Careful readers will have noticed something strange about the New York Post, today: there's less copy on each page, and a disconcertingly wide margin at the top and bottom, as if someone made a mistake. It's not. Rupert Murdoch's New York tabloid is shrinking, tomorrow, in honor of Earth Day; but the dimensions of the printed area were adjusted a day ahead of the actual paper, hence all the the white space. Rewind a second. "In honor of Earth Day?" Corporate America may kowtow to the environmentalists, but the Australian media mogul's News Corporation remains a bastion of planet-destroying bravado, surely.

Incidentally, the Murdoch imports at the Wall Street Journal continue to tread on the newspaper's delicate sensibilities. You'll remember Marcus Brauchli, the Journal's managing editor, had a speech ready to welcome his new overlords, but they never called on him. That was just the first humiliation.

Husband-of-Touby Jon Fine, who writes for Business Week when he's not being lassoed by his millionairess wife's trademark boa, sneaked a look at Rupert Murdoch's speed dial. The Australian media mogul's old cellphone is on display at the Newseum, that mausoleum of 20th-century media bric-a-brac, which Fine checked out this week. Murdoch's key phone numbers include those of his children, various executives at News Corporation-and, slightly less predictably, a Tunisian movie producer called Tarak Ben Ammar.

Since when is Newsday so hot? The paper consistently publishes the most boring front page of any of the Gotham tabloids, but the publication is clearly stirring the passions of corporate tycoons. Rupert Murdoch's interest emerged yesterday; now it's clear that the News Corp. CEO and Post owner must queue with other suitors interested in winning Newsday from money-hemorrhaging Tribune Company. Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman wants the paper for largely the same reason as Murdoch, which is to merge business-side offices and cut costs enough to drive the remaining, unaffiliated tabloid out of business. Long Island cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp. is bidding, perhaps so it can cross-sell ads from its cable system and local news channel into Newsday. It's not clear that the other two bidders are as serious as Murdoch, or can afford to be, but broker Citigroup is apparently planning a "soft auction." Newspaper analyst John Morton estimates Newsday could fetch $350 million to $400 million, down about half from its value five years ago. Kind of sad for what Morton described, in the Times' retelling, as "probably one of Tribune's more lucrative papers." [Times, WSJ]

New York has long been an anomaly among American cities: the metropolitan area supports four competing daily newspapers, the New York Times, the Post, Daily News and, in Long Island, Newsday. Maybe not for much longer. Crains, the business newspaper, claims Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation may have approached the owners of Newsday, Sam Zell's Tribune Company, with a bid. That the Australian media mogul would make such a bid is less a sign of confidence in the newspaper industry, and more an indication of the decline in print advertising, which has put pressure on all newspaper groups. It's only since the latest horrific numbers came out that Newsday's erratic owner, Sam Zell, has indicated Tribune may be willing to sell. (The conglomerate lost $78m in the fourth quarter.)

Wily old Rupert Murdoch. His media conglomerate, News Corporation, is in talks to merge its social network site, MySpace, with Yahoo, reports the Wall Street Journal. Why is this so clever?

Is Google a threat to traditional media? That notion is "naive and simplistic," executive David Eun tells I Want Media. "Journalists, news bureaus, that's not what we do." Smart! Which helps explain this chart: the search engine, at $171bn even after the stockmarket tumble, is worth more than the next three media conglomerates put together.

The virtues of going quietly are much overstated. Book publisher Judith Regan, an incredibly aggressive executive in an incredibly passive industry, was offered $6m after being fired by her employer, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. After she threatened to expose a call from a Murdoch henchman — urging her not to testify against her former lover, Bernie Kerik — the terms improved. Maybe she could have gotten a better deal if Kerik still had the potential to embarrass the former Republican front-runner, Rudy Giuliani. Even so, the rumored $20m-$25m payoff in today's settlement is a nice improvement over Murdoch's initial offer. (Update: Another source says more like $10m, though definitions may vary.) Even after legal fees, and a slanging match (anti-semite! Giu-lovers!) with some of the dirtiest players in politics and media. If anyone could out-slang Roger Ailes, the former Nixon aide who built up Fox News for Murdoch, it's Judith Regan.

Judith Regan, the maverick publisher fired from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation after she pressed ahead with a book by O.J. Simpson, has settled with her former employer. Regan is not an anti-Semite; Murdoch henchman, Roger Ailes, did not pressure her to keep quiet about her former lover, dodgy Giuliani aide Bernie Kerik; and O.J. is not guilty. Whatever. The only question: how much did Rupert Murdoch pay to make the increasingly deranged Regan Books founder shut up? Answer: not as much as she would would have received before the primaries began. Rudy Giuliani's campaign is faltering and, with it, Regan's leverage. It's moot whether Fox News creator and former Nixon aide, Ailes, pressured Regan to save the Giuliani's presidential bid. It's now beyond saving. Update: A newspaper source says Regan's settlement is $25m. Pah, nothing!

When mogul Rupert Murdoch was last heard talking about his British tabloid The Sun, he was complaining about how it had gone soft and crappy with nothing but celebrity coverage. You see how hands off he is, fearful reporters? Pish! says Andrew Neil. The embittered former editor of Murdoch's Sunday Times in London told a parliamentary committee that when he was on the job, Rupert was the final word in all publishing decisions. "If you want to know what Rupert Murdoch really thinks read the editorials in the Sun and the New York Post because he is editor-in-chief of these papers," Neil said. Of course, the Wall Street Journal, a much more prestigious paper just acquired by the News Corporation boss, is another matter. Murdoch would never dream of interfering there. [Guardian]

Anyone else hearing that FBI showed up to the McGraw-Hill building in Manhattan looking for Judith Regan? The Feds thought the controversial publishing impresario would be at the Sirius office, in the 6th Avenue skyscraper, for her Wednesday appearance on the satellite radio network, according to a tipster. But the show is pre-taped on Tuesday, so she wasn't there. The FBI agents told the Sirius receptionist they were sending a team to Regan's house as well. What on earth would they be looking for?

6,000 weekday viewers: now that's embarrassing. Somebody has to carry the can for the disastrous launch of Fox Business News, the News Corporation's cable channel. But not Roger Ailes, that's for sure. The Murdoch henchman's reputation as a media genius — built on the destruction of the Dukakis campaign and CNN's dominance of round-the-clock news — is too well cemented. What's the betting that Roger Ailes, an adept corporate infighter, will offer up sidekick Kevin McGee instead to assuage the wrath of Murdoch?

In his own, not-so-subtle way, Rupert Murdoch is screaming Face! at all of News Corp.'s competitors, detractors, and new Dow Jones employees. The form of his victory lap? Despite the fact that every major news outlet has covered Murdoch's $5 billion acquisition of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones since the first whispered rumors, the billionaire found it prudent to spent $2 million on a global ad campaign — a three-page advertisement that flaunts the history of News Corp.'s acquisitions. With Murdoch's oft-undermined slogan — "Free people, free markets, free thinking," except when he's doing business in China — the promo is running today in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. "We make the stuff that excites, entertains, informs, enriches and infuriates billions of imaginations." Indeed.

• Howell Raines' new book — The One That Got a Way — has an unoriginal title. [WWD]
• Bidding for Plame memoir reaches seven figures. And it sounds like the Howell Raines book party was boring. [NYP]
• People named Time Inc.'s mag of the year, for its excellent coverage of, among other things, the ill-fated Zellweger-Chesney nuptials. [WWD]
• More investors are shorting Times Co. stock. Oh, poor Pinch. [NYP]
• ABC anchor Bob Woodruff's recovery continues, but it's still unclear when he'll be able to return. [LAT]
• More evidence 750 Third Avenue will rival 4 Times Square in coolness: New cafeteria will offer sushi bar, custom salad station, international specials. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Well-hung Clinton to speak at News Corp. retreat. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Forbes editor Bill Baldwin doesn't read Jon Friedman's column. [MW]

OK. Yes, we know Business Week Online has a piece today on News Corp.'s recent internet acquisitions and the company's potential future targets. And, yes, we also know that Gawker Media makes a small cameo appearance down near the bottom. Let's read that mention together, shall we?

• Say hello to News Corp.'s new My Network TV, a network for stations orphaned by the UPN-WB deal and what's sure the be the place to turn for shows not quite good enough to make one of those two flailing former networks. [NYT]
• Bob Schieffer is a folksy country doctor who performs with backup singers. [NYT]
• Those office pirates are multitalented: That's Office Pirates creator Mark Remy, former EIC of Giant mag, acting in several of the new Time Inc. humor site's video clips, which were shot by his colleague Mark Golin, former EIC of Maxim. [WWD]

• News Corporation made a billion dollars of profit last quarter. [MW]
• Why the New York Press REALLY wouldn't publish the Mohammed cartoons: Because they didn't want to get bombed. (Or, at least, so says the departed EIC.) [The Politicker/NYO]
• Travel Savvy crashes, as parent company closes it and sibling mag after owner's death. [NYP]
• The Media Mob suggests an alternative cover for Page Six: The Magazine. [NYO]

• We're shocked shocked that ABC killed the words "cum" and "cock" from Stones songs at the halftime show last night. [AP via WP]
• So how do Time Inc. mags cover the Dick Parsons-Carl Icahn battle of Time Warner? Just like they cover anything else, insists John Huey. [MW]
• Jim Cramer's crazy shtick sells big. [NYT]
• Rupert Murdoch likes Time Warner and Google, doesn't like the video iPod or the Viacom split, and promises a CNBC rival in 2006. Because what the world really needs is more Neil Cavuto. [Newsweek]
• Elle goes green for a month. [WWD]

You've got to hand it to the New York Post. Not only did Rupert Murdoch's scrappy tab pull off a major coup yesterday by hiring away the top business exec at the rival Daily News, but in so doing the Posties also pioneered an entirely new recruiting technique. Usually, companies seeking new talent make sure to lavish them in praise and compliments. The Post, however, managed to lure Les Goodstein with insults.

Our earlier report of Media Christmas at News Corp. prompted other Newsies to write in with their recollections of the evening: