million apartment. In other news, we hear he'd like out of that paper. If only.

In 2008, Todd was great as a freewheeling political director and straight-man to Chris Matthews on MSNBC, but he's choking as NBC's White House correspondent. Now, he may get a chance for redemption.

Our friends at the Observer report that you can now pick up a copy of your favorite salmon-colored weekly at select Starbucks locations around town. The NYO website even has a handy little map that will show you which outposts are now stocking the paper. Yes, one of them appears to be floating in the Hudson River off 31st Street, but it's possible that Starbucks recently introduced a floating café and we weren't notified. Either way, enjoy! [NYO]

• President Obama's first Congressional address drew in 33.6 million viewers last night, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen. [ML]
• It was Chris Matthews who muttered "Oh, God" on MSNBC last night, right when Bobby Jindal was about to deliver the Republican response. [Politico]
• Fourth-quarter profit declined 77 percent at the Washington Post Co. [NYT]
• Remember the DABA Girls? Yea, well, much of what they told the Times was BS, which is why the paper issued a correction today. [Newsweek, NYT]
• The CW has renewed a bunch of shows, including 90210, Smallville, America's Next Top Model, and—most importantly—Gossip Girl. [Variety]
• Ex-Domino editor Deborah Needleman is "spending more time at the gym" in order to acquire "one of those Connecticut-housewife bodies," FYI. [MM]
• Jared Kushner may be cutting a deal to sell the Observer at Starbucks. [NYP]

Is Jared Kushner's family real estate business having trouble subsidizing the cash-bleeding New York Observer? Maybe: Editors told one writer about orders to delay freelancer payments.

We always thought of NBC's Andrea Mitchell as a prime example of the utter failure of television news departments to police glaring conflicts of interest, but apparently she is a gay icon!

After igniting controversy throughout North America with his comments to the Observer, Web attention-trolling expert Rex Sorgatz backtracked. Or, as he put it, cleared some things up.

First New York bloggers were incensed by Rex Sorartz's caddish self-promotion in the New York Observer; now fellow Midwesterners are raising questions about the life story he floated in the paper.

The commercial real estate market is tanking. Jared Kushner, the owner of the New York Observer, is invested up to his neck in that market. Is it time to start jumping to conclusions?

Jared Kushner, the Ivanka Trump-dating New York Observer publisher, once promised a Politicker for all 50 states. Yeah, so much for that. A tipster reports: "all of the non-East Coast sites are shutting down."

Did you know the Observer is subsidized by an illicit slush fund? It shamefully is, according to a lawsuit filed by the former president of one of the Kushner Companies. When developer Charles Kushner bought a $1.8 billion office tower, he routed $18 million back to himself as commission on the mortgage, then allegedly siphoned $5 million off that for son Jared's cash-bleeding weekly newspaper.