Conde Nast, having finally realized that, no, the web is not going to disappear, is beefing up its web presence. Blake Eskin, a former New Yorker fact-checker and the founder of Nextbook, has returned to the mag to work with web manager Matt Dellinger, who you may also know as the Vince Lombardi of media softball. Meanwhile, our beloved Andrew Hearst of Panopticist will be devoting his talents to Vanity Fair, where we assume he'll spend considerably less time creating cover mock-ups, instead working on making James Wolcott's blog look pretty.

The blogging power couple that conquered Metafilter (and some rag called the New Yorker) makes it official. Ex-SFers Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan say "I do" tomorrow in NYC.

If you're anything like us, you were drinking and dancing till the wee hours last night, celebrating the announcement of this year's National Magazine Award finalists. Such excitement! Such drama! Such drug-addled nightmares of being stampeded by a herd of bronze elephants! In the sober light of morning, finally, there's a chance to ponder some of the great metaphysical questions raised by yesterday's announcement:

'New Yorker' Cartoon Caption Contest [Daily Transom]

Keith "Don't Call Me Clarkson" Kelly reports on Wenner Media's Black Tuesday, when Men's Journal editor Michael Caruso lost his DeskJet and decided to quit. In the aftermath, the staff looks to management for inspiration:

• "Another decade, another lengthy Harper's state of the novel essay." [Media Mob]
• You'd better shatch up that DVD collection of every New Yorker issue ever while you still can, because someone might be having an electronic rights problem down the line. [Boston Globe]
• And speaking of The New Yorker, Ken Auletta's piece is all about how when a national chain owns your newspaper, you totally don't have to feel obligated to try very hard anymore. [E&P]
• Wolf Blitzer insists his name is real. His integrity, not so much. [Post-Gazette]

We were reading the New Yorker the other night, trying our damnedest to get through the Talk of the Town (we're of the firm belief that so long as one reads at least that much of the magazine every week, one shant be doomed to literary hell), when we got to an item on an effort that managed to belittle an arrogant lawyer and raise money for Katrina victims at the very same time. It wasn't the story itself that caught our attention, however. It was the fact that one of the story's subjects is a woman who writes for Fox's heavenly cracktard drama The O.C.

• "ABC, CBS Secretly Search for Anchors," says AP hed. Yes, no one had any idea. [AP via Newsday]
• Shocker: Plame fallout makes sources less likely to trust reporters' promises of anonymity. [AJR]
• And another shocker: Bush SCOTUS nominee doesn't like the press. [NYT]
• Slightly more Americans trust the media than don't. Rejoice! [Gallup]
• Media more interested in Cocaine Kate than in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's stock sale. Can't imagine why. [Media Matters]
• Friday's kick-off party for The New Yorker Festival featured James Woolsey, Jonathan Franzen, and Gilbert Gottfried. [WWD]
• Mags hold benefits for Katrina victims. [MIN]

• How much of an idiot do you have to be to not tell the difference between a Target ad and the New Yorker's editorial content? This much of an idiot. In his defense, though, the New Yorker staff was drunk in Prospect Park when they came up with the idea. [Miami Herald]
• TimesSelect = anal sex, somehow. Paying for content is painful, we know, but the Times just wants us to know if we love it as much as we say we do. [CopyRanter]
• Everyone's been all nice to the press lately for suddenly noticing that there are poor people. We think it may be almost time to roll some of that praise back a little. Here to help is MSNBC's Lisa Daniels, demonstrating an impressive grasp of race relations and an inspiring willingness to ignore her own network's coverage. [MMFA]
• Super-advanced audience behavior research (involving "the internets") says we may be stuck with Jason Lee's crankstache and that god-awful President Thelma show for the rest of the year. Sorry. [NYT]

A tipster reports:

Unfortunately, his lucky Gap khakis failed him.

Per yesterday's news, we're helping out the Occidental Alumni Association with their latest mailing:

From the New Yorker:

• Mediabistro scores a Mo Rocca humor piece. No, it's not so funny, but you try doing 1,000 words on Judy Miller and Lil' Kim. [MB]
• Now on eBay, an original first issue of The New Yorker. Only $200. [emdashes]
• Inspired by Rob Haskell's Katie Holmes profile, Simon Dumenco pines for some Scott McClellan/Karl Rove slash fiction. [Ad Age]
• "What I Told the Grand Jury." By Matt Cooper. [Time]
• American Media, Schwarzenegger make deal, then terminate it. [NYT]

The NYT takes a look at Greg Gutfeld's tenure as editor of Stuff, and his abrupt departure earlier this week. Gutfeld contends that his bosses just didn't get his sense of humor. Gutfeld, who got kicked out of grade school for lighting firecrackers in class, continued with the pranks through most of his editorial career. Stuff featured public mockings of other magazines such as having then GQ editor Art Cooper's handwriting analyzed, responded to letters sent to Entertainment Weekly (an oldie but a goodieSPY used to answer letters to the New Yorker), and running a "correction" that said, "In last month's issue of Esquire, we thought we read something pretty interesting; turns out, we were just staring at a wall." Gutfeld's off-the-page stunts were even better. He sent a group of dwarf actors to disrupt a magazine panel and wore a bearskin rug to a fashion show. I know Gutfeld's a pain in the ass, but I think Stuff is going to be incredibly boring now. Then again, if he's looking for things to do, we could always use another unpaid intern.
A publishing pest moves on [NYT]

Tina Brown, on her decision to invite entertainment mogul Barry Diller and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell to participate in her talk show: "There must have been a good reason why I had decided to team these two people together in the first place. It was some creative high concept rationale about them both being mavericks in different spheres. I must have been insane to invite two of the smartest people I know to come all the way out to a shake-down cruise in a TV studio in New Jersey. Was I on drugs? I should have booked Celine Dion."
The Washington Oscars [Times2]

The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten profiles Francis McInerney, a "top reviewer" at Amazon whose name can be found in the acknowledgements of The Da Vinci Code, a surprise NYT bestseller. McInerney has done over 800 reviews. (Alas, no James Frey; no Devil Wears Prada.) It appears to be a competitive hobby: "other reviewers sometimes create multiple e-mail accounts and repeatedly vote 'not helpful' on his reviews in an attempt to catch up with him. 'As soon as Amazon started ranking people, everything in human nature that�s associated with being competitive came out,' [McInerney] said."

Acknowledged [New Yorker]

Yesterday's insolent poking of the New Yorker resulted in more poking elsewhere: "Setting: The M4 Limited. Dramatis Personae: the commuting population of Manhattan, and a male writer of a certain age, wearing an insouciantly knotted ascot, who appears to have recently traveled to France. The population throws off dozens of make-your-day anecdotes, which the straphanging scribe strains to sample. Writer [thinking out loud]: 'Oh-la-la, this is great material! Certainement, I could get 3,000 words out of this, pas de probleme !"
Adam Gopnik's Metropolitan Diary [Greg.org]

The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik takes a city bus and marvels at the mystery of it all. The bus! A protean microcosm where a seemingly innocuous interaction has A Larger More Profound Meaning! The bus is a busbut oh, so much more than a bus! All hail the city bus! (Yay, bus!)
The people on the bus [New Yorker]

From Lauren Weisberger's (roman-a-clef about Vogue) The Devil Wears Prada: "...I recognized the description immediately from a New Yorker article I'd just read. It seemed the entire book world was eagerly anticipating his next contribution and couldn't shut about the realism wiith which he depicts his heroine...The critics had gone crazy over the first book, hailing it as one of the greatest literary achievements of the twentieth century...The New Yorker piece had included an interview in which the author had called Christian "a force for years to come" in the book industry, but one with "a hell of a look, a killer style, and enough natural charm that would ensurein the unlikely event that his literary success did nota lifetime of success with the ladies."