• Seth Mnookin joins parade calling bullshit on NYT's anonymous source policy.

• Ken Auletta can't call others smug when he himself, is you know, that too.

• Katie Couric isn't the only diva at CBS News.

• HuffPo's Rachel Sklar throws down with Graydon Carter, who has no idea that media blogs everywhere are watching his every chortle.

• BlackBerrys will cause your children to resent you and your spouse to leave you.

• God help us if it's Details that's chronicling the new class war.

• Celebrities who blog finally receive well-deserved attention.

• Cute! The WSJ gets to the bottom of those annoying underlined text link ads you've seen (and read about) everywhere.

• Lindsay Lohan throws some kerosene on her Paris Hilton feud, claiming the heiress threw a drink at her.

• Sixth grade math puts the cost of canceling the O.J. Simpson book-interview extravaganza at $10 million.

• NBC and MSNBC begin calling Iraq a "civil war." Tony Snow certain to get angry.

• We love a hefty Ken Auletta media piece in The New Yorker (this week: Lou Dobbs!). We don't love having to choose just one punchline from thousands and thousands of words of copy.

• Publicists: Leave David Carr alone for a while, and he just might talk to you.

• Tom Mazzarelli begins staffing up Fox's morning show, with nary a Today show staffer in sight.

• Simon Dumenco read skimmed Reader's Digest, and lived to tell about it.

When not getting his balls tugged by Jon Friedman, The New Yorker's Ken Auletta is taking on the Los Angeles Times this week about how, well, it's crappy and will die a sad and painful death. (As will we.)

Well, unless David Geffen gets his hands on it, but perhaps we're being overly dramatic.

Anyhow, a funny thing happened on the way to printer: Despite The NYer's "vaunted fact-checking process," Auletta's piece just won't have the "this is real media crit, people!" kick it was meant to.

Writes New York Sun editor Ira Stoll:

The New Yorker out tomorrow carries a long and interesting article by Ken Auletta about the Los Angeles Times. It's full of gloomy statistics about the future of newspapers. Yet despite the New Yorker's vaunted fact-checking process, the article misspells the name of an editor at the L.A. Times, Joel Sappell, rendered in the New Yorker as "Joel Suppell."

Somehow we just won't be able to take it seriously now. But it will be quite an entertaining read during Rosh Hashanah services.

It's Blowjob Day at MarketWatch today. You should see how quickly Jon Friedman put on his kneepads for today's item on The New Yorker's Ken Auletta. And through the magic of the Internet, you can!

Let's tune in for some quick blips of media reporter fawning, wherein you can find Jon's comments in italics and ours in, well, this regular font we chose.

Chances are, the Walter Mitty in media reporters dreams of being Ken Auletta of the New Yorker.
And that's just the lede!

Media celebrities routinely grant him unusually close access. His editors give him months to do his reporting (the most fun and rewarding aspect of a reporter's work) while his counterparts get hours or, if they're really lucky, a week. And when Auletta sits down to write, he can expect to have 10,000 words.
Not even Michael Wolff is getting that kind of treatment at Vanity Fair! Sadly, James Wolcott still is it seems.

I regard Auletta, 63, as a role model for his peers because of the quiet way he holds people accountable for their actions. He has honed his craft over a distinguished career which includes 10 books.
So Jack Shafer's loud and obnoxious accountability methods aren't worth their weight in Web ink?

Auletta also invariably achieves the ultimate, grudging accolade from his subjects
This is code for: When he fucks his subjects in the ass, they lift their legs for him.

I like his style, too.
It's the bright shiny teeth more than his perfectly tailored slacks, isn't it?

Auletta characteristically speaks so softly that you have to lean forward to hear him. But when he gets in front of a word processor, he's as tough on his subjects as any reporter, as a reader can see from perusing www.KenAuletta.com.
Nothing wrong with plugging this guy's website while he massages your prostate. Or, as you lean in, your tongue.

Okay, we're getting ill, so that's all the comments we're making. Do let us know if you make it to the end of the article for the money shot.