In your painful Thursday media column: major layoffs at AOL, reporters in peril in Libya, the latest Katie Couric career rumors, anonymous commenting debated, and Newsday is new, somehow.

In your yet-another-synonym-for-"snowy" Wednesday media column: HuffPo no longer cool, The Daily's latest launch date, Demand Media's distressingly popular, Michael Cohen leaves the Village Voice, Newsday hires people, and Brian Lehrer's a reasonable guy.

Are you an aspiring journalist desperately seeking employment to validate your perilous career choice? Good news: Newsday is hiring 34 reporters. Real jobs for real journalists! Working on Long Island is a small price to pay. [Romenesko]

In your hateful Thursday media column: CNN staffers hate Eliot Spitzer, Newsweek hates China, a former Newsday editor moves to NY1, the NYT gets itself a fancy "Tumblr," and whites spotted on the teevee.

Here is a Dennis the Menace cartoon that ran in Newsday today. Poo-poo us for seeing the sex-pervert worst in everything, but it's kind of amazing that someone didn't speak up and stop this from getting run.

In your finally Friday media column: wacko wants to buy newspaper from some other wackos who are too wack to sell, Christiane Amanpour has a new job, a WSJ wage freeze, and Jon Friedman is a literary Tiger.

• It's the end of the line for Miramax. The studio that Harvey and Bob Weinstein founded in 1979, sold to Disney in 1993, and departed in 2005, was officially shuttered today, and 80 people were let go. [Wrap, NYT, Guardian]
• Jay Leno went on Oprah today to try and redeem himself. He acted like a cry-baby and flat-out lied (and may have gotten away with it anyway). In related news, Conan's final week on the air turned out to be his biggest, not surprisingly. And there are some signs the late-night debacle may have Comcast's bosses thinking about showing NBC chief Jeff Zucker the door.
• 48 million people tuned in to the State of the Union address last night. [NYT]
• Only 35 people have signed up for a subscription to Newsday.com since the paper set up a pay wall a few months back. But it's all going according to plan and Newsday management couldn't be happier, the paper claims. [Crain's]
• This is a bit awkward: The Wall Street Journal is rolling out a local edition this spring that it hopes will compete with the New York Times. But it may actually need the Times' help printing the papers to make it happen. [NYT]
• A growing number of Time Inc. staffers are defecting to Bloomberg. [NYP]
• Samantha Harris is bidding goodbye to Dancing with the Stars. [People]
• Is Fox News reporter Major Garrett a fan of hookers? Maybe! [Gawker]

Here, Newsday's counterpoint to the embarrassing report earlier this week about their dismal online subscriber numbers. That is not even part of their strategy, jerks.

• How many people have signed up for Newsday.com since the newspaper put up a pay wall three months ago? A grand total of 35, believe it or not. [NYO]
• Following in Oprah's footsteps, Martha Stewart announced she's moving her syndicated TV show to cable (the Hallmark Channel) next fall. [Reuters, WSJ]
• NBC honcho Jeff Gaspin says he "underestimated the level of emotion" that would follow the decision to change up NBC's late-night schedule. Fortunately, the Olympics are here, which he says will be "a cleansing moment." [NYT, AP]
• Ratings are up at Fox News: The network was ranked No. 1 in primetime cable last week. Strangely, Fox News was also ranked "the most trusted name in news," according to a national survey released today. Seriously. [NYT, PD]
• There's lots of anxiety in the air over at CNN, not surprisingly. [Politico]
• Yet another Post staffer is suing the paper for discrimination. [Gawker]
• Roger Hodge, the editor of Harper's, has been let go. [NYT]
• More than 83 million people tuned in on Friday for the Haiti telethon. [LAT]
• Who's going to replace Simon Cowell on AI? Possibly one of these guys. [NYM]
• Nancy Grace loves cameras in courtrooms. Except when she's the one doing the testifying, in which case they can cause "embarrassment." [AP]

While the New York Times is taking a full year to get its online paywall right, Newsday—an immeasurably crappier paper—just went ahead and did that shit. How's that working out for them?

• Prepare to enter the third dimension. ESPN plans to launch a 3D channel in June. And Discovery, Imax and Sony are teaming up on a 3D channel, too.
• Has Kathy Griffin been banned from CNN following her risqué performance alongside Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve? Maybe yes, maybe no.
• Newsday is cutting pay and vacations for 1,100 of its employees. [NYP]
• Apple's buzzed-about tablet device comes out in March. [WSJ]
• Google's buzzed-about mobile phone/iPhone ripoff debuted today. [BN]
• You'll be relieved to hear that the New York Times has no plans to follow in Kim Kardashian's footsteps and begin sticking ads in its tweets. [AdAge]
• Coming soon: Publicist Kelly Cutrone's TV show and self-help book. [WWD]
• Nielsen closed Kirkus Reviews last week, but it may now have a savior. [NYT]
• Conveyor of Love, the new reality show on ABC that combines dating and the latest in baggage handling technology, is off to a solid start. [Wrap]
• Will Avatar turn out to be the biggest movie ever? Maybe! [MTV]

Cablevision, an unskilled owner of newspapers, is asking for more work hours and cuts in pay and vacation time from employees at fucked-several-different-ways newspaper Newsday. The union says the "horrible" contract was the best it could get. Probably true, sadly.

• The New York Times is gearing up to cut another two dozen positions at the newspaper, but that's fewer than NYT execs were anticipating. [NYP]
• Cancellations: MTV has pulled the plug on Alexa Chung's daytime show; and HBO's Flight of the Conchords is finished after two seasons. [THR, Variety]
• Diane Sawyer and Chris Cuomo bid goodbye to GMA this morning. [ABC]
• NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker, who will remain in charge of NBC after Comcast takes control, has been signed up to a new three-year contract. [THR]
• Ex-Daily News editor Debby Krenek is Newsday's new editor-in-chief. [E&P]
• Stodgy Harvard Business Review is getting a sexy makeover! [NYT]
• Grim stat du jour: 367 magazines were shuttered in 2009. [Crain's]
• More on Dave Zinczenko, the laziest magazine editor alive. [Gawker, DF]

Newsday is going to start charging for its awful website. One columnist there quit over it. The New York Times says it will make a decision on charging for its (good) website "within weeks." Then what happens?

• Tom McGeveran took over as editor of the Observer after Peter Kaplan made his exit this spring, but now he's headed out the door as well. [NYO]
• Layoffs: The cuts at Condé Nast continue though they should end soon; the layoffs at Forbes this week were deep ones: 1 in 4 editorial staffers were let go.
• Newsday's website erected a pay wall today. Good luck with that. [E&P]
• The Michael Jackson movie This Is It sold $2.2 million in tickets on its opening night, which is pretty good considering it was a Tuesday. [LAT, NYT]

• The New York Times Co. reported a $35.6 million loss for the third quarter as ad revenue plunged 30 percent. But it was better than what Wall Street analysts were predicting, so the stock shot up 22 percent today. [NYT]
• New York magazine's chief says there are no plans to sell the magazine following last week's death of owner Bruce Wasserstein. [AdAge]
• Newsday plans to charge $5 a week to access to its website. [NYT, [E&P]
• Fortune is cutting back on the number of issues it publishes. And Time Inc., Fortune's publisher, is planning another round of job cuts. [WSJ]
• On the same day Sarah Palin's memoir is published, the Nation will release Going Rouge, an identical-looking book that mocks the ex-governor. [Politico]
• As if losing billions of family money wasn't enough of a punishment, France says it plans to put Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. on trial for insider trading in connection with the 2000 merger of Vivendi and Seagram. [NYP]

While the best newspapers in America fret over whether to charge to read their websites, the other end of the newspaper spectrum is charging ahead: Starting next week, it will cost you $5 a week to read Newsday.com. Hahahaha. Ha.

CityFile just published a groveling retraction of an item it published in July in the face of a defamation suit from Jim Dolan, the truculent chairman of Cablevision, which owns Newsday.

• Twitter is close to raising $100 million in new funding. And despite the fact it makes no money, the deal will value the company at $1 billion. [WSJ, CNN]
• A new survey finds that 86% of the public thinks the news media tries to influence public opinion. One reason to discount the data: Fox News came in as the country's most-trusted and least-trusted news source. And Bill O'Reilly ranked as "the most-trusted news anchor on cable TV." [THR, Poynter]
• MTV reports that it plans to go ahead with the drug-intervention reality series featuring DJ AM that was shot just before he died. [THR]
• Michael Moore's new documentary is off to a strong start, alas. [LAT]
• Tim Knight, Newsday's publisher, has handed in his resignation. [NYT]
• Corynne Steindler of "Page Six" is joining Bonnie Fuller's new website. [NYO]
• NBC Nightly News' audience is growing, believe it or not. [HP]
• Yahoo is spending $100 million to remind you it still exists. [BrandChannel]
• CBS has a brand new viewer today. Chief exec Les Moonves and CBS Early Show anchor Julie Chen had a son named Charlie this morning. [ET]

Newsday publisher Timothy P. Knight has resigned "to let others move our business forward."