We're all for telling it like it is in book reviews, but this Sunday's review of Harry, Revised by Troy Patterson in the New York Times, seems extraordinarily mean-spirited, even unusually so. Among many things, Patterson mentions that the book "does not seem to have been reread, never mind revised," that its author Mark Sarvas writes "about 'old money' in a fashion indicating that he's never met anyone in possession of it," that it contains "a kind of coarse banality that may have found a new exemplar," and (drumroll, please) "that you are reading a review of this novel in these pages is a testament to the author's success as a blogger." A backhanded compliment, that last one! We had to ask author Sarvas: did he, like, do something to piss off Troy Patterson, who is a TV critic for Slate and a film critic for Spin?

They start early! The Washington Post regrets that one of the kids published in its KidsPost poetry contest actually submitted a poem written by Shel Silverstein. (Last year's winner was also a copycat, reports Regret the Error.) There was more than one indiscretion: agents, click through to see which clever, annoying kids to get in touch with. (They're "branding" themselves as renegades with no respect for the old, bourgeois ideas of art and propriety!)

David Rothkopf, a highly educated scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, penned an explosive op-ed for the Washington Post that could upend the global power structure and spark revolution across the earth. Because it seems that our world—far from being one in which each of the 6 billion humans shares in an equal portion of the political, economic, and cultural power, as you had believed—is actually run by a "superclass" of people who control everything. Rothkopf reports, in direct contradiction to everything that your third grade social studies teacher promised you, that very powerful people are, in fact, very powerful. Bummer!

Clearly inspired by the much-vaunted free Madonna show at an "intimate" 2,000-capacity theater last night, the New York Times review got a little wild, describing her fans as "screamy" and quoting a 28-year-old about her look for the evening: "stewardess-Madonna-tricky-tranny." The show was only thirty minutes long; one Madonnagay told the Times that "Gays don't camp out [for tickets], but we'll camp out for this." (Only Madonna can overturn the gays' longtime anti-camping law.) When the aging pop star took the stage,"the room roared with 'Omigods.'" [NYT]

The Strand, the humongous New York bookstore by Union Square that is like one of the biggest used book stores ever of all time, has always attracted lots of young workers who take the low pay in exchange for the cool factor of working at the place, and the chance to be around books all day. One negative: the store is run by a despised woman named Nancy Bass Wyden (trivia: she's married to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden). I've known several people who worked at The Strand, and they universally agree on her tyranny. Now, the New York Press has actually done some investigative work on the claims, and it's found evidence for allegations of racial discrimination, callous disregard for pregnant women, and—most terrifyingly—"fungus from rats."

Once again, American scandals hang their heads in shame. News comes from jolly old England that a former "Mr. Gay UK" has been arrested for murdering an ad executive from a gay magazine, and then eating some of him [Telegraph via Queerty]. Don't get any untoward ideas, though; they were just "friends." The killer also had some flesh from the man's right leg diced up, cooked, and ready to season when the cops came in. That does seem incriminating. Eat your heart out, Jeffrey Dahmer—you never won any pageants at all. A full beefcake photo (pretty much NSFW) of the award-garnering cannibal, Anthony Morley, from the time of his glorious 1993 title win, is after the jump:

The Pulitzer-winning book critic for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, has been in the news this week: she was called "the stupidest person in New York City," by author Jonathan Franzen, presumably because of her negative review of his memoir. (Norman Mailer called her a "one-woman kamikaze" who "disdains white male authors," but he was afraid of intimacy.) The Guardian's book blog offers a field guide to this "reclusive," mysterious critic:

If the New York Post had to name three things that it can't stand, those things would be: cultural sensitivity, wisdom, and peace (fourth: stepping on gum). That's why the paper is outraged that "the Bush administration has gone all PC in the War on Terror." They've stopped using words like "jihad" and "Islamo-fascism" because they may be provocative or offensive. The Post's jaw literally dropped onto the floor at that news! Right onto the floor! So the neocon, Murdoch-owned scandal sheet had to evoke the memory of prominent socialist revolutionary George Orwell to help it call for harsher language about the Arabian menace:

A departing reporter for the Wall Street Journal has delivered an implicit rebuke to Rupert Murdoch's new régime at the paper-and its aversion to long-form journalism. In his farewell note, veteran James Bandler says his former editors "understood that great Journal stories-whether complex corporate probes or powerful narratives-can take weeks, if not months of reporting time." For another defense of the business newspaper's traditions, read the excellent comment by 'medman' in response to yesterday's Gawker article, Civil War At The Wall Street Journal.

Of all the cliques at the Wall Street Journal, the reporters and editors of the newspaper's Money & Investing team were most inclined to accommodate to the new régime put in place by Rupert Murdoch. They're more financially sophisticated than the average Journal reporter, and less precious; the head of the paper's third section is thought friendly with Murdoch aide Gary Ginsberg, and has even been mentioned as a candidate for managing editor; and Money & Investing is widely regarded as the newsiest part of the Journal, in need of less of a re-education than the self-indulgent feature writers of the main paper and the second section, Marketplace. And that's why this week's disastrous pep talk by the Australian media mogul's key lieutenant, Journal publisher Robert Thomson, is so damaging.

Any smoker who moved to New York from another state has probably reflected on the fact that they could make a lot of easy cash just by filling up a U-Haul truck with cheap cigarettes from back home and driving them into the city. And boy would they be right! Congressman Peter King has helpfully crunched the numbers for an editorial in the Post today, and now we are seriously considering getting into the Newport-smuggling business full time. Upside: you can make $50K in a single trip. Downside: according to Peter King, you will probably use that money to finance "another 9/11-style attack." Also: Peter King loves to use the phrase "butt-smuggler":

Rabid New York Post attack columnist and X-ray pornographer Andrea Peyser finally weighs in today with her take on the Miley Cyrus uproar, and a breathless city exhales. She's upset! Now she has to add Miley to the list of pop stars "not welcome in my house" (you're on there too, Jamie Lynn Spears). But she reserves most of her contempt for Miley's dad Billy Ray Cyrus, a "one-hit wonder who lives like a leech off his billion-dollar baby." Zing! We agree the photo of the two together was a little weird. But Peyser is also mad that Billy didn't stop his teen daughter from being such a freaking idiot when she opens her mouth:

"College students today enter a low hook-up culture when they leave the classroom," warns Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield in his WSJ review of the newest overwrought book about college kids fucking. "In case you don't know, a hook-up is a brief sexual encounter between two partners who don't necessarily know each other before and who don't necessarily want to know each other after." Sounds costly. "And it's free." Well, that's a bonus! "The sort of transient sex that once was available to men only for money can now be had, without paying, from college women - as long as the man is a fellow student and minimally artful about his approach." Good lord, is that new? I don't remember that. "If he is thwarted in one overture, he may try another with a reasonable prospect of success." That, sadly, is just the intro paragraph.

Newspaper readership, long resilient, is now clearly dropping. Paid circulation from September 2007 to March 2008 dropped 3.6 percent from the similar period a year ago; Sunday circulation dropped 4.6 percent. [Reuters]

At a farewell party last week, some Journal staffers bitched that Marcus Brauchli, the managing editor pushed out by the paper's new owners, had sold his silence for a generous severance package. "It was disgusting," one told David Carr of the New York Times. But there was some more intriguing scuttlebutt from the event. Brauchli's predecessor Paul Steiger was overheard saying that Rupert Murdoch's lieutenants were looking externally for a replacement atop the newspaper. The name Steiger mentioned: Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Times' blue-eyed mergers and acquisitions correspondent.

The New York Times' big front page investigative story on Sunday about the tight connections between ex-military "analysts" on news programs and the Pentagon's PR machine was a solid re-affirmation of most people's suspicions that they, along with much of the media at large, were all play-acting in the inevitable march to war. The piece was hugely comprehensive, but it did lack the input of one man: incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian, head of the press-friendly agency 5WPR! Luckily, Ronn has chimed in with his advice to all of you who may have been upset by the story of undercover warmongering propaganda: chill. It's all just PR 101.

Martin Gee is a designer at the San Jose Mercury News, which, like every other paper, has been gutted by budget cuts, layoffs, and buyouts recently. One night on a whim he took a camera and shot a series of photos inside the almost abandoned newsroom. They do an amazing job of capturing the junkyard aura of the place [PDN via Animal]. It's newsroom-as-battlefield, the day after. You can see his full set of photos here. Below, our five favorite shots.

Rupert Murdoch's 78th year has been busy. With the exit of the Wall Street Journal's native managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, the Australian media mogul's lieutenant now has a free hand to turn the business newspaper into a broader national title. We're hearing this afternoon that Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman has dropped out of the bidding for Newsday, clearing the way for Murdoch's News Corporation to take control of a third newspaper in the New York market. And the New York Post is this week shrinking to allow the News Corporation tabloid to be produced on the same presses as the Journal. But here's the question: why the rush? There are three main reasons: newspaper publishing economics; the broader synergies available to a media group with heightened political influence; and mortality.

In a cost-cutting move that is, frankly, kind of sad, the DC bureau of the legendary Hearst Newspapers chain has moved into the same office space as McClatchy's DC bureau [E&P]. "They just have a small area in the back of our offices, they have three rows of work stations," a McClatchy manager said. Your front line watchdogs of democracy, ladies and gentlemen. Among the new denizens of the cramped, back office workspace is 87 year-old Hearst columnist and prime Bush tormentor Helen Thomas. She really deserves better. But, death of print and all that. Below, a classic news conference clip of Thomas questioning the president about the Iraq war, to his discomfort.

Times are tough for journalists. Sure, there are humorous t-shirts, but that's probably not enough to save the industry. The McClatchy Company, which owns The Sacramento Bee and The Miami Herald, put up a video of their CEO Gary Pruitt to encourage and dupe their employees. In the clip, Pruitt says that no company won more than their two Pulitzer prizes. The Washington Post's six apparently don't count. He also claimed that no organization won as many George Polk awards as their two, when The Nation Institute won as many. But surely Pruitt wouldn't lie about the future of the McClatchy. Everything's going great there.