• Vanity Fair: Bringing computer nerds and high fashion together for the first time since Bill Gates banged a supermodel back in 1991.

• Does major media have a conservative bias? "Poppycock!" declares FNC chairman Roger Ailes.

• Wow, some Montreal based publishing company we've never even heard of is willing to buy the O.J. book say they'll buy the O.J. book for the free publicity!

• "Did WaPo break the Walter Reed Story?" wonders the Boston Phoenix. "Who in the hell is Walter Reed?" snaps diabetes frontman Wilford Brimley.

• Conrad Black's defense attorney already on the defensive.

• Sam Zell's bid for the Chicago Tribune is already "losing momentum," which means it's the perfect time for Team Burkle to swoop in!

• Jane magazine is sorry for inadvertently IDing the 53 women who agreed to "anonymously" show their tits.

• CBS poaches Google ad exec after promising him a correctly spelled business card and an intro to Katie Couric.

• Bigger isn't always better; Washington Posties told to keep their articles short…or else they'll find themselves at (gasp!) The Washington Times.

• The Pulitzers are coming! The Pulitzers are coming! Predictions for who won't win: The New York Daily News, for their dramatic coverage of the completely fabricated 9/11 "hero."

• It's nice that ABC's Bob Woodruff has helped raise awareness for injured army vets. Too bad the Pentagon has just banned CNN and the Discovery Channel from filming at Walter Reed Medical Center.

• And in sad news, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger has died, at the senseless age of 89.

• Money Honey made a habit of 'cozying up' to business execs; CNBC made a habit of ignoring it.

• WashingtonPost.com blogger, William M. Arkin, has received thousands of email critiques, death threats—or, one from each of President Bush's remaining supporters.

• Scooter Libby believes NBC's Andrea Mitchell will clear him in CIA leak case. Also, everyone hates Meet The Press.

• Viacom to fire 500 MTV staffers; Related: Vanessa Minnillo to try really, really hard not to drop another F-bomb.

• MySpace to keep pedophiles, perverts; get rid of copyrighted video material.

• More Time Inc. publications to move to Florida, crash your grandparents' retirement condo.

• Al Franken may have a "face for radio," but that won't preclude him from joining fellow uglies in a run for the U.S. Senate!

• Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame's identity to a Time reporter, then said, "I've already said too much" before disappearing with a loud cry of "go, Gadget, go!"

• Although the NYT lost nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars last quarter, Google's earnings are up 67%.

• Chandler family prolongs the whole boring Tribune buyout saga.

• The WSJ hopes to attract more women with new advertisers. Related: Scott Storch hopes to attract more women by buying them crazy bling to compensate for his heinous appearance.

• WaPo debates whether to dump its style section, given that its readers are more of the "dowdy politician" persuasion.

• Liberal columnist Molly Ivins dies of breast cancer at the senseless age of 62.

• The Washington Post announces plans to publish fiction for the very first time; "Been there, done that!" scoffs the NYT.

• It's opening day at the Scooter Libby trial, also known as "just one more thing you won't get to read about in Valerie Plame's book."

• Parents suddenly catching on to this whole newfangled MySpace thing.

• CBS responds to threat of never-ending Today show, announcing two more years of Rachael Ray.

• The biggest problem for YouTube's marketing team? "There are only 365 days in a year." Oh, to be bought by Google…

• Good luck getting another author booked on Oprah, Random House!

• Had we joined Cindi Leive and James Brady for lunch, we wouldn've fallen asleep in our soup.

• Redbook fattens up to attract middle-aged heavyset women.

• Surprise! Dean Baquet is job hunting 'round these parts.

• Anna Wintour maintains straight face while telling Barbara Walters the pulse of the nation can be felt in the pages of Vogue.

• WaPo brings the holiday cheer. Err, the holiday jeer.

On the heels of respected Washington Post reporters Jim VandeHei and John Harris defecting for a web operation comes word that the D.C. rag is about to start evalutating employees in a plotline we're pretty sure The Office has already torn through. Multiple-choice reviews – with options like "meeting" or "exceeding expectations" will be attached to each newsroom staffers' HR docs. And – can you believe?! – WaPo journos aren't enthused over the grammer school grading system.

“Obviously, the timing of me doing this is unfortunate, because some people—a minority of people—think this is a prelude to getting rid of people,” said [Peter Perl, assistant managing editor for training and career development].

Now what would give them that idea?

• Richard Huff is the only one routing for Real World Denver.

• The family of the woman who killed herself just after appearing on Nancy Grace's show? Yeah, they're suing Nancy and CNN.

• Washington Post loses two top staffers to – god – a website.

• The "models and bottles" saga continues on LX.tv. To make up for it, we hear LX is doing a round of Thanksgiving philanthropic specials.

• Robert Altman, the man behind MASH and Gosford Park, is dead at 81. Elsewhere, Broadcasting & Cable loses business editor John Higgins to a heart attack.

• David Shuster eats his word. Literally.

Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie just handed down a memo to staff, where he announced impending job cuts in the newsroom, moving staffers around to fill in gaps, and cutting article length. How did he spin it?

• Slashing jobs becomes "shrink the newsroom staff through attrition, as low-priority positions become vacant."

• Forcing staffers into jobs they don't want but need filling becomes "moving reporters and editors within and among staffs to accomplish this."

• Chopping article length becomes "a new approach to story length."

So how does Downie feel about all this? He calls it "the most important change that I will lead as executive editor." He must be so proud.

Full memo after the jump.

CONTINUED »

Did you know that John Harris of the Washington Post wrote a book? No? Really? Well, apparently, neither did his co-workers. Or, at least Harris doesn't think they know about it. Hence this letter "from the department of shameless self-promotion" in which he begs his peers to buy The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008." And they say the media isn't biased! Well, at least he's honest.

From: John Harris/news/TWP
To: NEWS - All Newsroom@WashPostMain
Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 02:05PM
Subject: from the department of shameless self-promotion

I recently wrote a book on presidential campaigns and strategy. "THE WAY TO WIN: Taking the White House in 2008" is focused on the way the political game has changed over the past generation and tries to illuminate the specific principles that people who have thrived at winning this game (including Bill Clinton and Karl Rove) know and how they put those principles to work.

He also encourages his Post colleagues to come hear him speak tonight. And the alluring fact that his underling simply adored the book is his main selling point.

CONTINUED »

There has been so much sudden hype over Bob Woodward's latest novel The State of Denial that we don't even know where to start. You know Woodward "scooped" the Washington Post by saving his juicy journalistic bits for his book, instead of giving them up to his paper. (Happens every time.) On top of that, he didn't even give WaPo a heads up that the book was being released early, and the New York Times' Kit Seelye jumped on the story last Friday.

And now today, we have David Carr's analysis, which is quite intriguing and explanatory. Not only is his piece totally dumbed down, but the journalist/blogger also insists on twice comparing the world of books to the world of blogs.

The actual journalistic accomplishment in “State of Denial” is less than grand. It took him three books to arrive at a conclusion thousands of basement-bound bloggers suggested years ago: that the Bush administration is composed of people who like war, don’t seem to be very good at it and have been known to turn the guns on each other.

Basement-bound? What the? Oh, whatever. We're sure Carr has some warpped sense of how bloggers live (dark, hermit-like Star Trek and computer locked in a basement) because of people like Matt Drudge and Pete Rojas. But he doesn't stop the blog comparisons there. Carr goes on to pull a quote from Simon & Schuster's publisher, who just can't believe that in a world of random 20-somethings throwing their opinions on the Internet that people even read books anymore.

It is interesting to me that in an age of blogs, Webs and texting that a book, something which is essentially a tortoise, very quaint in its own way, can carry the most immediacy.”

And so the circle of media life continues, with the blogs jumping on the hype of books, forcing the newspapers to work even harder to break news — and then spreading the news once it's broken with a bit of cheeky commentary. Until tomorrow when we all drop this half-witted political conversation, and go back to the things people actually care about: more Photoshopped photos of Lindsay Lohan's cooter.

A Reporter Who Scoops His Own Paper [David Carr, New York Times]

While we have often prodded Robin Givhan, the fashion editor at the Washington Post, we may be forced to admit that the lady has chops. We joke that there is no such thing as fashion when it comes to D.C., but when Givhan comes to the Big Apple, she's not afraid to take a bite out of the scene.

And now that she has her blog at WaPo, there is even more opportunity to spread the dish. Like when she (as did many NYC fashion bloggers) revealed Anna Wintour's seeming crush on tennis pro Roger Federer. Givhan described Wintour at the Marc Jacobs show, writing "She seemed to be rather in awe of him. Did we see her flick her hair with a girlish toss?" That's a risk that most New Yorkers, at least those who want to continue being allowed into the inner circle parties, may not take.

Perhaps she got away with certain opinions — such as "Carmen Electra has been all over the shows, and we still are at a loss to figure exactly why she's so famous that she requires three security guards to escort her out of the building. Anyone? Anyone?" — because WP's online editors read her postings, not her regular section editors, before they appeared online.

Sure, her online editors are probably a bit less stuffy than the paper's staffers. However, keep in mind, she is quite removed from the wrath of Ms. Wintour and Carmen Electra's people. Not to mention there is no way in hell Anna Wintour reads the Washington Post blog, even if it is about fashion.

Blog It Out [Stephanie D. Smith, WWD]

From the New York Times, July 19, 2005:

With tabloid journalism and reality television bleeding into each other, and with magazine programs indistinguishable from entertainment, films … simply assume that slime is a reporter's middle name.

The more that confidence plummets, the more likely movies are to portray reporters unfavorably; and, in a snowball effect, the more unsavory reporters appear on screen, the more that image takes hold.

The image of the flawed journalist is so widespread that it has crept into the most serious films.

From the Washington Post, July 30, 2006:

With occasional exceptions, newspaper people usually get the hero treatment in movies and TV shows.

Sure, newspaper reporters in the movies can be a cynical, tough-talking, hard-drinking bunch who aren't above cutting a few corners to get the story… But all is forgiven when they expose the truth.

Even Superman's alter ego is a newspaper reporter.

It Pays to Be a Print Journalist — in Films [Paul Farhi, Washington Post]
The Decline and Fall of Journalists on Film [Caryn James, New York Times]

• Katie Couric has her doubts about Rosie O'Donnell's sucess on The View. [Forbes]

• The Daily News photog roughed up by Jessica Simpson's security cartel will have his torn pants replaced — but not his memory card. [NYDN]

• Calling Reese Witherspoon "bloated" instead of pregnant is one way for Star to say sorry. [Gawker]

• Just because it's a holiday doesn't mean the Washington Post should be easing up any on Condi Rice. [CJR]

• Screw the First Amendment. 2006 is all about the Fifth. Or not. [Slate, Romenesko]

• You shouldn't need data analysis to reveal your ass has been priced out of New York. [NYDN]

What a day, what a day. First, we have Ann Coulter lifting passages for her book and Dan Abrams jumping to MSNBC, and now this. Honestly, we don't even know how Dylan Stabelford has the energy left for Asian porn on days like today.

Now, the Washington Post brings the heat on BBC, arguing that by pulling news stories from so many sources and wires, the highly popular news site is developing a habit of not properly crediting their news sources.

With the proliferation of news sources on the Web, the use of wire-service reports on subjects or places where news organizations don't have their own staff has become much more common. And in an era when blogs and other sites are filled with material from other sources, the standards of crediting wire services — so readers know where their news is coming from — are becoming fuzzier.

Wait. Hold up. Did the Washington Post really just recognize blogs as a source of news?

We were honestly under the impression that all WaPo reporters were under strict contract to only refer to blogs as shady, sketchy places full of people even less trustworthy than the ones you find on MySpace. Maybe the world is ready for vloggers after all?

BBC's Credit Policy on Web Site Draws Notice of News Providers [Aaron O. Patrick, Washington Post]

• Wait, we thought it was always the Condes who were snatching people up from Hearst. Are things that different in the UK? [WWD]

• Things get more serious between Jay Leno and the gay community. [Canada.com]

• Oh, the thrills of plagiarism. It's fast, fun, and so easy to get away with. Plus, everybody's doing it. [Slate]

• Karl Rove shows up to court to testify against Judith Miller. Once a press-hating member of the administration, always a press-hating member of the administration. [NYT]

• Washington Post's big names are taking Washington Post's big pay-offs. [Washingtonian]

We're not saying Howard Kurtz wrote his own headline here, but we can't help but notice it left out any mention of the New York Times snagging three Pulitzers.

Post Wins 4 Pulitzer Prizes; 2 Go to New Orleans Paper [Howard Kurtz, WaPo]

• While we thought Dave Chappelle was having a mental breakdown, it turns out that all he wanted to do was to trash white people a little more than usual. But damn those caucasian bosses, they wouldn't have any of it. [AP]

• Nerve goes to the gossip columnists for sex advice and, somehow, we were included. [Nerve]

• Kate White spends 10 hours a month perfecting the craft of the perfect Cosmopolitan cover line. With two million newsstand sales, it's 10 hours well spent. [Forbes]

• More Paid $ix fallout: News Corp. is denying, on Richard Johnson's behalf, deceased landlord-slash-media powerplayer Lou Rudin ever gave the Page Six editor a rent-controlled Upper West Side flat, though former NYTer Blake Fleetwood stands by the story. [Daily Politics]

• Meanwhile, Jared Paul Stern will answer Gawker's questions, but not ours. It's nice to know he's still got kind words for Page Six, the institution. [Gawker]

• Egads! Sometimes the Washington Post news desk and editorial board don't match up. [Washington City Paper]

• Meanwhile, President Bush wants WaPo to apologize for its "reckless reporting" regarding White House intelligence. [E&P]

• Leaks don't only come from the White House; they arrive from the taping of Will & Grace's series finale, too. (Spoiler warning.) [MNH]

And in other "our government is totally fucked up" news, the National Journal brings us a Plamegate update.

As was pretty much suspected, but never actually testified to a federal grand jury, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby admits that he "received 'approval from the President through the Vice President'" to leak intelligence regarding invisible WMDs to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

In some instances, the information leaked was directly discussed with the Vice President, while in other instances Libby believed he had broad authority to release information that would make the case to go to war.

Of course this led to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, an investigation into Judith Miller which resulted in her going to jail for protecting her source, and Dick Cheney laughing in the corner because his plan to distract the media from the war is going perfectly.

Next week, when the veep accidentally shoots someone, we can only hope the gun will backfire.

Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks [Murray Wass, National Journal]

Did you know that blogs were around before Elizabeth Spiers left Gawker? Before the Washington Post starting bitching about them every day? Yes, even before we became "obsessed with who Paris Hilton was sleeping with," there were the blogs of 2000, scoring mad crazy hits in the 30's and 40's.

As for us, well, we were still in high school in the year 2000. We may not have known what a blog was. Whatev, we didn't even know who Paris Hilton was.

But we did know how to drink more than six shots. Ok, fine. Rebecca Mead is smarter than us.

Tripping down memory lane [Blogebrity, Beebo]