Put on your thinking caps, go into active listening mode, and stretch out your inside voices, Washington Post employees: it's time for a good old-fashioned in-house daylong corporate brainstorming session. No idea is too wacky to win the $1,000 prize! Looking at you, Hipness Desk. So remember to RSVP for this big event, #PostDisrupt. Is it on Twitter? No, there's just a hash tag in the name. For reasons of #Disrupt #Journalism #Hipness #BobWoodwardIsDoneAndWeNeedSomethingBig. The full email is below.

It looks like the biggest guillotine thus far has fallen (again) in the News Corp phone hacking scandal: British police have reportedly arrested Rebekah Brooks—former editor of the tabloids News of the World and The Sun, as well as former CEO of News International, News Corp's UK newspaper division, and a close friend and confidante of the Murdoch family. Brooks resigned from News International last year and was arrested last summer in the earlier stages of the phone hacking investigation. She was given a hefty going-away package last year.

A.G. "Baller of a New Generation" Sulzberger—son of NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger, heir to the throne of the Times empire, and natural wisenheimer—has completed his exile in Middle America, where he helmed the Kansas City desk and was forced to endure prolonged periods of subpar vegetarian cooking. He's coming home... TO RULE. To work on the Metro Desk, we mean. Don't fool yourselves; he'll be ruling soon enough.

As this whole "internet" thing has grown more popular over the past, oh, 15 years or so, the newspaper industry has declined. That's because the newspaper industry, at some point in the past, decided to give away its product for free on the internet. They figured that somehow, someday, this would make them money. It did not. Now, we can put a figure on just how badly this bet has failed.

Can't get enough of the mild musings of inadvertent New York Times columnist Frank Bruni? It's your lucky day—he's started a blog.

Anthony Shadid, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of Iraq for the Washington Post, died of an asthma attack yesterday while reporting in Syria for the New York Times. He was 43 years old.

Marge Miley, a former editor and columnist at the Manitowoc (WI) Herald Times Reporter passed away this week at the age of 86. Marge composed her own obituary, which she left on file with her funeral home. (Here's the first page—click to enlarge.) She would surely take some satisfaction from the fact that what she wrote was better than the obit the newspaper did for her.

The New York Times Sunday Review section invites professional editorial cartoonists to draw cartoons for free and submit them to the paper; one will be selected to run each week. The winning cartoonist will be paid $250. Everyone else gets nothing.

Last July, Les Hinton resigned as CEO of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, as part of the far-flung fallout from the News Corp phone hacking scandal. At long last, his replacement has been named: a "purple-suited arsse."

Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper serving Atlanta's Jewish community, devoted his January 13, 2012 column to the thorny problem of the U.S. and Israel's diverging views on the threat posed by Iran. Basically Israel has three options, he wrote: Strike Hezbollah and Hamas, strike Iran, or "order a hit" on Barack Obama. Either way, problem solved!

The nomination deadline for the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes is five days away. Newspaper editors around the county are busy crafting nomination letters, putting together elaborate packages showcasing their best work, and forking over $50 entry fees for a shot at winning journalism's most prestigious prize later this Spring. No one will care.

Banning jeans in a newspaper's newsroom is dumb and mean.

Oklahoma state senator Jim Wilson has a bright idea about how to raise $17 million for his state: put a sales tax back on newspapers and periodicals. Because levying taxes on an industry locked in an economic death spiral is always a good way... destroy that industry more quickly. Also a good way to get a newspaper to stop talking bad about a certain politician who may have an important vote on the state's tax policy. Everybody wins!

Late last month, the New York Times Co. sold off the 16 small and medium-sized papers in its Regional Newspaper Group to Florida-based Halifax Media, for $143 million. Halifax's first order of business: screwing employees (more so).

The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago's runner-up paper, has been sold to a group of investors for "more than $20 million," reportedly. Former Newsday publisher and Tribune Co. exec Tim Knight will now lead the Sun-Times. Just in time for... a new year. God bless 'em.

Bloated starfucker Piers Morgan finally gave his long-awaited testimony before a British commission investigating phone hacking today. While there were no Perry Mason moments trapping Morgan in one of his numerous transparent lies about his tenures at the News of the World and Daily Mirror, he was at least exposed as having a conveniently spotty memory.

Yesterday afternoon, New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson abruptly announced her resignation. She may have been pushed out, though she got a nice fat "consulting" paycheck to cushion her fall. The important question now: who takes over?

Well, HMMM: the New York Times Co. just announced that CEO Janet Robinson is "retiring." It's fair to call this unexpected. Try reading between these lines, from the NYT's own story:

Russ Stanton is stepping down as editor of the LA Times, a job he's held for the past four years, through some of the shittiest layoff-plagued times in the history of the newspaper industry, and under the ownership of the thoroughly incompetent Tribune Co. He'll be replaced by Managing Editor Davan Maharaj. Perhaps the biggest story here is how small of a story this is, in 2012.

Whoops! Remember when Rupert Murdoch's News of the World was revealed to have illegally listened to the voicemails of teen murder victim Milly Dowler? And how the bastards actually erased the voicemails, leading Dowler's family to falsely believe that their little girl was still alive and checking her messages? And how Murdoch killed off NOTW in shame and a panicked attempt to avert scandal when it all came out? Well, there's a slight wrinkle.