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Murdoch: Tablets Are The Future For News Corp. (Guardian)
Rupert Murdoch was cozying up to Apple again Tuesday as he spoke at a media debate in Sydney, saying tablets are "a perfect platform" for cheap, convenient and up-to-date News Corp. content. News Corp. has "tens of thousands of readers" through apps for The Wall Street Journal, the Times and The Australian, he said, and then added that Apple will sell many more iPads than predicted. The Australian: Appearing by video at a new media breakfast and panel debate hosted by Media in Sydney, Murdoch told attendees, "We can deliver our content to our readers when, where and how they want it. It's cheap, convenient and constantly up-to-date."

Condé Nast To Move To Skyscraper At Ground Zero (NYT)
On Tuesday, the Port Authority signed a tentative deal to move the Condé Nast headquarters from its current Times Square home to 1 World Trade Center, the 1,776-foot skyscraper now under construction at ground zero. That would make it the building's largest private tenant so far and one with trend-setting cachet to boot. The Port Authority declined to comment on any negotiations with tenants.

Playboy Board Forms Special Committee To Evaluate Hefner Offer (TheWrap)
Playboy Enterprises announced on Tuesday that its board of directors has formed a special committee to evaluate the offer founder Hugh Hefner made last month to take the company private. The special committee is actually just two people -- Sol Rosenthal, an arbiter and counsel at the Los Angeles-based Arnold & Porter law firm, and Shing Tao, chairman and chief investment officer at Pacific Star Partners, a private investment group.

Sidney Harman Talks To The Newsweek Staff (NY Observer)
Sidney Harman spoke to the Newsweek staff in an auditorium at the magazine's Hudson Street offices after his purchase of the magazine was complete. He said that he had no interest in cutting the magazine down to size. "The people are our primary asset," he said. "How in the world can you pass up the opportunity to lead an organization like this? I have no thought of investing a great deal of money so I can make a great deal of money."

CBS Reports Double-Digit Profit, Revenue Growth (TheWrap)
CBS reported its second consecutive quarter of solid earnings on Tuesday, with revenue growth across all of the company's businesses. Revenues were $3.33 billion during the second quarter -- up 11 percent over the same quarter last year and spurred on by double-digit gains at CBS' local broadcasting networks (17 percent), cable networks (12 percent) and its entertainment segment (10 percent).

Sports Illustrated Publishes Book Of Magazine Covers (Folio:)
Sports Illustrated is releasing Sports Illustrated: The Covers, a 208-page collection of more than 2,500 color photographs. The book is divided up by decade and features all the covers in chronological order. (The first issue was August 16, 1954.) Each decade features a chapter introduction written by the SI editor that the magazine deemed most closely associated with that 10-year span.

The Savior Of Condé Nast: Scott Dadich Is The New It Boy Of The Mag World (NY Observer)
Back in May 2009, Wired creative director Scott Dadich asked Wired editor Chris Anderson to meet him to discuss the creation of a prototype for a new digital tablet. Dadich knew the iPhone screen was far too small to re-create the magazine experience, but it got him thinking about a Minority Report-like touchscreen that could work. Dadich took out a cocktail napkin and drew an illustration of what Wired could look like on a 13-inch tablet screen. The sketch worked.

Army Probing McChrystal Staff Over Rolling Stone Interview (McClatchy)
The U.S. Army inspector general is investigating whether aides to former Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal were insubordinate when they made a series of derogatory comments about top civilian leaders to a Rolling Stone reporter. The investigation comes as the Pentagon grapples with how much access the reporter who wrote the piece, Michael Hastings, should have to troops. Hastings was banned from a scheduled embed this September in Afghanistan for being untrustworthy.

News Corp. Won't Be Bidding On Texas Rangers (WSJ)
A day before a rare auction for a Major League Baseball team in U.S. bankruptcy court, News Corp. announced that it will not be bidding for the Texas Rangers. "Fox will not be submitting a bid for ownership of the Texas Rangers," said a spokesman for Fox Sports Networks. News Corp. executives began to consider bidding for the team in recent weeks, largely to protect the company's regional sports network, Fox Sports Southwest, which broadcasts the Rangers' baseball games.

Barnes & Noble Board Of Directors Ponders Selling The Company (GalleyCat)
The Barnes & Noble board of directors announced they are considering selling the company -- along with other "strategic alternatives" that might "increase stockholder value." Founder Leonard Riggio has expressed interest in assembling a group of investors to buy the bookseller. The board was disappointed in what they saw as the company's "significantly undervalued" stock, and nominated a special committee for "evaluating strategic alternatives."

USPS Bites Back At Affordable Mail Alliance (Audience Development)
The USPS is taking a hard line against a pricing protest issued late July by the Affordable Mail Alliance, a coalition of hundreds of businesses including magazine publishers and trade associations. The Postal Service Monday asked the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to deny the coalition's motion to dismiss the USPS' proposed exigent rate hike.

MSN Adds Localized Deals From Gannett's ShopLocal (paidContent)
Microsoft's MSN, which introduced new "Local Edition" pages as part of its big homepage overhaul earlier this year, is now adding localized deals to those pages as part of a relationship with Gannett-owned ShopLocal. The Local Edition pages, which let visitors see local weather, traffic, news stories, and restaurant reviews in one place, now also prominently feature newspaper-like ad circulars touting deals at local branches of major chains.

The Evolution Of The Journalism Job Market: We May Be Headed Into A Golden Age (BI)
"As I travel around the country talking about the economy and journalism," writes former BusinessWeek chief economist Michael Mandel, "I usually make two points. First, the next jobs expansion is likely to be driven by a communications boom. Second, we may be headed into a Golden Age of Journalism, where the combination of the falling cost of communications and the high demand for news just opens up all sorts of possibilities for doing journalism in different ways."

Why I Like Vicious, Anonymous Online Comments (Salon)
The protective force field of anonymity -- or pseudonymity -- brings out the worst in some people. They say things they would never say in the presence of flesh-and-blood human beings. For all the downsides of comments-thread anonymity, there's a major upside: It shows us the American id in all its snaggletoothed, pustulent glory, with a transparency that didn't exist before the Internet. And in its rather twisted way, that's a public service.

News Analysis: Break.com Beats ESPN Home With 3D TV (TMM)
The Internet's next great video play just may be in 3D. The website Break.com, which, by its own description, provides "funny videos, funny clips and funny pictures," just raced ahead of ESPN and BSkyB in terms of sports coverage. While ESPN and BSkyB will both debut 3D sports networks this fall, Break just launched its own version on the Web.