• A new research study reveals that The Daily Show appeals to the smart, well-informed populace while Fox News caters more to the "slack-jawed yokel" demographic.

• Don Imus invokes the Ann Coulter defense, attributing his misconstrued remarks to a wayward attempt at comedy.

• David Carr instigates a boring Ellie's rivalry by hyping up the competition between Field & Stream and Martha Stewart Living.

• Al-Jazeera to become most popular YouTube sensation since "Dorky Light Sabre Guy" and "Girl Who Can't Dance For Shit."

• Newspaper apologizes for publishing Photoshopped images, pisses off fashion, pornographic industries, Mariah Carey by calling digitalized alterations "dishonest."

• Larry King plans to keep on broadcasting, wearing suspenders until he's forced to answer to "that big Brooklyn guy in the sky."

• Could all the Democrats dumping Fox News signal an actual change on the left?

• David Carr will tell you exactly where Don Imus went wrong.

• Hearst jumps on "all things green" bandwagon, making us thisclose to getting pissed off with the environment.

• Teen Vogue offering scholarship to breed unhealthy body images at a younger age.

CONTINUED »

• Wunderkind publisher Jared Kushner often works on the Lord's Day. Possibly because he's Jewish, definitely because he's "motivated."

• Conrad Black fraud trial to start this week. Which is great, cause we haven't had a media circus since the days of Scooter Libby and Anna Nicole!

• David Carr quietly wonders whether Village Voice might be slightly better off if its editorial director weren't a "hayseed" living in Phoenix.

• Would U.S. News make up fake data in its college rankings? And if so, would it target those "hot artsy chicks" over at Sarah Lawrence?

CONTINUED »

CNBC has positioned itself as an adjunct to business, the glowing friend in the corner with the sound off and a ticker at the bottom. In that respect, CNBC has roughly the same relationship to Wall Street that “Entertainment Tonight” has to Hollywood: boosterish, gossipy and more than a little starry-eyed...

If there’s a price to be paid, the bill will be sent to Ms. Bartiromo’s reputation. After all, what are all those day traders going to think the next time she opens her show with a look at Citigroup? It may be hard to keep their minds on their “trade” buttons.

--David Carr, on Maria Bartiromo/CNBC in "Citigroup and CNBC Cozy Up"

Could the LAT be extending out a friendly hand to potential buyer David Geffen? That's what moonlighting NYT blogger David Carr suspects. There are just too many flattering articles about Dreamgirls – Geffen's "pet project" – for the LAT to merely be towing the line of every other media outlet in fawning over the blockbuster project.

Still, the LAT and its Oscar website, The Envelope, has dived deeper into the tank and more often than almost any media outlet. The Bagger is no cynic — he actually enjoyed “We are Marshall” — but he has watched story after story emerge from his esteemed West Coast competitor and wondered if someone, certainly not him, would begin to think thusly:

“Dreamgirls,” is the long-beloved project of David Geffen, the Los Angeles macher who owned the film rights to the story and who has been rumored to be in talks with the Chandler family about teaming up on a bid for the LAT.

No one knows what, if anything, Mr. Geffen is going to do, but if you worked at the paper, might not the possibility that you would soon be calling him boss or He Who Must Be Obeyed have an impact on the amount of attention “Dreamgirls” gets?

While we were quick to notice former New York Post-cum-Fortune scribe Tim Arango's CNBC flattery when he thought he could land a gig on the biz channel, we're going out on a limb and remaining cautious about whether LAT writers even have the foresight or dot connecting ability to play into Geffen's back pocket. But when Lola Ogunnaike started feting ABC any chance she got as she auditioned for The View? Yeah, that was totally her M.O.

• Even after reading what went on inside the New York Film Critics Circle, we're still not sure what went down.

• David Carr: Rewarding readers for reading is stupid.

• Surprise! Good Day New York is just a marketing show for its own properties.

• Newsday EIC John Mancini says there will be no punishment for the 113 newsroom staffers who signed the petition sent to Tribune Co.

• So far it's a holiday season filled with parties sans food.

• NY1 plays defense with Adele Sammarco sexual harassment scandal.

• 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.

We aren't the only ones who noticed David Carr's piece in the New York Times today seemed a little to close for comfort to what was basically the same exact article written by Michael Calderone in the New York Observer two weeks ago. But that's not going to stop us from reiterating.

From Carr's piece today:

Many reporters are now forced to conduct themselves like C.I.A. operatives, encoding files, shredding notes and switching cellphones. But technology also makes forensics on determining where leaks came from far easier.

From Calderone's piece :

“With this crazy environment, with subpoenas and so on, there is this feeling that you have to act like a drug dealer or a Mafioso,” Mr. Barstow said ....

Mr. Barstow said he suggests disposing of story drafts and cutting back on telephone and e-mail contact with sources—or using disposable cell phones for important calls. Reporters should be wary of meeting sources at their offices, Mr. Barstow said, so as to avoid sign-in sheets and security cameras.

Sure, Carr went the CIA route versus the drug dealer route – also a big surprise, considering he is the new king of drug lit – but more or less it's the same piece.

But that's not the only Carr news we received today. Check out Fishbowl, NY:

So what does Carr think about being one of the poster children for publishing's "Rehab Lit" movement? "I don't think about it," Carr said, adding that he liked Choire Sicha's recent piece in the New York Observer on the budding phenomenon.

In October, look for a Times piece by Carr, about himself, which will incorporate lines like, "Members of A.A. have been struggling with the significance of that second “A” for more than half a century."

An Obsession With Leaks and Plugs [David Carr, New York Times]
Times Studies How to Shake Feds: Disposable Phones, Erasable Notes: "Act Like a Drug Dealer" [Michael Calderone, New York Observer]
Rehab Lit: David Carr Sorting Through 30 Hours Of Video, 40 Hours Of Audio For Addiction Memoir [Fishbowl, NY]

A few weeks ago, Jossip had some fun comparing how journalists cover journalists in movies. If you remember, the conclusion was the Washington Post thinks movies portray journalists as tough-talking boozers who have Superman's day job, while the New York Times thinks journalists are shown as slimeball, flawed morons.

Which is why we couldn't be happier to have David Carr come along and really clear things up for us: journalists are drunk floozies — especially the women. And the only way a female reporter can land her story is by sleeping with her source. We agree — it really is so unfair that the film industry pigeonholes reporters like that. Especially when we have the reality shows to prove that things aren't really like that.

The show, set in the newsroom of The Daily News in New York, is that rare reality series that actually uncovers something fundamental about its subject. For starters, it is hard to imagine anyone being seduced by any of these reporters.

Ouch. Though it's pretty obvious David Carr never ran into Hudson Morgan at the Soho Grand.

Reporters on Film: Drunks and Tarts [David Carr, New York Times]
Earlier: A Look Back on Journalists reporting on Journalists in Films

Today, Animal brings us a handy little round-up of the best way to pitch gossips. If you call Keith Kelly at 5:30 and he will cut you, Richard Johnson wants you to spit it out in 10 seconds, and David Carr prefers your e-love letters.

But, what about the great and powerful Lloyd Grove? How should you pitch him stories?

Name: Lloyd Grove Phone: 212 210 1647 Fax: 212 643 7832 Email: lgove@edit.nydailynews.com Bio: He joined the NYDN in 2003. Before that, he wrote the “Reliable Source: gossip column in the Styles section of the Washington Post. He worked at the Post from 1980 – 2003, working as a features writer, theater critic, campaign reporter, and style reporter before becoming the Gossip columnist in 1997. He also worked as Corpus Christi Caller-Times and the Dallas Morning News.

So, uh, yeah. They don't really say. But we know how to get your name in Lloyd Grove's column. Oh yes we do.

CONTINUED »

Popping up in yesterday's Times Corrections:

The David Carr column in Business Day last Monday about cost cuts at Gawker Media, a blogging company, erroneously included a Web site on a list of sites where editors were moved to new jobs or replaced on June 30. The changes occurred at Gawker.com, Gizmodo.com, and Gridskipper.com; no editors were moved or replaced at Wonkette.

Or, if you've been following this story, you read that as: Nick Denton's insinuation that he got rid of Wonkette's David Lat as part of his restructuring is a steaming pile of shit. Lat left of his own accord and gave notice a month previous. Then he slapped Denton across the face, huddled between Liz Spiers' thighs, and hoped for a brighter tomorrow. Carr, meanwhile, should be bitch slapped himself for eating up Denton's drivel.

Corrections [NYT]
Related: All Gawker Whacker coverage

Exclusive

Because when you begin chatting about the chattering classes, the flood gates of gossip open — which means we've already received our fair share of updates regarding Jesse Oxfeld's ousting at Gawker and Nick Denton's additional slashings. As you recall from our exclusive report earlier today, Gawker honcho Denton dismissed Oxfeld without warning on Friday. Denton, we're told is also going to close two of his titles: Screenhead (made extinct by YouTube) and Sploid (while sporting some impressive CSS, was made extinct by news junkies' continued preference for The Drudge Report and, well, YouTube).

So why is all this happening? Because Denton – who has long touted Gawker's media insider vantage point – wants to take his flagship title more mainstream (read: mainstream = more pageviews = more ad dollars). And that means there's no place for Oxfeld's endless Radar magazine updates and masthead shake up chronicling. Instead, Gawker needs new blood: enter TMFTML/Alex Balk and Gridskipper's Chris Mohney. But while Balk is taking over what's technically Oxfeld's empty Aeron, the real news is Mohney's role: top dog.

After two-plus years helming Gawker, co-editor Jessica Coen is getting a new superior to answer to. In additon to managing editor Lockhart Steele breathing down her neck, newcomer Mohney will techically be Jessica's overseer. And you can imagine how pleased she is with that back stab. (Surely Jessica squelches her tears with hosting duties for the Star channel's Looking For Stars.)

As for readers, they can likely expect an Us Weekly-ization of Gawker, sans bright yellow serif fonts. (Whether Denton will remake Mark Lisanti's Defamer as a bland Hollywood gossip sheet instead of insider studio rag is yet to be determined.)

Now, when it comes to closing Screenhead and Sploid, Denton is looking for a buyer before he's ready to shut them down. But there's a short timeline: one month. If a cheque isn't endorsed by the end of the July, both sites will go under. And so, too, will their staff: "Dong Resin" at Screenhead and Sploid's Ken Layne and Scott Ross will be out of work. And that's not all of Denton's pink slipping: Gizmodo's John Biggs – who joined Denton's stable in April 2005 after founding editor Peter Rojas defected for a future windfall at rival Engadget – is being shown the door as well. (Blogebrity says someone from Wired will be filling in.)

It's also worth noting Oxfeld is the first of Gawker's four editors to leave involuntarily. So what'd Jesse have to say about all the new revelations? "Your account is inaccurate, reckless, and defamatory. I was at most moderately hammered when I arrived at the Magician Friday night." And he has been all weekend.

And remember, there's something to look forward to tomorrow: the New York Times will have its own item about all this.

Update: Nikki Finke weighs in on her favorite email sparring partner. From her item we learn David Carr is penning the piece (where, oh where, is Kit Seelye's byline where it should be?), though if that's true, perhaps Carr should actually touch base with Oxfeld.

Earlier: Gawker Whacker: Nick Denton Fires Jesse Oxfeld, Shutters 2 Titles

Bonus: Now you can vote!

Today we learn that New York Times columnist David Carr had a drug problem, wrote a book about it, and is getting a $300,000 Simon & Schuster book deal for it. Not that it really seems like a huge chunk of change compared to the price of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, but, we guess it's a pretty good deal for a journalist.

Oh, and speaking of journalists, did you all know that the act of reporting was supposed to be non-fictional?

"We're thrilled to have a chance to publish a book from one of the finest non-fiction journalists of our time," David Rosenthal, publisher of industry giant Simon & Schuster said.

Carr was the editor of Washington City Paper, worked at the defunct Powerful Media and was a contributor to Atlantic Monthly when he was hired by Howell Raines as a media reporter at the New York Times.

Well, at least Jayson Blair continues to hold on to his "finest fiction journalists of our time" title.

Media Ink [Keith Kelly, New York Post]

What could be better than a media discussion between David Carr, Bob Garfield, and Mike Lacey? Ok, fine, just about everything. But you can actually listen to this one ... just in case you missed it (as we did) when it aired May 5.

But it is always fun to watch people fumble around for overly analytical answers to why just about everybody quit the Village Voice when Lacey took over. What we've extrapolated is that he was an extremely demanding boss with these crazy expectations of what is the most important thing about working at a newspaper and running a newsroom.

I said you need to pick up the phone and interview people. I want you to do fundamental reporting and not simply riffing about what had occurred to you that day. And apparently, that was too much to expect.

And when half the ex staffers flee to Rolling Stone, where the tasks of reporting is secondary to the tasks of keeping your desk clean and re-writing your reviews to compliment FOJs (Friends of Jann's) they will finally have found their place.

Alt-Upheaval [On the Media via Romenesko]

• The marketing geniuses at the New Yorker seem to think flying fish will stick with their audience. [FBNY]

• Yeah, all those bloggers are just lazy shits who couldn't hack it in the journalism world. And we know that all those journos are just so good at blogging. [PI]

• Jill Abramson's diatribe is living proof that newspapers are alive ... albeit in their last stages of terminal illness, but alive nonetheless. [NY Sun]

• Tsk, tsk. David Carr is sorely mistaken if he thinks the "time to make the doughnuts" guy didn't eat that shit for free all the time. [NYO]

• It's not just the public who doesn't really approve of President Bush. The liberal-ish media aren't too fond of him, either. [NYO]

So what if you can't pronounce Ron Burkle's supermarket conglomerate Yucaipa. You've still been thumbing your way through the Daily News, Post (sorta), L.A. Times, and, once again today, the New York Times. David Carr takes his requisite stab at the gossip industry, playing phone tag with all the regulars – Ian Spiegelman, Kurt Andersen, David Pecker, and gossip item emeritus Ed Koch – and reveals the industry shattering news that if your hotel wants to curry good favor from the Sixers, you let their reporters drown in Veuve.

But perhaps a Monday Times article, no matter how beautifully illustrated, wasn't enough for you. Then it's worth your while to thumb through Gawker's weekend archives, fluffed with the most partisan coverage from Nick Denton's camp since Jessica Coen took on Chris Wilson. While Stern utilized the blog's empty restriction on column inches to muster items more nepotistic than ever we could think up to create an embonpoint of ego even Burkle would envy, the real story is in the not so subtle tone of Gawker's editorial crew, suspiciously lacking any hope of authenticity. Said Gawker maestro Jesse Oxfeld to Fishbowl NY:

Giving Jared a gratuitous platform to defend himself is a small price to pay for having someone on duty to cover all the important media news that's sure to break over Easter weekend.

And just when we thought Denton was keeping his feet dry in the pool of transparent attempts at publicity.

The Hard Edge of a Fluff Machine [David Carr, NYT]

• Brokeback Mountain got its second dis since the Oscars when GLAAD presented Charlize Theron with an award for increasing understanding of homosexuality. Wait, we thought she wasn't a lesbian in North Country? [AP]

• David Carr had almost no self confidence when he started at the New York Times. Then he met Jon Friedman. What? We're not saying these incidents are related ... they just happened in that order. [Market Watch]

• Nicole Richie says she eats whatever she wants. Which we take to mean "nothing." [Sky]

• As Janet Jackson proves, when you're fat (and then skinny and then fat) you can still shoe shop. Because after eating 10 boxes of ho-hos, you still fit in your shoes the next day. [TMZ]

• Which is funny because the New York Times just published the exact same story. Minus Janet, plus a few drag queens. [NYT]

• And finally, if you lied, or have been suspected of lying, or just tend to exaggerate a little in your reporting, the Times wants to know. So that they won't hire you. [Romenesko]

• Hey, New York Times! Yeah, you. 1999 just called — they want their "crazy Chinese tattoos are fake" story back. [NYT]

• Tales of an ex-newspaper addict are really, really terrifying. We feel so ... so disoriented. [New City]

• Because when you get three friends or more together, buying movies online for $20 is so much cheaper than going to the theater. [ABC]

• Those deceptive little Trader Joe's winos are really pushing the buck. [Gothamist]

• Oh, Jim Romenesko, you got us good! When we accidentally clicked on something that led us to a "Bonnie Fuller plagiarized James Frey" tag, we got so excited. And so totally punk'd. [Romenesko]

• Katie Couric to CBS, Merideth Viera to Today, and Mimi Rogers to The View. And we're sure Elizabeth Spiers is just eating up the potential for media/Wall Street crossover. [Gawker, Ad Age]

• David Carr may think that indie mags can't make it, but Jefferson Hack is going to try to hack it down unda' anyway. [WWD]