The Guardian is a widely-respected paper, but it has been having a tough time attracting an American readership. It has made some big hires — such as Glenn Greenwald and Ana Marie Cox — but still, traffic to its United States coverage has been low. To help turn things around, the paper has decided to launch a six figure ad campaign.

According to The New York Times, the Guardian’s effort (pictured above) is running on billboards and online. Each ad features two sides to a hot topic, such as online privacy and women in the military. The Guardian is hoping that people will also tweet a picture of the ad that represents their view.

The spreads are clever, but we doubt this will attract new readers. The main problem is that there’s already about 5,734 U.S. media outlets for people to digest. People are overloaded as it is. So despite its track record, The Guardian is fighting a battle for American attention that it cannot win.

The Beauty Myth author Naomi Wolf is joining the Guardian US website, Comment is Free.

Wolf will write a weekly column and will also appear live on the site weekly to interact with readers in the comments section.

“Guardian US brings the Guardian’s hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion,” Wolf said.  “But Guardian US’s perspective is global as well as national; and there has never been a stronger need for a media platform that encourages America to talk engagedly to the rest of the world, and invites the rest of the world to talk directly to America.  It is for that reason that I am excited as well to be partnering in a new format of interactive opinion journalism, in which op-eds are an opening point for a direct online discussion and debate with the national and global community of Guardian US readers.”

Wolf joins other  journalists, such as Ana Marie Cox and Amanda Michel, appointments announced by the company in recent months that are part of its goal to create a hub for Guardian readers in the United States.

• The Atlantic: You know shit is about to get real when Bill O’Reilly starts chastising the CPAC for being too mean to Obama.

• PRNewser: Social media campaigns and viral endorsements are getting into some gray areas, ethics-wise. That’s why The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has created these helpful Guidelines For Social Media Disclosure.

• New York Observer: Former Gawker Managing Editor Gabriel Snyder can take some cold comfort in knowing them former Wonkette Ana Marie Cox does not miss the Nick Denton experience.

• Business Insider: Advertisers are going to pay media companies money up front again! Maybe! According to some guy from CBS!

• WebNewser: That Justin Bieber kid is blowing up the Internet. If only NBC had managed to get an exclusive endorsement deal with him, and then only show delayed, “best of” footage.

Congrats to Ana Marie Cox, who has had no trouble finding a new job after her gig as correspondent at Air America expired when the media company shuttered in late January. The frequent Rachel Maddow guest (and substitute host) will be putting her prolific knowledge of the D.C. scene to good use as the new Washington correspondent for G.Q., helping shape the magazine’s D.C. Power List to be “less like a best-dressed list, and more like a Billboard 100,” as she told Politico‘s Michael Calderone this morning. This will be Cox’s first time working at a monthly magazine, though before the Condé Nast title she was Time.Com‘s Washington editor. Cox is perhaps most famous for founding the D.C. political snark blog, Wonkette.

Read More: Ana Marie Cox joins GQ

Veteran and motivational speaker J.R. Martinez honored at last night’s Heroes Gala Photo: Brad Barket/PictureGroup

You’ve seen the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) commercials: They’re the ones on TV and on Hulu where a young man returns home from war and is greeted with empty streets reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic Roland Emmerich movie. Suddenly, another man in camo comes out to a street corner and shakes the man’s hand. IAVA’s slogan for 2009? “We’ve Got Your Back.”

And got your back they do: In 2008, Paul Rieckhoff, Iraq veteran and founder of IAVA, lobbied Congress to pass the G.I Bill which ensures affordable college education to all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. This year, the IAVA is also working to increase health care coverage of veterans by $4.5 billion.

The stars were out last night at New York’s Gotham Hall for the third annual Heroes Gala of the D.C. grassroots lobby group, but nobody was looking at the celebrities. Instead, the real stars of the evening were the servicemen and women themselves, who populated the non-profit, non-partisan event hosted by Brian Williams, as well as Rieckhoff, MTV‘s Van Toffler and veteran-cum-actor-cum-motivational spokesman J.R. Martinez, who delivered the night’s most moving speech after being awarded for his courageous service for veterans.

More photos from the night after the jump

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It’s not often that we find ourselves at media events eating Chinese take out in someone’s living room. But that’s exactly what we experienced Wednesday night as Air America Media celebrated the upcoming launch of its new Web site.

Newly engaged chief digital officer Michael Bassik (right), CEO Bennett Zier and chairman Charlie Kireker welcomed guests to the sprawling apartment located just north of Soho on Broadway and introduced the site’s editor-in-chief, Beau Friedlander, who talked about the venture, which the company hopes will become the homepage for progressive Democrats.

Air America’s on-air talent were also in attendance, including Ron Reagan, Lionel, Montel Williams and Ana Marie Cox. We also chatted with The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston, blogger Maegan Carberry and Deanna Zandt. And happily, unlike one unlucky partygoer (or building resident) we avoided getting trapped in the elevator. We took the stairs.

More pictures after the jump.

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The past couple days have been filled with a flurry of panels and presentations about technology, politics and new media. There’s been so much information flying around, its hard to sort through all the noise. That’s why we were so pleasantly surprised by Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch‘s presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum this morning about YouTube and the new media generation.

As a cultural anthropologist, Wesch examines how YouTube — and social media Web sites like Twitter and Facebook — have made people voyeurs and over-sharers. His entrancing presentation, which included some popular YouTube videos and their tributes, remixes and satires, drew the only standing ovation we saw at PDF.

This afternoon, we sat in on a panel about how the “Internet Ecosystem” can improve journalism — a topic we have ruminated upon ourselves. Moderated by PDF founder Andrew Rasiej, the panel included Frank Rich of The New York Times, Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty, Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media and NPR’s Scott Simon.

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Ana Marie Cox has a new gig. The former Wonkette, Time and Radar contributor, online fundraiser, and current columnist for The Daily Beast can now add radio host to her resume. Air America has announced it has hired Cox as their D.C.-Based correspondent. According to the release Cox will “contribute text, video and audio content to airamerica.com, as well as to a weekly program to air on Air America’s radio network.”

Cox tell us she will be doing “political stories from both outside and inside the Beltway.” She makes her debut next Monday just in time to cover the Inauguration. Full release after the jump.

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More lists! Maybe itemizing things makes the terrible year media we just suffered easier to bear. Also it’s a fun way to fill the time between now and opening the champagne. Anyway, here’s the final installment:

• Rex Sorgatz has put together a very smart list of this year’s most notable blogs. Parts of which made us wonder if we spend enough time on the Internet! The list includes the notable likes of, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nate Silver, NYT.com, Kanye West, Ana Marie Cox, and something called Single Serving Blogs — Rex explains it all here!

• Twitter! And lots of it, in the form of the top twenty Twitter posts of 2008.
• Over at TVNewser you can take your pick of any number of lists and polls. In fact you might call it a list and poll bonanza! We’re not kidding, go see for yourself.
• Meanwhile over at Galley Cat, you can find a round-up of 2008 stories divided into months. Seriously industrious.
• Andrew Sullivan is posting the winners of the 2008 Daily Dish Awards.
• Of course if none of this will suffice, there is always George Bush’s reading list.
• And speaking of reading lists, here’s a sort of list of memoirs that didn’t make it past the ever vigilant guardians of the publishing world.
  

Folio:‘s Dylan Stableford is looking on the bright side of media! He’s put together a list of the ten most inspiring things to happen in media in 2008. Number One: Seasoned Print Editors Go it Alone — Online

From ex-PC World editor Harry McCracken to Tina Brown‘s inner-Beast to a pair of ex-ElleGirl editors with Daily Candy-like aspirations, 2008 could was the year that old-school print editors collectively said “&%@# it” and forged ahead with their own businesses online.

Check out the rest of his glass-half-full list here (Ana Marie Cox clocks in at number five).