"World Class Entrepreneur" Bob Thomas world class plagiarized his Nevada Appeal newspaper column today.

Former Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers took over as editor of the New York Obsever in February of 2011, bringing a measure of stability to what had been a decidedly up-and-(mostly) down enterprise under parsimonious wunderkind owner Jared Kushner. Now, Spiers is leaving.

Did you catch the BIG SPLASH on the front page of NYT Travel section this past weekend? "Single in Chicago." Summary: Single woman goes to Chicago. Opening sentence: "IT'S hard to decide, while sipping a citrine cocktail called Sex on the Roof, what to gawk at first..." And?

This week, News Corp announced that it would spin off its publishing division, thereby sequestering the moldy old newspapers and other not-so-good-but-romantic businesses in their own little quarantine area, while the moneymaking TV and entertainment properties shed the dead weight and continued to print money. It's a common-sense move that News Corp executives not named "Rupert Murdoch" have been advocating for for years. But with all due respect to the mean old man, he's organizing this thing all wrong.

Ink may run in Rupert Murdoch's icy veins, but he's dumping his first love—newspapers—for the bitch-whore of film. News Corp. announced today that all of its newspapers and publishing assets (the dying, scandal-ridden ones) will be spun off into a new stand-alone company called Papers'n'Shit, leaving its film and television assets to make fistfuls of money unmolested by dinosaur media.

The setup: two young female Washington Post reporters, frustrated with the bad dating odds in DC, fly to Alaska, where there are far more men than women, in order "to find romance." Allllll, the way to Alaska, they went, on the company dime. For romance. *Wink*

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's investigation into the origins of the Watergate break-in—which took place 40 years ago yesterday—is one of the most highly mythologized episodes in the history of journalism. It represents the Platonic ideal of what journalism-with-a-capital-J ought to be, at least according to its high priesthood—sober, careful young men doggedly following the story wherever it leads and holding power to account, without fear or favor. It was also a sloppy, ethically dubious project the details of which would mortify any of the smug high priests of journalism that flourished in its wake. The actual Watergate investigation could never have survived the legacy it helped create.

Vindictive troll Roger Ailes, who—when he's not busy using corporate security to tail his employees, calling local cops to fish his keys out of his locked car, or overseeing the production of political attack ads disguised as news programming—owns a pair of small-town newspapers in rural Putnam County, N.Y., is an absolute master at real-time reflexive paranoid hysteria. For instance, if you write things about those small-town papers that he doesn't like, he will go through the subscriber rolls, find your name, and cancel your subscription. Attention to detail!

This week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced that it is cutting its print publication schedule back to three days a week and laying off staff in an effort to remain financially viable. It's a sad step for a storied and respected newspaper. It is also, on an industrywide scale, a completely expected evolution. Let's briefly review the recent past, and the future, of newspapers.

Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries, which we identified last month as the Pentagon information operations contractor that ran an operation against two critical journalists, has admitted playing a role in the subterfuge.

A Chinese writer is claiming that Rupert Murdoch was behind one of the Wall Street Journal's more embarrassing recent corrections—the paper wrongly claimed that the son of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, who preached Maoist austerity, once showed up for a date at former Amb. Jon Huntsman's residence in a cherry-red Ferrari—and that the Journal "badgered" and "threatened" a source that refused to back it up on the story. The Journal's China editor tells Gawker that the claims are "utter nonsense."

Media General is a chain of small-ish newspapers across America. Not a particularly prestigious or savvy chain of newspapers, and the company's value has been nosediving off a cliff for the past five years along with most of the rest of the newspaper industry. But! Media General has now been purchased by Mr. Warren Buffett. And just like that, this mediocre little newspaper chain becomes the embodiment of the industry's future.

The deliciously slow-falling dominoes of the News Corp phone hacking scandal continue to falllllll: Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor, News International boss, and Rupert Murdoch bestie, is going to be charged with "conspiring to pervert the course of justice" for attempting to conceal documents and data in the hacking case. Brooks' husband and several others are being charged as well. Brooks denies the charges.

Last night USA Today reported that two of its staffers, Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker, were the targets of a smear campaign, including fake Twitter accounts and web sites established in their names, launched by a Pentagon contractor specializing in "information operations." For some reason, the paper declined to name the perpetrator: Leonie Industries.

Khristopher J. Brooks is a young reporter who was excited to be hired by the Delaware News-Journal last week. In a playful little gesture, he wrote up a fake "press release" on his own personal Tumblr announcing, "On Wednesday April 4, 2012, the News Journal Media Group acquired veteran education reporter Khristopher J. Brooks." He included some quotes about his career and background on the paper itself. For this, he was immediately fired, because NEWSPAPER WORK MUST NEVER BE FUN.

Pushing back against the New York Observer's report yesterday that New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan was named in federal wiretaps as a close pal of Manhattan Madam Anna Gristina, Post reporter Jeane MacIntosh has written an extremely unusual story claiming that she—and not her boss—was the madam's pal.

Well, well, well. It turns out that the Col Allan, the New York Post's penis-rubbing, stripper-loving editor-in-chief, enjoys a very chummy relationship with Anna Gristina, the alleged Manhattan Madam whose recent arrest is spreading panic amongst her reportedly A-list client list. And in a stunning instance of New York news omerta, Allan's archrival the New York Daily News knew all about the relationship but sat on it for weeks.

Since you're reading this site while you should be doing something more productive, chances are that you're the kind of self-proclaimed "internet-savvy" media consumer who said to yourself last year, "Hey, I don't care that the New York Times started an online paywall, because it comes with 20 free articles per month, and besides, it's full of easy holes for an internet-savvy consumer such as myself!"

Unsatisfied with merely maligning the memory of its freshly deceased editorial page editor by gratuitously reporting the embarrassing details of his death, the editors of the Portland Oregonian have now seen fit to fire a woman for the crime of trying to protect the family of her departed friend.

The Portland Oregonian's editorial page editor Bob Caldwell died over the weekend, and the newspaper that employed him for 29 years honored his passing by reporting that he died while screwing a 23-year-old woman who was not his wife.