Dan Brown Reveals Secrets of Da Vinci Code's Writing (Independent)
The bestselling author told a British court that he was "not much of a detail person" and had relied on his wife to carry out much of the research for his bestselling book. But he denied that he or his wife had read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail until the final stages of writing the novel. NYT: The testimony seemed almost bizarre at times, with Brown discussing, for instance, points like "when I learned that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute."

Comcast in Talks to Buy E! (B&C)
The purchase would bolster Comcast's growing position in cable programming, which is composed primarily of smaller networks outside of Nielsen's top 30 channels.

Al-Jaz Finds Hurdles in Bid to Broadcast in U.S. (NY Sun)
Al-Jazeera's new English-language channel, set to debut in May, is already enraging some critics who fear it will become a mouthpiece for terrorists, but for the moment the fledgling network faces a bigger challenge: whether Americans will be able to see it at all.

Press Sleeping During O'Connor 'Dictatorship' Speech? (Slate)
Jack Shafer: Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave a speech invoking the word "dictatorship" to describe the direction the country may be headed if Republicans continue to attack the judiciary. But the mainstream media — aside from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann — didn't mention it.

Ad Agencies Stepping Up Investment in Search Engine Marketing (NYT)
Marketers are also expanding their spending into nascent realms like video search. Last week, eMarketer forecast that ad revenue from search engine marketing would climb to almost $6.5 billion this year, from $5.1 billion in 2005, and reach more than $10 billion by 2009

Ridder 'Surprised, Unhappy' Over Plan to Flip 12 Papers (E&P)
One of the biggest surprises in the aftermath of McClatchy's winning bid for Knight Ridder is that the CEO of the latter newspaper chain, Tony Ridder, was shocked that the buyer turned around and put 12 of his newspapers on the market. WSJ: Newspapers discover "creative destruction."

Gawker Takes Stalking to a Whole New Level (Lowdown)
Lloyd Grove: You can run, Lindsay Lohan and Leonardo DiCaprio, but you can't hide. New York celebrity life just got harder with today's launch of the site's "Stalker" feature that can post celeb locations on the Internet, complete with a map, within minutes of each sighting. WWD: Recently the gossip blog has itself been flirting with overexposure — at least in the eyes of its owner, cybermogul Nick Denton.

Weblogs Inc. to Become Netscape? (Jack of All Blogs)
Rumor: Weblogs Inc. may become a Netscape.com portal in a rebranding phase from AOL. Netscape could then become super blogging portal in attempt to bring blogging mainstream by AOL.

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