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At Flagging Tribune, Tales Of A Bankrupt Culture (NYT)
At a time when the media industry has struggled, the debt-ridden Tribune Company has done even worse. New management did transform the work culture, however. Chief executive Randy Michaels' and his executives' use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk. LA Observed: Tribune Company chief Randy Michaels rushed out a memo Tuesday night trying to shoot down a New York Times story posted last night by David Carr. According to the memo: "Many of the questions Mr. Carr asked us for this article concerned events, distortions and rumors more than two years old. He will apparently paint the work environment at Tribune as hostile, sexist and otherwise inappropriate."

Howard Kurtz Joins The Daily Beast (Daily Beast)
The Daily Beast announced Tuesday that Howard Kurtz will leave The Washington Post to join the website as Washington bureau chief. In this new role, Kurtz will oversee the two-year-old site's coverage of Washington and will report and write regularly on politics, media, and the intersection of the two. Kurtz will continue to host the weekly CNN media program "Reliable Sources" -- the longest-running media show on television. Washingtonian: The news that long-time Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz is jumping ship to the Daily Beast to head the website's Washington bureau raises a lot of fascinating questions. For one: Who will inherit Kurtz's keyboard at a time when the Washington media landscape is undergoing seismic changes? Possibilities include Jack Shafer, Foster Kamer, William Powers and Mark Feldstein.

Blogonomics: The New York Observer's Bid For DealBreaker (CNBC)
DealBreaker's readers are frothy-mouthed fans of its writer, Bess Levin. Any acquisition that didn't bring Levin along would be counter-productive. Her fans would turn against the site, and Levin would likely find backers for a competitor. (Barry Ritholtz has already offered to stake her.) To put it differently, despite what the paperwork might say, Levin is an economic owner of DealBreaker. Attempts to pay out the legal owners while ignoring her economic ownership will fail.

The Huffington Post Launching 'Divorce' Vertical (WebNewser)
Continuing its rapid expansion into new verticals and topics, The Huffington Post is planning a section dedicated to the subject of divorce. Journalist and author Nora Ephron conceived the vertical, and will serve as its founding editor, with Willow Bay serving as senior editor. "The premise behind it, as Nora puts it, is that marriage is for some time but divorce is forever," says HuffPost founder and editor in chief Arianna Huffington.

Bad Ratings Follow Bad Reviews For Eliot Spitzer's New Show (BI)
CNN's new 8 p.m. show, "Parker Spitzer," which premiered Monday night, already got beat up yesterday with some pretty bad reviews. Now the Nielsen ratings have come in, via MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who also has a show at 8 p.m., and it ain't pretty! "Parker Spitzer" had 454,000 total viewers last night, which is not much more than about how many were watching recently-fired Rick Sanchez while he was subbing (and turning in CNN's worst 8 p.m. ratings in three years) during that time slot.

Rick Sanchez: "There Was A Lot Of Concern At CNN About 'What Was I Doing?'" (TVNewser)
In the second part of the Media Beat interview with Rick Sanchez, recorded three weeks before he was dismissed from his job, Sanchez opens up about his anchoring style and about the unease from some corners of CNN when he got his first show there. "At the very beginning," says Sanchez, "There was a lot of concern at CNN about 'what was I doing?' and 'why was I doing this?'"

Next Issue Media CEO Guenther Short On Details (Mediaweek)
Next Issue Media, a publisher-founded e-reader consortium, has been quiet about its activities since it got off the ground almost a year ago, prompting some industry head-scratching about what exactly it's doing. On Tuesday, president/CEO Morgan Guenther addressed a gathering of publishers in one of his first few public statements but did little to quell questions about what NIM is up to, saying only that the consortium would launch a digital newsstand in 2011.

JEGI Report: M&A Up In B-To-B, Down In Consumer And Events (Folio:)
The number of deals in B-to-B media soared 200 percent to 33 through the first three quarters of 2010, according to an M&A report from investment bank The Jordan Edmiston Group. Deal value on the B-to-B side grew to $470 million. However, until recently, the B-to-B market has been dominated by distressed sales such as the sell-off of RBI and Nielsen Business Media properties.

PBS.org Revamp Aims To Make Local Content More 'National' (paidContent)
For the past few years, national media outlets from The New York Times to Aol have been trying to build greater hyperlocal presences. PBS is trying to go in a different direction as it prepares to unveil a site redesign and new iPad app this month. It's also ensuring that all of its 354 member stations have the ability to reach a more national audience. Part of that plan involves expanding its already extensive video offerings to include more original content from its members.

A Print Dream Dies (NY Observer)
In 2008 and 2009, when the freelance well all but dried up, a little savior sprung out of Abu Dhabi. In 2008, a weekly section dedicated to reportage and art and book reviews began as an insert called The Review in an English-language newspaper, The National. In about two and a half years, Jonathan Shainin's Review was a perfect illustration of what's happened to the American print press in the past couple of decades: lofty ambitions took a back seat to economic reality.

NBC Local Praises Social Media For Traffic Jump (LostRemote)
NBC Local Media, which runs ten large-market sites including NBCNewYork.com and NBCChicago.com, said yesterday that it's seen steady audience growth over the last year -- up 32 percent in page views and up 20 percent in unique visitors. NBC says the growth is fueled in part by the sites' integration with social media. Referrals from Facebook and Twitter grew from 2 percent of total referrals in August 2009 to 8 percent in August 2010.

News Analysis: A Groupon-Like Bid For ABC (TMM)
It's getting harder to earn a buck locally. After all, everyone's building local media sites these days. But ABC has an idea -- if it can use group-bidding to hedge its bets locally, it may earn more money. All it needed to give it a whirl?: to see Groupon make it work first. Maybe the popular coupon site should add good ideas to its daily deals.

Parents Mag Cuts Into iPad With Bargain Priced Virtual Pumpkin Carver (minOnline)
Some magazines are pushing the envelope of iPad digital magazine design, but at the same time attracting the ire of users who recoil at the high per-issue price tag. Other magazines are creating low-priced branded mobile and tablet 'toys' that neither aspire to be digital mags nor bust the users' iTunes budget. Parents has been cultivating the latter strategy with its $.99 iPhone and iPad pumpkin carving app that tries to offer value by being a one-trick pony... albeit a cheap one.

Oprah Names Her Favorite iPad Apps (Ad Age)
We know Oprah's a fan of the iPad -- she gave all her magazine staffers one earlier this year -- and she's spent a fair amount of time finding her favorites. At the annual American Magazine Conference, she praised the device for helping her stay up on more breaking news, for which she favors the CNN app and the ABC News app. And she's a big fan of Brushes and Sketchbook for her creative outlook. But the one that she said "changed her workouts"? Scrabble.

Spaghetti Tacos 'Expert' Has Now Been Interviewed By 78 Different NYT Reporters (The NYTPicker)
In todays's New York Times, reporter Helene Stapinski performs what might appear to be a near-impossible feat of journalism dexterity -- producing a college professor to support her thesis that more Americans consume spaghetti tacos than ever before. But maybe Stapinski's reportage isn't so remarkable. In fact, she's only continuing a longstanding tradition in quoting Thompson -- and has become the 78th NYT reporter to do so, in 150 separate stories over the span of almost two decades.