• It's only been a week since Conan took over the top-rated Tonight Show, but David Letterman has already passed over him in the ratings. [NYT]
• Also: Dave Letterman's new contract will keep him at CBS through '12. [LAT]
• Yesterday the Boston Globe's largest union rejected the New York Times Co.'s proposed package of cuts. The NYT responded by implementing a 23 percent pay cut anyway and now the union is taking the matter to court. [NYT]
• Ratings are down for CNN's Lou Dobbs. And thank God for that. [NYO]
• It's official: Ari Emanuel is the new Mike Ovitz! Both the New York Times and The Daily Beast invoke Ovitz's name in lengthy pieces on "the pre-eminent power player in Hollywood" and "Hollywood's new don." [NYT, TDB]
• Sound the alarms! Swine flu has returned to Condé Nast! [Daily Intel]

The New York Times Co. reports today that it's retained Goldman Sachs to "manage the possible sale of the Boston Globe" and it "plans to request bids for Boston's major daily in the next couple of weeks." The paper hasn't indicated how much they're looking to get for the Globe, but if you'd like to get a head start and open the lines of communication, you'll find contact info for the man to talk to located on your left. If your budget is a bit more modest, but you're still interested in walking away with a NYT Co. cast-off, perhaps we can interest you in the Times jet? It's still on the market. And priced at a very reasonable $9.5 million, too! [Dealbook, Boston Globe]

Yesterday the Globe's main union rejected a proposal from its parent company, the New York Times, that would've resulted in 10% employee pay cuts. The Times then announced a 23% pay cut instead, which slightly upset the Globe's union.

• The Boston Newspaper Guild, the Boston Globe's largest union, narrowly rejected a package of pay concessions and benefit cuts last night. [NYT]
• David Letterman is close to signing a new, 3-year contract with CBS. [THR]
• Conan O'Brien has beat Letterman in the ratings every night since his show debuted last week. But that may very well change pretty soon. [Vulture]
• Rachael Ray's talk show has been renewed for two more seasons. Alas. [THR]
• Glenn O'Brien is out as Interview's editorial director. [Daily Intel, FWD]

Early this morning, at about 5AM, we were browsing through today's edition of the New York Times when we ran across David Carr's media column. Something about it struck us viscerally, so much so that we were unable to process it at the time and write anything about it.

• Is Harvey and Bob Weinstein's film company headed for bankruptcy? That remains unclear, although the Weinstein Co's decision to hire Miller Buckfire to restructure its finances isn't a good sign, that's for sure. [NYT]
• Members of the Boston Newspaper Guild are voting today whether to accept the package of pay cuts proposed by the New York Times Co. [PC]
• Stephen Colbert is broadcasting from Iraq this week. In addition to an interview with the president, Colbert will get a military-style makeover. [NYT]
• Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by a North Korean court late last night. The Obama administration has vowed to keep up its lobbying effort. And in the meantime, employees at Current TV—where both women work—continue to keep quiet about the matter, per instructions from network management. [NYT, AP, NYT]

The global economic downturn is forcing parents of Williamsburg hipsters to drastically scale back their monthly allowances, forcing many of them to turn to drastic measures to pay for their PBR and Edensoy, drastic measures like actually getting jobs.

On Tuesday, the New York Times' hosted a party for same-sex couples whose weddings have been featured in the Times' Weddings pages. Out.com has a wonderful, picturesque gallery of the attendees (including former NJ Governor Jim McGreevy). [Out.com

In your inexorable Thursday media column: Nickelodeon magazine folds, newspapers face threats from within and without, Glenn Beck is allegedly a superstar, and the answer to a question you didn't know you had:

When memes collide! Bethenny Frankel, one of our Real Housewives of New York beauties, was spotted in the lovely cafeteria of our favorite newspaper, the New York Times. She was looking skinny. Just like the paper!

• The newspaper industry may look to take a cue from the music business in its elusive hunt for new sources of revenue. Because, clearly, if there's one industry to gleam some wisdom from, that's the one. [MP, WSJ]
• The Justice Department is looking into whether tech giants like Yahoo! and Google violated antitrust laws in their recruiting efforts. [WaPo]
• NBC's two-part White House special scored big ratings. Conveniently, it also squeezed in plugs for every other show on the network. [HP, Newsday]
• Laura Ling and Euna Lee went on trial in North Korea today. [WaPo]
• Silvio Berlusconi is feuding with Rupert Murdoch. And so now Michael Wolff says he really likes Berlusconi. Business as usual, clearly. [Gawker, Reuters]
• Here's something really depressing to chew on: Glenn Beck is No. 81 on Forbes's "Celebrity 100" list and made $23 million last year. [Forbes]

How Twitter-addled is the New York Times newsroom? Well, it's gotten so bad that the newspaper's system administrators have cautioned the Twitter addicts against using their beloved Twitter syringe, "TweetDeck," to get on the microblogging service. It's crashing the system!

• Stephen Colbert will be Newsweek's guest editor next week. [NYO]
• Conan O'Brien's second Tonight Show dropped 30 percent from Monday's record-setting premiere, although that was probably to be expected. [THR]
• For the third straight month, MSNBC bested CNN in the cable news ratings. Fox News remained in first place, as usual. [Daily Finance]
• More bad news for CNN: Campbell Brown returned from maternity leave this week and immediately returned to fourth-place in the ratings. [THR]
• A new Harvard Business Review study reveals that 10 percent of Twitter users account for more than 90 percent of Twitter messages sent. [AdAge]
• Jon & Kate Plus 8 is still generating obscene ratings, sadly. [AP]

The outlook wasn't brilliant for Young Sulzberger that day; His stories had been boring, tho' his wit's on full display; But then an editor cried out, "AG! Come earn your pay!"; "Your presence is required at the baseball game—hey hey!"

In your merry Monday media column: Hearst Magazines is not dying quite so quickly as others (news!), the New York Times wants more of your money, a thing happens at 'Morning Joe,' Sun-Times people invite Bill Rancic to suck it, and more:

• Conan O'Brien makes his debut this evening as Tonight Show host. [BN, EW]
• Bravo is ditching its tagline "Watch what happens" and replacing it with "By Bravo." We'll just have to watch and see what happens with that. [AdAge]
• More on the recent ratings meltdown at CNN. [Politico]
• The Times Magazine will be 9 percent smaller starting in two weeks. [E&P]
• DirectTV chief Chase Carey is in talks to join News Corp. as Rupert Murdoch's second-in command, taking over for Peter Chernin. [THR, BN]
• Disney's animated pic Up was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. [THR]
• New York's cover story on Condé Nast, in case you missed it. [NYM]

When we mentioned yesterday that Pfizer had put two of its planes up for sale, we were reminded of that moment in late 2008 when every company in America seemed determined to dump their flying palaces in response to the downturn. That had us wondering about the fate of some of the jets that had been placed on the market in the waning days of 2008. Did Citigroup's Vikram Pandit manage to dupe someone into taking a couple of planes and a helicopter off his hands? What about that New York Times Co. jet? Sadly, very few of them have found a new home (or hanger) yet. But some of them are cheaper than ever! And since the thought of these jets sitting forlornly at Teterboro pains us all, we've rounded up a bunch of corporate planes that remain on the market. Print out the used-plane ad above, hand it around the office, and spread the word: A little word-of-mouth marketing goes a long way!

Come the fuck on, Liptak. Did we need another one of these? "Judge Sotomayor's sharp-tongued and occasionally combative manner—some lawyers have described her as 'difficult' and 'nasty'—raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen." She's mean to lawyers! That's bad now?

The Way We Live Now: Chewing the cud of resentment. The New York Times has assigned all of its reporters to ferret out and write up the most awkward and awful examples of opulence, as if they were news. Hey I wonder if Per Se's kitchen is nice, still?

In the good old days of the culture wars, your teenagers, after years of being raped by Satanist daycare workers, were all organizing "Rainbow Parties" and smoking weed three times more powerful than the stuff you smoked all the time in high school. Now they are just hugging?