Media Minutiae

Daily Intel: New York Observer owner Jared Kushner twice asked New York Times business reporter wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin to be editor of the paper. Looks like he settled for Portfolio's Kyle Pope instead.

Reuters: Thomson Reuters is not interested is getting into the print media game, says CEO Tom Glocer.

Folio: Playboy is working on ways to keep the magazine alive, with plans in the works for a joint venture in the development of a new business model for the company and more cost cutting initiatives on the horizon.

Mediaite: The New York Times issued a correction on a headline about a story on Fox News Channel's election night ratings, just to clear up any insinuation about the channel's political bias.

The Business Insider: How to survive a media layoff.

TVNewser: Nominees for the Business and Financial Reporting Emmy Awards we announced today. CBS gathered the most nods with 15 while PBS garnered four and CNBC and BBC America each received three.

FishbowlLA: 60 to 70 protesters gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles office today, protesting biased reporting by the news network of the debate over a public health insurance option.

BayNewser: A sneak peek at McSweeney's upcoming broadsheet project.

Editor & Publisher: State Island Advance is looking for 40 staffers to take buyouts in order to avoid layoffs. The buyout offers include two weeks' pay for every year of service up to six months of salary, along with medical coverage.

Nieman Journalism Lab: Google's Eric Schmidt answered questions about how and why Google now distinguishes between news organizations and blogs in its search. "My guess is...it has a lot to do with the infrastructure around the writer. So a blog that's associated with a major, legitimate organization...would be, I think, treated differently than an individual blogger who's using his or her right of free expression to say whatever he thinks. So the presence of an editor, as an example. You know, an editor that's not your mom."

BayNewser: The Wall Street Journal is launching its local San Francisco edition tomorrow. WSJ told BayNewser that editing and reporting on the edition will be done by current Journal staff -- compared to The New York Times' Bay Area pub, which is looking for partners to produce content.

MediaWeek: Reader's Digest Association folds quarterly Christian-themed magazine and Rick Warren vehicle Purpose Driven Connection.

New York Observer: John Seeley, former deputy managing editor of The New York Sun, has been picked to lead The Wall Street Journal's new New York-focused section.

Editor & Publisher: About 50 newspapers who have given The Associated Press notice that they may cancel their subscriptions have rescinded their cancellation notices in recent months. About 130 remain under cancellation notices, while papers like The New York Daily News have said they won't end their relationship with the AP.

Wall Street Journal: No surprise here: newspapers are suffering from severe advertising declines and need to show some real gains soon in order to have any chance of survival.

Wall Street Journal: Viacom, parent company of MTV Networks, reported its third quarter earnings today. Profit grew 15 percent due to cost-cutting, perhaps related to this summer's layoffs at MTV?

New York Times: Scripps is reportedly close to closing its deal to buy the Travel Channel from Cox Communications.

Folio: B-to-b publisher Ascend Media has filed for Chapter 7 liquidation.

MediaWeek: Bloomberg unveils its plans for BusinessWeek: make it look more like The Economist and offer content for free "while creating deep, vertical content areas that paying users could access for roughly $100 a year."

Business Insider: Alan Meckler, the CEO of mediabistro.com's parent company WebMediaBrands, talks about plans to buy new blogs, and his plans for Mediabistro and Semantic Web.

TVNewser: Comcast is coming close to closing its deal with General Electric over NBC Universal. An announcement might come as soon as this week.

FishbowlDC: Rumble in the Washington Post newsroom: Henry Allen punched Manuel Roig-Franzia in the face last night.

PaidContent: Time Inc.'s Vivek Shah is leaving the company after 15 years.

Editor & Publisher: Gannett has issued a list of priorities to its papers' editors, asking them to beef up investigative reporting, reposition Web sites for breaking news, and better engage young readers and Sunday readers.

New York Times: David Carr mourns the loss of the business press. Another casualty of the recession.

Broadcasting & Cable: An exclusive Q&A with Jay Leno. He talks about the negative press he's received recently and what's it's like to work at NBC: "I find there's a lot of anger at NBC. But it's like I say to the people who write the dramas: If I weren't doing this, it would be "Dateline" five nights a week or reality shows. We've kept work in California, we have 22 WGA writers, but there's always going to be anger and resentment. The last couple of weeks I've seen some articles that are a little more, 'It's not Jay's fault, its NBC's fault,' and that's OK, I get it. But when your name's on the thing, you take the hit and that's fine."

TVNewser: Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show" devoted nearly 12 minutes last night to discussing the Fox News vs. White House feud and a mocking analysis of Fox News' distinction between news and opinion programming.

MediaJobsDaily: Reporting its third quarter earnings, the Washington Post Co. posted a $7 million increase in income while revenues at the company's newspaper decreased 20 percent to $156.3 million.

WWD: Richard Beckman, president and CEO of Conde Nast's Fairchild Fashion Group, which publishes WWD and Footwear News, is taking over control of W as well.

Daily Intel: Days after Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger compared print media to the Titanic, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham tried a different analogy: "Forgive my possibly overly facile analogy here, but when we are looking at the digital delivery of the printed word, we are kind of where the Sony Cassette Walkman was," he said. "There will be, I think, an interim step that will be a CD Walkman. And then it seems to me there's going to be an iPod."

GalleyCat: GalleyCat readers band together to donate audiobooks to military personnel overseas.

WWD: Gourmet's subscribers are now receiving Bon Appetit, and the surviving Conde Nast epicurean magazine will be raising its rate base 15 percent, to 1.5 million from 1.3 million, in January.

New York Times: Boston Globe publisher P. Steven Ainsley is stepping down from his post. He will be replaced by Christopher Mayer.

Mediaite: Gawker gets an estrogen injection: the site is testing out two women for its night shift editor slot.

Philly.com: Bankrupt Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C is in trouble with their senior lenders, who rejected the publisher's offer of $87 million to settle their $300 million debt.

Agency Spy: Doodle on your iPhone, and your masterpiece could end up in a giant Times Square digital display thanks to a new Prius app campaign.

FishbowlDC: The White House and Fox News have come on an uneasy truce...for now. Maybe that means Barack Obama and Robert Gibbs can stop pretending Roger Ailes' channel doesn't exist?

Gothamist: Those NYU activists are still pissed and instead of writing their term papers, they are creating a 28-page manifesto outlining their grievances with the college. Which is sort of impressive on NYU's part...getting kids to write 28 pages of anything is no small feat. Mission accomplished?

AgencySpy: Gawker Media fell victim to a phony ad sales scam, which resulted in ads on Gawker's sites crashing browsers and, in some cases, installing spyware on computers.

FishbowlLA: Amidst the hefty Condé Nast layoffs, Bon Appetit editor Heather John has left the magazine, but will "land some kind of contributing deal."

New York Times: The Wall Street Journal has abandoned its plans to sell its U.S. edition in London and instead has revealed a new strategy in Europe that includes a redesigned Wall Street Journal Europe.

Daily Intel: New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. compares print media to the Titanic: "Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed. Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane."

PRNewser: Former FishbowlDC founding editor Garrett Graff, now the editor of the Washingtonian, talks about working in PR and then making the jump to journalism.

All Things Digital: Today, Mcgraw-Hill told investors that its sale of BusinessWeek netted the company $5.9 million after taxes.

Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Ralph D. Crowley, Jr., who is looking to buy the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from The New York Times Co., says negotiations might be wrapped up in two weeks.

New York Times: A closer look at Comcast's bid for a majority stake in NBC Universal.