Idiot manchild Jay Mariotti, who quit a highly paid job as a Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist in order to find work at one of these "web sites" he's heard so much about, has a job!

Good morning sunshine! It's January, which means the horrible media advertising apocalypse has now begun. But not to worry, media lovers; it's only affecting every famous book, magazine, and newspaper publisher:

It once might have raised hackles for the Times to carry a display ad on the front page. Now the only scandal is that the paper waited so long.

Chick lit is tired! We predict Xanax lit in 2009. In this week's Modern Love, we learn the perils of what happens when a breast-cancer patient cops an unauthorized Xanax in the waiting room before a biopsy.

The angry old building super/tabloid star over in Bay Ridge with a penchant for posting crazy-ass notes threatening to kill his tenants, Richard Martin, has been fired. We're sad!

Seeing Arianna Huffington in the LA Times Sunday, someone who has worked for the internet publisher tipped us to a purported lookalike: Ursula from the Little Mermaid. Mean and juvenile! But maybe appropriate!

One less thing to aspire to, journalists: The New York Times in cutting back on those nice overseas executive gigs at the Paris-based International Herald Tribune:

We all know that the LA Times is a dim shadow of a once-great paper owned by a bankrupt company. But now they may want to fire, basically, every non-local reporter. Problematic!

As it turns out, "burn in hell you heartless beast" was not actually the worst thing said about late Journal-Register Co. CEO Robert Jelenic by bitter former employees.

Will the futurist gurus at the New York Times Op-Ed department ever stop blowing our minds? Their newest plan: launching an "Instant Op-Ed" section online. Fast access to opinions, online? Now we've heard everything.

Remember back in the good old days of journalism, when reporters lived like veritable kings? Me neither. But we know those days existed, because now everyone who lived through them is getting nostalgic:

Newsday, the little Long Island paper that couldn't, just laid off 100 staffers. And they told the union: On the way out, take your damn holiday "food drive bins" with you. Bah humbug:

No reporters left to cover your city, no reporters left to cover your state, and no reporters left to cover Washington, DC. It's the new journalism.

The FBI says the Chicago Tribune's Dec. 5 ROD BLAGOJEVICH scandal scoop didn't affect the timing of their Dec. 9 arrest, as had earlier been reported. That dude was so dirty they could just arrest him pretty much whenever, okay? [WSJ]

Should the New York Times Co. sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox? Some people say yes. But this clever Monopoly metaphor says NO:

Bill Kristol's very first New York Times column ran on January 7, 2008. It seems like only yesterday! Thankfully that means his contract is now just about up.

Have you guys been able to enjoy the news at all with this big AP byline strike? Been going on since Sunday? Anybody? Hello?

"Good" news: a massive real estate developer and a sugar magnate may buy the Miami Herald. Hey, then let's sell the Washington Post to the CIA! This is a CHILLING VISION of newspapers' future.

"For those over 30 years old: hooking up is a casual sexual encounter with no expectation of future emotional commitment." So begins another god damn op-ed about wet, wild youngster sex.

Nobody lives in Detroit any more, and nobody reads print newspapers, so maybe it's not so bad that the few remaining Detroit residents can no longer get their awful papers delivered to their burned-out homes.