TVNewser: CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour celebrated the launch of her new show “Amanpour” at Michael’s yesterday, and chatted with Kevin Allocca. Says Kevin: “After the interview, Amanpour remarked, ‘That’s the tiniest lens I’ve every looked into.’”

FishbowlLA/Folio: Nikki Finke reports that The Hollywood Reporter will be going online only next year, while another entertainment trade Variety will be erecting pay walls. But Folio reports that THR owner Nielsen Business Media says it has no plans to shut down the trade pub’s print edition.

GalleyCat: Back in August, GalleyCat senior editor Ron Hogan correctly predicted that Oprah Winfrey‘s next book club selection would be Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan. The Washington Post made it official this afternoon, citing unintentionally leaked info. Winfrey is set to announce her book club choice during her show tomorrow.

Ad Age: The Wall Street Journal has announced plans to start charging for its mobile app available on iPhones and Blackberrys, and the cost is surprisingly high. Readers that don’t subscribe to the WSJ either in print or online will have to pay $2 per week for the app — or $104 a year. Subscribers to either medium will only be charged $1 a year and those who subscribe to both will get mobile access for free.

Bloomberg: IAC CEO Barry Diller says he will use his cash to repurchase stock, not invest in other companies like NBC Universal.

BookExpo America 2007, the nation’s largest publishing convention, kicks off at the Javits Center today. One of this year’s major convention sponsors will be, of all things, MySpace. The social networking ubernetwork, which recently launched MySpace Books, will be hosting a panel on networking and surviving as a supporting sponsor. BookExpo America already has an officially-sanctioned MySpace group with over 300 members. However, MySpace will not be the only social networking site with a presence at BEA. The quasi-Amazon affiliated Last.FM-inspired site Shelfari will be making its industry premiere at the convention as well.

Scheduled speakers on BEA panels include Joyce Carol Oates, Valerie Plame, Francine Prose and — oh, God — Christopher Hitchens.

Speaking of which, mediabistro.com is throwing a BookExpo publishing party — hosted by GalleyCat bloggers Ron Hogan and Sarah Weinman and white-hot author Dana Vachon — tonight:

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We read Maureen Dowd‘s Times column over the weekend, the one where she takes a stroll through a D.C.-area Borders with New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier and declares, among other things, “I even found Sylvia Plath‘s The Bell Jar with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering.” Far from experts in chick-lit or literature written by chicks, we’ll let Ron Hogan at GalleyCat explain Dowd’s plundering:

Dowd’s stroll through a D.C. bookstore with curmudgeonly blockhead Leon Wieseltier is filled with ridiculous flourishes, as when she declares, “I even found Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering.” Let’s assume she was talking about the cover at right, which graces the most recent HarperPerennial reprint. Yes, Plath’s name is in somewhat pinkish letters, and, yes, the cover does make use of the classic “legs-in-isolation” theme. But to compare this somber-hued, dully typefaced cover with the bright colors of explicit chick lit novels published by, say, Red Dress Ink or Plume or even Harper’s Avon division is rather a stretch, unless you’re looking to be deliberately argumentative. And then there’s the idea that “the bachelorette party of log-rolling blurbs by chick-lit authors” makes the books feel “interchangeable.” Because, Lord knows, that sort of thing never happens in the rarefied world of literary fiction.

Our two-headed literati known as GalleyCat doesn’t merely exist to be accessories to Judith Regan scandals. They also are well-heeled meta-critics of the New York Times Book Review. Today, co-editor Ron Hogan [above, left] turned his attention to a single writer, sci-fi guy and ex-Spin editor Dave Itzkoff [above, right]. Let’s just say Hogan isn’t exactly impressed with Itzkoff’s criticisms, nor editor Sam Tanenhaus‘ championing thereof:

It’s a given that the litblogosphere has it in for Sam Tanenhaus and the New York Times Book Review, with this blog counted among the critics. But I like to think that the ‘Cat has been supportive, albeit in a rather tough-love mode, of the changes Tanenhaus has executed in nearly three years on the job. But nestled among such successes is a columnist whose faults have become more glaring with each new effort — science-fiction reviewer Dave Itzkoff.