• Laura Bush and her daughter, Jenna to write a children's book; President George W. Bush to have trouble reading it.
• It's a sad day for Marie Claire.
• Feds are fighting uphill battle to deny you of your daily internet porn supplement.
• Take my Rodale, please!
• From the LA Times: "When the shrinkage of print editions is accompanied by shrinking coverage of world news, the world around us gets smaller and smaller until it contains little more than local scandals and the latest celebrity gossip." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
• Watch out, cable news. You know you're in trouble when even the internet geeks think you're "uncool."
• Cartoonists around the country raise their pens, grab their sketchbooks and blast Barry Bonds in angry cerebral comic strip solidarity.
• Congratulations to steroid impresario Jose Canseco, who may have succeeded in effectively ruining professional sports.
• From Idolator: "The next issue of Rolling Stone has as its cover subject High School Musical cutie/frequent Bop subject Zac Efron, who is captured in an awkward pose that looks like he's sheepishly feeling himself up while showing off his Tegan and Sara-inspired haircut."
• O.J. Simpson still having trouble grasping the whole "I owe $38 million to the parents of that guy I murdered" concept.
• Weekly World News is folding, which means the only place to read about a bald, umbrella-brandishing freakshow is on Britney Spear's official website.
• Presidential candidates get a little hot under the collar; perspire freely.
• In addition to being a better athlete than you are who gets hotter chicks than you do, QB Tom Brady is also a far snazzier dresser.
• Barry Bonds is officially the new Roger Maris. On 'roids.
• Never one to miss the scoop, Jon Friedman starts asking the big questions about some mysterious mogul man (Rupert whatisface?) who's slowly but surely taking over the media world.
• Fox News discovers it ain't easy being green.
• Keith Olbermann tells the LA Times he had a "conversation" with "the large people at CBS before they went and decided to go to Katie Couric." A smug CBS exec responded, "See?! I knew we had a good reason for picking Couric."
• Rapper/idiot Kanye West describes Karl Lagerfeld as a "living legend" in the August/September issue of Complex magazine. Which he also edited—presumably, badly.
• "Don Imus has a cockroach's knack for survival," writes New York magazine, who—incidentally—is having the Best Lede Ever.
• Apparently unsatisfied with the legal battles waged against his brother, daughter and son, Sumner Redstone also plans to slap his wife with divorce papers.
• Bourne Ultimatum rakes in $70.1 or $69 million in its opening weekend, depending on how much you care.
• Rupert Murdoch promises: "I won't meddle any more than [NYT publisher] Arthur Sulzberger does." In other words, we're all screwed.
• It's official! The View has picked their next washed-up comedienne to take the reins.
• Manhattan Media buys New York Press, leaving thousands wondering, "Why?"
• Cable television hit record numbers this summer, proving once again that Americans are fat, lazy and watch far too much of the Lifetime channel.
• Everybody hates Rupert Murdoch. Enough already, we get it!
• More Republicans agree to join the YouTube debates, except none of the ones who actually matter.
• What's the only thing worse than being thrown into Lebanese prison? Being thrown into Lebanese prison and having everyone think you're actually an Israeli spy.
• Rupert Murdoch buys Dow Jones. For real, this time.
• Which kinda makes this whole "Bancrofts Close to Accepting Murdoch Bid" story sort of outdated. Then again, who cares? It's over!!
• After her catastrophic television debut last week (a.k.a. the funniest thing we've seen all month) the big question on everyone's mind is: will Merry Miller will get another on-air opportunity? "Perhaps, if it's done on tape, but not live," says Debbie Downer Jessica Stedman-Guff, a.k.a. exec producer of ABCNewsNow. Sigh. The show's over, people.
• Ad sales/readership for Women's Health have never been, well, healthier.
• Jeff Zucker on Ben Silverman: "Ben brings great enthusiasm, optimism and energy, so it's always exciting to have Ben around because his enthusiasm and excitement is boundless." How…enthusiastic. And exciting!
• Citizen journalism: it's not just for underfunded barely read news publications anymore.
• Tom Snyder dies, and with him dies the legacy of the funny late-night comic.
• The Bancroft family still divided on whether or not to sell their company to an sinister old man who has deep pockets and no soul.
• Redstones continue to hate, sue and publicly debase one another.
• In moving to CNN, Campbell Brown becomes one of only three women currently hosting her own primetime cable news show, and joins the illustrious ranks of Greta "Legs" Van Susteren and Nancy "Crazypants" Grace.
• Less than a week after getting publicly lambasted by Bill Keller of the NYT for shoddy reporting, Slate's Jack Shafer wonders whether disgraced journalists should get a second chance. How topical!
At ABC headquarters in D.C., mysterious "white, powdery" substance turns out to be aspirin; Related: In moment of inspired genius, Lindsay Lohan's legal team unveils new "Tylenol" defense.
• CBS to pay Imus an undisclosed settlement. In exchange, the ousted radio D.J. will agree to "shut the fuck up."
• Ron Burkle still exploring the idea of adding Star and The National Enquirer to his "crappy supermarket tabloids" repertoire.
• Yeah, we're going to out on a limb here and say that Business Week's Jon Fine thinks Arthur Sulzberger should go private.
• Baghdad Diarist unimpressed with Weekly Standard and New Republic for being unimpressed with him: "It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq."
• Michael Moore, chubby liberal nutjob or marketing genius?
• "Newspapers read like they're put out by terrified bureaucracies," writes Columbia Journalism Review. Um, that's because they are, says Dean Starkman (a.k.a. "Obvious Guy.")
• The new TVNewser reveals his top-secret identity! Oh no, wait—we already knew that.
• Jack Shafer fought Bill Keller, and Bill Keller won. Easily.
• Internet video advertising costs projected to reach an estimated 4.3 billion over the next four years, thanks in large part to CNN.
• WaPo praises Steve McPherson for having "great programming instincts" and a "low hooey threshold." Which explains why the guy can't stand Ben Silverman.
• ""You're not going to survive very long in this business if you internalize every rumor that is out there," Paula Zahn tells the AP. "To a certain extent, my staff and I were able to drown out the noise and do what we were expected to do." You know, until she "voluntarily" resigned.
• Salon readers, YouTube subscribers don't like being called "novices."
• Exciting news! JLo will grace the cover of that annoying Fashion Rocks outsert you'll glance at (briefly) before tossing into the trash.
• NY Times donates over 700,000 pages of personal letters, financial documents and photographs to the New York Public Library. And it should all be available to the public as early as…the year 2050.
• During the Bancrofts' "not acrimonious at all" discussion regarding the potential sale of the Dow Jones corporation, "Christopher Bancroft entered the hotel wearing a 'Bite Me' fishing cap." Touché.
• WSJ vet leaves paper after 22 years to join Portfolio, avoid working for Rupert Murdoch.
• Gossipy Hamptons rag Dan's papers sold for enough money to buy a "pretty nice" house on Amagansett Lane.
• Wenner Media and Time Inc. promoted a bunch of lowly staffers who you've probably never heard of.
• How Condoleezza Rice went from the most popular girl in the White House to total social pariah.
• 24 to elect its first female president, much to the dismay of former tv "prez," Geena Davis and Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.
• Andrew Lloyd Webber to make the leap from writing/producing trashy theatrical productions to writing/producing trashy reality television.
• Second Life makes it easy for unhappy computer nerds to find salvation in…their computers.
• Chicago Sun-Times too become too liberal for Conrad Black's liking.
• Campbell Brown leaves NBC to have babies, work for CNN and "do something besides fill in whenever Brian Williams is on vacay."
• Ever wondered what color Pucci caftan Elle fashion director Nina Garcia wears to the beach? Yeah, neither have we.
• Poor, innocent model made to look like Anna Wintour was presumably advised, "it's less about furs, sunglasses and the bob-haircut, and more about acting like a 'huge fucking bitch.'"
• Dow director quits out of pure, unadulterated hatred towards Rupert Murdoch.
• In addition to "accidentally" portraying the Queen of England as a tantrum-throwing diva, the BBC has also inadvertently sponsored some fake phone-in competitions. For which they're truly sorry.
• FYI, The Economist's readers are younger, smarter, more educated—and way more influential—than you.
• C-Span's Brian Lamb gives such a fascinating interview (about his objections to living in a "celebrity culture") that even MarketWatch's Jon Friedman has trouble screwing it up.
• And speaking of the downsides of a celebrity culture, the "Hott 4 Hill" girl to shill for MSNBC.
• "Basically," explains a totally not-crazy Teen Vogue devotee, "all we do is act like psycho stalker sex crazed rapist-murderers or really stupid girls or people who eat too much and start fights and type annoying and get on the general YM's nerves." Oh, is that all?
• The Canadians' schadenfreude obsession with Conrad Black can probably be traced back to that time where he ditched the Canucks in order to become a British lord.
• 'Does YouTube stifle creativity?' wonders Slate. Um, clearly not!
• "As the chances of an alternative to Rupert Murdoch appear to wane," writes the New York Times, "more Wall Street Journal staffers have polished their resumes and peddled them to rival publications."
• Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don't work, I don't get in a car, I don't fucking ride in a car, I don't pick up the phone, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as shit don't fucking go and and buy Harry Potterl! Shomer shabbos!
• After a somewhat disappointing debut, Portfolio's hotly anticipated second issue will sport what some are calling "a redesign," and what a spokeswoman is calling "tinkering."
• Most people would be embarrassed to admit they actually work for Cosmo. But not this guy!
• Kimora Lee Simmons wastes no time making sure viewers of her new reality show, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, clearly understand that she's a washed-up closet case with an over-inflated ego. "I've had billboards; that's my life," she says, matter-of-factly.
• Oprah becomes the newest Obama girl, raising money for the presidential wannabe because, as she explains, "I like my men like I like my coffee."
• After more than one false alarm, the words "Murdoch and Dow Jones reach agreement in principle" have us shouting from the rooftops, and singing a song we made up ourselves entitled, "It's About Fucking Time."
• Which means Christopher Bancroft has failed in his last-ditch, longshot crusade to thwart Rupert Murdoch's plans for total world domination.
• At long last, HuffPo tackles that hard-hitting issue of "Why Canadians care about the Black verdict and Americans don't."
• Harper's Bazaar EIC Glenda Bailey becomes the latest victim of the new jaundiced fashionista trend.
• William Shatner to interview celebs on boring, new Biography-channel version of Chelsea Lately.
• As the battle between the 'Giuliani Girl' and the 'Obama Girl' heats up, Team Barack "keeps to their tradition of balancing booty with wit, using a pop-up Al Gore to excellent effect, along with the somewhat hapless character of "Kucinich Girl," which is a nice nod to lower-tier candidates (though one shudders to think of what "Gravel Girl" might look like)."
• Larry Flynt to Tucker Carlson: "I'm a slimeball, and you can't dance."
• According to the results of a new Harvard study, "young people do not make an appointment with news every day the way older adults do." As a result, teens also tend not to talk like out-of-touch septuagenarians.
• WaPo brings "local news" to excruciatingly boring macroscopic level.
• Again, the BBC is really, really sorry for making the Queen look like a royal bag.
• But not sorry enough to quit, apparently!
• Former television columnist Gail Shister demoted reassigned to the metro desk. Next in store for Gail: The local traffic beat.
• HBO execs in total denial over those giant piles of hate-mail from people still livid over the Sopranos finale.
• Meanwhile, HBO starting to face the reality that, without Chris "Bruiser" Albrecht at the helm, they've got zero new hit shows.
• Magazine ad sales come in "flat" by dropping 0.5% since 2006. "But if flat is the new up," writes AdAge, "a decline smaller than 1% can certainly be called the new flat." Or, in other words, no news is good news.
• Queen Elizabeth throws a shitshow temper tantrum and storms off set after photog Annie Leibovitz asks her to pose for some tawdry pics without her crown. Reportedly, Leibovitz's attempts to cajole QEII into cooperating included telling her "all the royals were doing it" and reassuring her that it would be "tasteful, for the sake of art."
• BBC apologizes for accidentally airing footage of the Queen storming off; explains away royal temper tantrum as "a documentary clip [that] had been edited incorrectly."
• "I don't want to be remembered as the guy who killed David Halberstam," worries the Guy Who Killed David Halberstam.
• You know what sucks about working at Bauer? Everything!
• The NYT has the non-exclusive on a magazine that already folded three days ago.
Editorial Director
