• Jack Valenti, the longtime Hollywood lobbyist, dies at 85. His death will be mourned by everyone who knew him, and rejoiced by every teen who's ever been denied admittance to an R-rated movie.

• Two "major publications" (read: NYP and People) digitally obscured portions of the photo from the VT shootings. "Eh, that's nothing. I used to to pull that crap all the time!" says recently fired Blade photog, Allan Detrich.

• Say, remember when we suggested Rush Limbaugh might be the next Don Imus? Apparently, he was listening!

• ABC network exec, Andrea Wong, to take the reins at The Lifetime Channel. Her first goal? To make it "even more boring."

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Larry Hackett can rest assured that he owns the personal trauma niche. After Bauer's In Touch attempted to invade on People's territory by slapping the Virginia Tech tragedy on the cover last week, editor Richard Spencer saw newsstand sales slide. A normal 1.2 million sales clip stumbled to just 900,000, or below, making it the worst selling issue in a year. (Loose-lipped enemies will say two years.)

And in other news from Keith Kelly: Life & Style had its best week ever, notching 900k at the newsstand (congrats, Pasetsky!), while Us Weekly's own 900k copies were down from last year's 1 million. Meanwhile, Bauer chief Hubert Boehle has approved plans to test half of Life & Style and In Touch issues with a jump in the $1.99 newsstand price to $2.19.

Which is just their way of saying: If you're not going to buy our heartfelt issue about a college campus mourning, you're gonna have to pay a premium for half-truths about Angelina Jolie.

Simon Dumenco, doing serious media criticism? Long ago we thought he'd abandoned that at AdAge and instead settled in for his tenure of media quizzes. (They tickle! They entertain!) And then there was Monday's column, where he took the television networks to task for their Virginia Tech coverage. It wasn't the forced product placement that brings American Idol to mind, but the commoditization of news.

News as a product? It's just awful.

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How many minutes before Col Allan assigns his enterprising news reporters to jump on the Sun-Times reporting scandal?

That Marketwatch's Jon Friedman beat them to it is, in itself, astounding, given that when Jon Friedman beats anyone to anything, the media is in for a day of shame.

So why would Col's New York Post be so interested in the way the Chicago Sun-Times bungled its Virginia Tech reporting? Because ex-Daily News foe Michael Cooke is now running the show over there. And, while there's no shoe fetish bit to make things interesting, the way he royally crapped on his newsprint is worth a look.

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• "Alessandra Stanley cares about accuracy in journalism, as long as it's now her own."

• "Bill O'Reilly Producer 'Stalks' Denver Post Columnist in Wild Oats Parking Lot."

• The NYT and WaPo "bought keyword ads that put their [Virginia Tech] coverage into the the prominent 'sponsored links' atop the Google results page."

• Meanwhile, editors of Virginia Tech student newspaper say, "we're getting like 10 billion phone calls."

• Wapo: "I was stunned to learn how many of the journalists I admire had been regular guests on Imus' program."

Today, as he is most days, Matt Lauer was NBC's whipping boy.

This morning's Today show was supposed to welcome the families of Virginia Tech victims, but after last night's "multimedia manifesto" (see how with it 30 Rock is?!) – where Brian Williams and his MSNBC cohorts aired photos, video, and documents mailed to them by VT gunman Cho Seung-Hui – the families pulled out, and left the Today show sans guests.

Cue Lauer's reading of a prepared statement defending the network's decision to air the material. But, as one NBC insider tells us, it's likely Lauer didn't want to go along for the ride.

"That's not something he would've chose to do," says a former Lauer colleague. "Especially at the risk of losing such a big story [having the victims on the Today show]."

We certainly don't mean to make light of the Virginia Tech tragedy. But when Shepard Smith goes on Fox News, gets all huffy, and threatens those who made the false bomb threat to the university with "a special place in hell" … well, it sort of makes you think about whether God loves the gays or not.

It was the "get" NBC News couldn't have ever bought: exclusive photos, video, and writings from Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old Virgina Tech student who killed 33 of his classmates and injured many more.

A white envelope arrived at Rockefeller Plaza yesterday – a day late, thanks to an incorrect zip code – and was promptly put on the desk of NBC News president Steve Capus. Federal investigators were called in and took the original items, but not before NBC made duplicates of all the material (down to the address scrawl on the envelope). As it turns out, Seung-Hui mailed the package in between killing his first two victims and the second wave of murder two hours later.

By 6pm, Tucker Carlson was teasing the exclusive on MSNBC's Tucker, but refused to elaborate on what the contents contained or show any details about what NBC News had in its hands. That moment only came at 6:30pm, when Brian Williams was over on NBC proper, and lead NBC Nightly News with the eerie words and video of the killer while Tucker broadcast what looked like a similar package.

Over at the CBS Evening News, meanwhile, Katie Couric had little to go on except the same reports we'd been hearing all day. On Fox News, Brit Hume lead with a story about President Bush and Iraq that we quickly turned away from.

Undoubtedly, it was a glorious get for NBC. Completely unexpected. And as yet unexplained.

Good evening. We now know what the Virginia Tech gunman was doing during that two-hour period between shootings on campus. He was compiling before going to the post office and mailing via overnight mail what can only be described as a multimedia manifesto, containing video, still pictures and a lengthy document to NBC headquarters here in New York. The envelope was sent from Blacksburg, Virginia on Monday morning…We are sensitive to how all of this will be seen by those affected, and we know that we are—in effect—airing the words of a murderer tonight.

–Brian Williams, on NBC Nightly News' decision to run the VT gunman's "multimedia manifesto" on last night's evening news broadcast.

Click here for the video.

• FCC can't fine CBS for Imus' comments, because the remarks—while racially insensitive—are still nowhere near as offensive as Janet Jackson's wayward nipple.

• The Virginia Tech massacre is the worst thing that could ever have happened to Larry King 's 50th anniversary party.

• Bill Keller tries not to sound ungrateful about the Pulitzers by sounding ungrateful about the Pulitzers.

• Cooking Light publisher discovers his sales assistand has "quite the voice." Naturally, "sing dancing and camera-phone snapping" ensue.

• Web to introduce new nerd-only tv programming; pseudo-intellectuals need not apply.

• Kurt Vonnegut: misunderstood genius or imbecilic failure?

Have you seen this week's In Touch weekly? In a nontraditional move, the celeb glossy has dedicated the majority of its cover to the "Heroes of Virginia," and inside the magazine is a 4-page spread about the devastation at Virginia Tech, including vignettes about several courageous victims and their "inspiring stories of survival."

Also inspiring? In Touch's refreshing decision to give a national tragedy its due attention and reduce Brad and Angie ("Is it over?") and John Mayer and Jessica Simpson ("So in love!") to a lowly sidebar.

**If, however, you are more of the "OMG, celebrity gossip is the most important thing in the universe!" persuasion, please refer to Us Weekly for the lowdown on Prince William's breakup, and OK! for the exclusive(!) pics of Larry Birkhead and Dannielynn that can also (exclusively!) be found in today's NYP.

So, about those Facebook and blog comments left by staffers at the major networks looking to score interviews with Virgina Tech students — the closer to killer Cho Seung-Hui, the better? Top producers from at least two networks forced the unenviable job upon low-level staffers and, at least in one case, an intern, report insiders at ABC and MSNBC.

"There wasn't much discussion about [whether it was appropriate]," says a junior staffer at MSNBC. "Once it was suggested to go on Facebook and MySpace to get interviews, everyone was told to do it."

If you or someone you know was forced to troll the social networking sites for a network get, we have bloggers and interns standing by who would love to meet you.

Everyone makes mistakes. After all, who among us has never once accidentally left the stove on, forgotten their house keys or shoplifted a $4 charm bracelet from Claire's Accessories in the fifth grade?

And who knows more about making mistakes than NYT television critic, Alessandra Stanley, who holds the dubious distinction of issuing corrections as frequently as a half-empty bottle of White Out? Today, however, hers was not so much a factual inaccuracy as a mysterious omission.

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In the wake of yesterday's devastating Virginia Tech massacre, horrified viewers across the country tuned in to see the latest developments of this catastrophic story. And what did they find?

Charlie Sheen's latest attempt at a sitcom (CBS), Heather Mills' dramatic peg-leg tumble (ABC), and Howie Mandel's shiny chrome dome (NBC). And while the network head honchos stuck to their regularly scheduled primetime programming, the talk show pundits hastily reconfigured their programs to make way for breaking new on the still unraveling story, with some (like mustachioed white knight, Geraldo) racing down to Virginia for some on-site reporting.

And inspired by Rivera's bravado, we sought to find out where the worst school shooting in American history fell on fellow Foxer (and Geraldo's occasional nemesis), Bill O'Reilly's radar.

The answer, after the jump.

CONTINUED »

• Network execs opt to show Dancing With The Stars, Deal or No Deal and Two and a Half Men rather than risk alienating advertisers by covering the "deadliest school shooting incident in U.S. history."

• Wall Street Journal wins two Pulitzer Prizes, giving them a 2-0 edge over Hustler magazine.

• MTV greenlights several more "user-generated" reality shows, adheres to its strategy of not playing any music videos whatsoever.

• That slacker Regis Philbin still isn't done recovering from his triple heart bypass surgery.

• Does the press pick presidents? "Yes!" hopes journalist/Ross Perot supporter, Jack Shafer.

• Conrad Black is as underwhelmed by the prosecutors on his case as his wife, Lady Black, is by 'those sluts who call themselves reporters.'