• Scribner won the non-race to publish Laura Bush's memoir. [AP]
• The Times is now selling ads on the front page of the paper. [NYT]
• Movie ticket sales totaled $9.6 bil. in 2008, down 1 percent from '07. [NYT]
• Is HuffPo worth $200 million? Not so much, says Simon Dumenco. [AdAge]
• Publishing companies are cutting perks, in case you haven't heard. [NYT]
• Howard Kurtz profiles Liz Claman, who left CNBC for Fox. [WaPo]
• Michael Phelps will now be pitching Mazdas in China. [Bloomberg]
• Marley & Me was No. 1 at the box office for a second week. [THR]

Good morning sunshine! It's January, which means the horrible media advertising apocalypse has now begun. But not to worry, media lovers; it's only affecting every famous book, magazine, and newspaper publisher:

It once might have raised hackles for the Times to carry a display ad on the front page. Now the only scandal is that the paper waited so long.

After backtracking on a comparison between Caroline Kennedy and Sarah Palin last week, the Times aired such a juxtaposition today. But its headline spun her aloofness positive.

How would someone come away with that impression? The headline is so complex and nuanced! As headlines tend to be! [Times]

Awesome news! The lobbyist who either had an affair with John McCain or convinced his staff that she intended to have an affair with John McCain is suing the New York Times.

Vicki Iseman, the Washington lobbyist who was linked romantically to John McCain in a New York Times cover story back in February, is now suing the paper for $27 million. [Fox News]

• Despite the change in moderators, NBC's Meet the Press continues to dominate the Sunday morning competition. [THR]
• MTV has canceled 50 Cent's reality show. [NYP]
• The New York Times Co. is busy trying to raise capital, but the company may have to take more radical action to turn the ship around. [Reuters]
• Magazine editors on how to find happiness in 10 minutes or less. [WWD]
• It's been a lousy year for most media moguls, but Liberty Media's John Malone appears to have had the least miserable one. [NYT]

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are locked in an obsessive death match. Only one newspaper can survive! But until one slays the other, they're mimicking each other's every move.

In today's NYT Book Review, media critic David Carr kinda savaged Michael Wolff's Rupert Murdoch bio. After the jump, see Wolff's vicious response via Facebook status line. Aren't media nerds cute when they fight?

She writes, "Did you hear the one about the stockbroker who’s been sleeping like a baby? Every hour, he wakes up and cries." I can't imagine this is a McCain original — sounds like an old one — but see him tell it yourself at the beginning of this clip from his Nov. 12 appearance on The Tonight Show.

Yesterday, we learned Caroline Kennedy is able to say "you know" twelve times in under a minute. Now that the entire NYT interview transcript is online, we know how much she loves "you know."

The holidays turn our thoughts to love and family. But the "m4m" section of Craigslist, usually a venue for anonymous hookups, is a strange place to begin one's soulmate quest. That didn't stop one reporter!

Could the New York Times default on its loans? If the cash-short newspaper concern does not unload its stake in the Boston Red Sox soon, it could face a fastball from creditors.

Ad sales at the New York Times dropped 21 percent in November. Condé Nast, the fancy magazine publisher, could see revenue drop 30 percent in the first quarter of 2009. The advertising drought is here.

• Katie Couric is still in third place, but her ratings are up considerably. [AP]
• CBS is the only network that has seen viewership rise this season. [Reuters]
• Portfolio's attempt to juice sales with a new cover strategy was a dud. [NYO]
• Ad revenue at the NYT fell 20% last month compared to a year ago. [AP]
• The Times has teamed with Riverhead to publish Obama: The Historic Journey, a book of with photos and essays, in February 2009. [Politico]

The Times is totally laying into its publisher's close friend Caroline Kennedy today! And on a day when so many people will be reading political news! Err, hmmm....

The Times may have backed off from its comparison of Caroline Kennedy to Sarah Palin last week, but there was no retreat in today's coverage of the senate hopeful's finance secrets.

The Times accurately compared Caroline Kennedy's "controlled" press strategy to that of Sarah Palin. A Kennedy supporter buttressed that view on MSNBC. So why did the Times delete the comparison forever?

The White House has issued not one but two press releases accusing the New York Times of "gross negligence" in blaming George W. Bush's policies for the housing bubble.