New York Sun columnist and bizarre racial thinker John McWhorter takes a wistful look back today at God and Man at Yale, crypto-fascist William F. Buckley's seminal work on how to be an uptight Ivy League conservative. Why today? Well, there's never a bad time to speak out against the outrageous marginalization of capitalism and Christianity on college campuses, in McWhorter's view, and besides, he had a column due. He thoughtfully and eloquently fellates Buckley's 1951 plea for sticks (of morality) to be inserted in asses (of Christianity) throughout our nation's top schools. And you know—not to be immodest—McWhorter can't help but see a little bit of Buckley's controversial genius in himself:

Tech blogger Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft and now with Fast Company, spent some time hanging out in the Times' research and development division, which exists (really?), and filmed some of their wacky publishing experiments. One innovation, set to go online today, is a browsable interface to the Times' historic back issues, which have been available through search but which can now be viewed as a series of front pages through an interface called Times Machine. More interesting: A prototype newspaper rack with a digital window display and the ability to generate custom versions of the newspaper. Of course, newspaper companies like the Times have been imagining the future for decades, and have jumped in at the earliest stages of most technological leaps, from radio to satellite data transmission to the internet. But they've never known their customers well enough to lead in the application of technology, and it's by no means clear whether the Times can make itself the exception to that rule, geek lab or not. Judge for yourself after watching a video clip of the magic rack after the jump.

The New York Post has canned Leonardo Blair, the black reporter who earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD alleging racial harassment. Blair probably got the sense that his employer didn't really have his back when the Post ran an editorial ho-humming racial profiling complaints the same day that Blair filed his suit. Neither the Post nor Blair would comment on the end of his employment there. At least the Daily News is now free to commission Blair to write a scandalous tell-all of racial discrimination in the inner bowels of the Post. If they don't, you have to wonder whether they're sufficiently bloodthirsty (or rather, justice-thirsty) to play with Rupert Murdoch. [NYDN]

Great job winning a record six Pulitzer Prizes last month for the Washington Post, Len Downie! But you're so fired. Or, as the Times has it in Monday's paper, "pressured" to soon leave the Post so the new publisher, Katharine Graham's granddaughter, can pick her very own editor. Nepotism beats journalism prizes, naturally. (Radar had something on this last week, but was apparently overconfident about the timing.) The publisher is trying to bring together the print and online halves of the Post, which have been warring, so it makes little sense that she's supposedly been trying to recruit as Downie's replacement old-media hands like New Yorker Editor David Remnick, former Managing Editor Steve Coll or former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli. But Remnick and Coll have already turned the publisher down, so it's possible she'll go with WashingtonPost.com editor Liz Spayd, who the Times paints as her friend. Bottom line: the pernicious Pulitzer Prize is not correlated with journalism job security these days, except perhaps negatively (in case that wasn't sufficiently clear from the 2003 departure of Pulitzer machine John Carroll from the Los Angeles Times). [Times]

John Bussey-the Wall Street Journal's DC bureau chief and one of the candidates touted for the newspaper's vacant managing editor position-probably won't get the nod from the Journal's new owners. To be sure, he's won respect from Rupert Murdoch's lieutenants for masterminding the newspaper's election coverage; one of them, Journal publisher Robert Thomson knows Bussey drive from their days together as rival foreign correspondents in Tokyo; and his less whiny underlings give Bussey credit for energizing the sleepy bureau in the capital. But Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici reckons Rupert Murdoch's lieutenants will bring in someone uncontaminated by the business newspaper's rather insular culture; and we're sticking by our original prediction that Robert Thomson will pull a Dick Cheney and nominate himself for the managing editor role (much like I have at Gawker). Anyway, it's too bad. Bussey has made a lot of enemies during his years at the Journal-and the backstabbing colleagues are offering a smorgasbord of delicious anecdotes about the newspaper exec that we'd love to have better reason to relay.

A tipster phones in some bad news: "A friend of mine works at the Boston Globe and says the place is crawling with McKinsey consultants. Everyone is fearing for their jobs."

A Brazilian newspaper is running a series of ads with the slogan "Understand the real value of money." So what's the real value of a dollar? Apparently it's terrorism, pollution, the Challenger disaster, war, and tornadoes. Oh, and weed. They didn't forget the weed. I won't pretend to be able to identify the underlying philosophy here, but I will point out that even dumb people have figured out that using 9/11 in ads is a bad idea. The takeaway: Give all your dollars to me. Below, the full ad from the Brasilmofascist menace:

This seems like a turning point of some sort. A tipster says the McCatchy-owned Kansas City Star just laid off the entire ad services department. And outsourced the jobs to India! Even more fun: before everyone's last day this summer, their Indian replacements will be flown in so the outgoing ad team can train them. McClatchy's already done this at some of their other holdings, including the Miami Herald, the Sacremento Bee, and the Raleigh News & Observer. Everyone please continue panicking. (Of course, journos didn't care so much when all the printing plant jobs disappeared, but still. The ad people work in the same building.)

Yesterday, the New York Post splashed with a big story about on-air cussing WNBC anchor Sue Simmons being a drunk who liked to down cocktails before doing her show. Today, the tabloid's follow-up mentions how she denies having a drink before showtime in the last 15 years, without even acknowledging that Simmons is talking about the Post itself when she says "I understand now why many people don't trust the media." Apart from the "Journalism" issue here (ha), the odd part is that the paper should have a little more respect for fellow professional drunks. After all, boozing is a Post trademark—and it starts right at the top, with the paper's heroically enthusiastic alcohol-abusing editor Col Allan!

PETA, the perpetually outraged animal rights group, is very upset that the New York Times Magazine ran a fashion photo shoot last weekend featuring bees. "The entire world is talking about the fact that bees are dying off—The New York Times has even reported on it—and yet The New York Times Magazine does a fashion spread with bees in it. That's pretty irresponsible," PETA told Animal NY. But Animal also spoke to a beekeeper, who said such photo shoots were perfectly safe for the insects. Perhaps PETA just wants bees to be paid fairer wages for their modeling work. Two more photos of honeymongers inconvenienced by fashion, below.

David Broder, who's been rehashing conventional wisdom at the Washington Post for nearly 500 years (or like 20), just accepted a buy-out. He'll still contribute to the paper as contract employee, though. We wouldn't want David Ignatius to get lonely! Still no word on whether executive editor Len Downie's taking a buyout too. Many people hope he will, as it'd give the paper a chance to shake things up. And a new editor might help solve the war between the paper and Post online. [Politico]

So, what's happening in Boston today? An outpouring of grief from the Boston Herald! The paper runs what may be the biggest correction of all time, size-wise: a front page splash apologizing to the New England Patriots for alleging that the team had videotaped an opponent's practice session. The original story ran February 2—the day before the Super Bowl, which the Patriots lost. Since the team obviously suffered morale failure from this traitorous blow by their hometown rag, this was really the least the Herald could do. (News of the apocalypse, P. 24). Click through for a larger picture.

Writers so fancy themselves as cultural guerrillas, sneaking in subtle messages of protest against the media-entertainment complex or any other form of totalitarianism. They really would have been happier penning samizdats in the former Soviet Union; and many authors did indeed mourn the passing of a régime so brutal-and mockable. Successful TV writer Chuck Lorre has little to fear from Les Moonves and his other bosses at CBS, but the millionaire writer has embedded subversive short texts in the vanity cards at the end of shows such as Two and a Half Men. In one recent message, the 55-year-old Mr. Lorre wrote: "I received a phone call from a mid-level CBS exec who began the conversation by saying he wanted to give me a head's up. Having been in this business a while I knew 'head's up' is code for 'we've decided to s- you.'"

Two things I'm noticing about cock-spying New York Post columnist of evil Andrea Peyser: first, her columns are something like 300 words long. Even Post readers could be expected to puzzle through a bit more than that. Second, she's a racist, past even an ironic point of amusement. That's not news, but it does make for some harsh reading first thing in the morning. It's hard to tell whether she's a just-showing-off Ann Coulter-style racist, or a real nitty gritty racist from birth, but either way, she gets the job done. For racism! Today, she takes a bold, racist stance on rappers, what with all their shooting guns and hurling Blackberries and who knows what else. They're not even people; they're just "things":

Having bought Newsday for $650 million, Cablevision executives, who pretty much suck at making money on anything that's not a cable system, are now interested in maybe having an actual newspaper company print, distribute and sell advertising into the tabloid. A printing deal with Post owner News Corp. or Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman would make eminent financial sense, since Newsday has an outdated printing plant and both the Daily News and Post stand to cut their own printing costs if they can sign up the Long Island newspaper as a customer. And cross-selling ads could drum up some extra revenue. But if Cablevision were to do a comprehensive deal covering pretty much all business-side operations, it would beg the question, why did Cablevision buy Newsday in the first place? Were the cross-selling opportunities between cable, internet and the newspaper really worth an $80 million premium over bids from News Corp. and Zuckerman? Prediction: Whichever media company ends up doing this deal with Cablevision, and one of them will, is going to end up owning the newspaper in a few years when Cablevision's high expectations are deflated. [Times]

The New York Times publisher and his wife Gail Gregg said their decision to divorce was "amicable"-which nobody believes. Divorces are never amicable. There's no information beyond the statement, buried on a Friday afternoon: even the Post, which would normally relish the opportunity to embarrass the liberal snobs at the Times, left the story alone. So here's some speculation from the gossip mill to fill the vacuum. 1. " I always just assumed a guy who still carried around a stuffed moose was either a plushie or a furry and therefore not interested in vaginal sex," says one gossip. 2. Given the Times' lackluster share price under Sulzberger's rule, and collapsing advertising revenues, the motives could have been financial. "She probably wants a divorce while he's still worth something." 3. Most likely: the younger girlfriend. Sulzberger and his wife, both 56, have been married for 33 years. Anyone know who the new model is?

25-year-old sketch artist Jason Polan has an unachievable goal: to draw every person in New York. He moved here from Michigan, and was seized by the desire to capture all of us—you, me, Graydon Carter—in quick, vague line drawings. So far he has "a couple hundred sketches," which means that, assuming a static city population of 8 million and a generous rate of 50 sketches per day, fives days a week, Jason will be finishing his project up in a little more than 615 years. If you like, you can email him and tell him where you're going to be at a certain time and he'll show up and sketch you. Cute, but not really doing wonders for your time efficiency, Jason. After the jump, a few samples of his work. At least he's quick!

Rupert Murdoch's secret, sneaky plan to destroy Long Island tabloid Newsday: let a dysfunctional company buy it for more money. Cablevision purchased the paper for $650 million and Murdoch withdrew his bid this weekend. Now, everyone is a bit confused. Because Cablevision owns many odd things, but none of them have been newspapers up til now. "The Newsday bid had the backing of both Charles Dolan, who founded the company, and his son James L. Dolan, the chief executive," the Times reports, even though generally the Dolans hate each other and disagree about everything. And according to witnesses of the meetings between the Dolans and former Newsday owner Sam Zell, the "tension between the two has been obvious." As have the tensions between Cablevision and its shareholders. Because Cablevision is a company that does one thing quite well and everything else quite poorly.

Former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger was tapped to write News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch's profile in Time's "100 Most Influential People" feature. So what does Steiger, who retired from the Journal last year after handing it over to Murdoch-who is evil-think of the media baron?

Tim McGuire used to edit the Minneapolis Star & Tribune. Now he gives cranky speeches about journalism. He recently told the Northwest International Circulation Executives that they have to "make their own sandwiches," which is maybe code for something. Or maybe literal! He goes on to say that thousands of newspapers will soon die but let's not worry about it, they were weak and deserved to go. Also: Thomas Friedman wrote a "tremendously important book" so you really don't have to take anything he says seriously. [McGuire on Media via Romenesko]