Nick Summers just can’t stay away from Newsweek. Joe Coscarelli is reporting that Summers is headed back to the magazine; leaving the New York Observer after only a few months.

He will reportedly be a senior writer at Newsweek, a magazine that according to Summers, has completely changed since he left in October:

As fond as I was of the old Newsweek, I never would have gone back to that. The new Newsweek is a different story. The place is pretty much gutted to the pillars and the rafters. It’s basically a brand, plus Tina and they’re building up. I think she can pull it off.

Foster Kamer, an expert at posing most coyly with laptops, is bidding adieu to the Village Voice‘s Runnin’ Scared blog to write features for Esquire.com as its new online editor, news and features. Taking his place this coming January is Joe Coscarelli, who had previously worked as the blog’s weekend editor.

Cosacarelli has written for the likes of Life, The Los Angeles Times, Mediaite, Capital New York, New York magazine and Rolling Stone, as well as for Gawker during Kamer’s waning days as the site’s weekend editor.

Somewhere out there, Jimmy Dolan has just developed a strange pang in his… heart.

Photo: (left to right) Chris Anderson, Gary Hoenig, John Sargent, Alan Murray

Last night’s discussion, Free AND Paid Content: Business Models That Work, hinged on whether consumers of news and books should and will pay for content online. But it became a tense intellectual slugging match between John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishing, and moderator Chris Anderson, most recently the author of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.”

“We have not grown up in an atmosphere of free books” — Sargent

Anderson contended that free digital copies could bring books back into the “cultural conversation,” while Sargent held steady as the consistent voice of dissent, expressing a grim forecast for the publishing industry and noting that it’s “hard to imagine books as a growth business.” Not even “freemiums” will work, Sargent said, warning of the “danger of the experimental stage,” in which giving away free books may increase sales the first year and even the second, only to see them disappear completely long-term. “It’s early,” he said. “We need a device or two and we definitely need a new screen.”

Anderson and Sargent were joined by panelists Gary Hoenig, ESPN Publishing’s general manager and editorial director, and Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive online editor of the Wall Street Journal, each of whom provided moderate voices amid Anderson’s proselytizing and Sargent’s foreboding.

Anderson moderated the panel hosted in the Condé Nast building where he works as editor-in-chief of Wired. As the group’s ostensible mediator, he served more as an antagonist to the three panelists, especially Sargent, highlighting the fact that all are generals in a war that seeks to have readers pay for a product that, in many cases, they can get for free.

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What started as a casual conversation about the humble beginnings of Chicago Public Radio‘s “This American Life” turned into an impromptu press conference last night as host Ira Glass announced the end of the popular radio program’s Emmy nominated television spinoff on Showtime.

“I don’t know if I can say this yet, but we’ve asked to be taken off of television,” Glass revealed.

Glass’ unexpected announcement came in the midst of a Behind the Scenes event hosted at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y. The night’s panel, moderated by NY1‘s Budd Mishkin, included the show’s senior producers Julie Snyder, Nancy Updike, Jane Feltes and Sean Cole, as well as film rights producer Alissa Shipp and production manager Seth Lind.

Then, of course, there was Glass — the host and executive producer of the public radio golden child and Showtime program of the same name — who has become ubiquitous on television, billboards and panels alike. His Buddy Holly glasses and graying spiked hair are familiar by now, and his notoriety explains why his introductory applause was by far the most sustained.

Steering the conversation casually, Mishkin lauded the program, giving the night a celebratory feel as the show’s creators discussed its methods and told insider stories to the delight of the crowd. The event began with anecdotes from seemingly slapdash beginnings, as Updike recalled struggling to fill an hour broadcast, even letting Glass wing it live to fill time in the days before the show’s syndication.

The producers reflected on the various media properties that have resulted since the humble inception of “This American Life,” including the forthcoming Steven Soderbergh film The Informant! starring Matt Damon, which is based on an episode.

According to Glass, the show’s relationship with movies was all about supply and demand: “We had no money, but a large supply of ideas, while Hollywood had a large amount of money and no ideas.”

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