Maureen Dowd, this weekend: Obama should try to be "dynamic" like Sarah Palin, instead of all this "dithering" and bowing. Today, Ross Douthat writes a "reality-based" column on more or less the same topic!

Awww yeeeah. Did you know people are rapping at weddings? You KNOW what this means. Phyllis Nefler's gonna throw down on some sick rhymes over Robert Woletz-produced beat of the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations. Let the beat build, Phyllis:

Newspapers are dying, which means there will never be any more investigative journalism and politicians will screw whomever they want. But it's OK, because "innovative" new "partnerships" like the Chicago News Cooperative are here to produce real journalism.

• Oprah got all teary today when she announced she'll end her talk show two years from now. Meanwhile her upstart cable network announced it'll launch in January 2011, eight months before her talk show goes off the air. [EW, THR]
• Oprah isn't the only one planning her goodbyes. Bill Moyers announced today that he's retiring and will wrap up his weekly PBS show in April 2010. [NYT]
• Former NY1 anchor Dominic Carter was found guilty of misdemeanor attempted assault today for roughing up his wife last year. [NYDN]
• Last night's season finale of Project Runway was the highest-rated episode of the season; meanwhile, winner Irina Shabayeva describes what's next for her.
• The new Twilight sequel, New Moon, isn't just causing excitable teens to pass out in droves. It's also on track to break a few box office records. [AFP, AP]
• More on the bloodshed at BusinessWeek the past few days. [FBNY]
• Tina Brown has herself a new right-hand man at The Daily Beast. [NYP]
• Yet another book by reality TV star Lauren Conrad is on the way. [NYDN]
• Phil Falcone's Harbinger has cut his stake in the Times once again. [Reuters]
• The scariest news ever: Lou Dobbs has left open the possibility that he'll make a run for the White House in 2012. And he wasn't kidding. [Reuters]

Maureen Dowd's column today is a list of ways that she is just Sarah Palin.

The uniformly mustachioed Twitter addicts of the New York Times media desk are getting a documentary of their very own! Sounds pretty........interesting. Sorry, fell asleep there for a sec.

Cops investigating union corruption raided the New York Times' printing plant this morning [NYT].

Murdoch was on a panel with Indian mogul Ratan Tata and Mexican billionaire and future New York Times owner Carlos Slim. The question that elicited Murdoch's bizarre reference to New York Gov. David Paterson was clearly directed at Fox News: "How do we bring more civil discourse to the discussion, and stop appealing to the populists on the right and the left?"

Yes, that was a real pig's head illustrating the New York Times' negative review of Jonathan Safran Foer's anti-meat-eating book, Gawker contributor Joshua David Stein has confirmed. The letters to the editor should be especially entertaining next Sunday.

Independent warblogger Michael Yon created a minor furor earlier this month when he claimed, via Twitter, that the New York Times had "paid millions" to secure reporter David Rohde's release from the Taliban. Now he says he didn't mean ransom.

If love is a battlefield, and weddings are your infantry missions, Phyllis Nefler is Sherman, burning up the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations. Well, she just earned her Downfall meme: we've found our first weddings trend. OOH-RAH, Matrimony Marines.

Heath Care Industry Rule Number Four Thousand and Eighty: DC lobbyists are shady. And exactly how shady are the lobbyists of Washington DC who worked both sides of the health care debate? They ghostwrote speeches for politicians lining their pockets.

Where, exactly, are you supposed to start when the New York Times runs a Page One media piece on the word "douche"?

Rohde's remark suggests that other press blackouts, like the one enforced for seven month by the New York Times as it tried to negotiate Rohde's release, are currently in place regarding abducted reporters.

David Pogue does not call himself a journalist; that much he made clear during the controversy over his positive New York Times pieces on Apple's buggy operating system and obfuscating CEO. So what is he, then? A "Visionary." (Updated)

Blogger behind "Kenneth in the (212)," is a NYT News Service union-busting/layoff victim, "strangely unbitter."

With 100 buyoutlayoffs already assured by the end of the year, the New York Times is tossing in a bit more good news for employees: 25 additional layoffs, thanks to the magical economics of outsourcing.

Yesterday, fancy media types got together at the New York Times building to remember recently deceased columnist William Safire. The small talk, naturally, centered on the expensive schools where fancy media types send their kids.

So it appears that fashion went directly from the 1990s to the 1890s in a single season. (We were in the 1990s last, right? I can never tell!) According to this Times fashion piece, Victorian style is hot hot hot:

All you do is take some element of popular culture, like a popular television show, and then ask, provocatively: Is society itself changing in response to this pop culture thing? Today: Glee makes chorus groups "cool" again.