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Striking Writers, Studios Head for Renewed Talks (Reuters)
Striking Hollywood writers will meet with studio executives this week for the first time since their contract talks collapsed on Dec. 7. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will open "informal discussions" on Wednesday to "determine if there is a basis for both parties to return to formal negotiations," the union and studios said in a joint statement. NYT: Writers drop demand and a picket plan. LAT: In what appears to be an effort to defuse tension, the union urged members to "exercise restraint in their public statements." Previous negotiations had been marred by vitriolic rhetoric on both sides. Picketing continues, but at a scaled-back level. B&C: Jerry O'Connell parodies Tom Cruise for the WGA. Variety: Striking writers pen short plays.

To Cut Costs, NBC Universal Ends Pilots (NYT)
Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, said the broadcaster was moving to save as much as $50 million a year by reducing its reliance on expensive pilots of new series on the NBC television channel. The decision to eliminate most pilots was made as the company looked for ways to cut costs in response to the Hollywood writers' strike and the slowdown in the economy, Zucker said. Variety: Fox, CW, ABC set for abbreviated pilot season.

Might Google Buy the New York Times? (RealClearMarkets)
John Ellis: If Google proffered a Murdoch-like, no-auction bid of $4 billion, wouldn't the Sulzberger family have to accept it? Every single class B shareholder would accept the offer. It's their only exit. It is also likely that Times employees and retirees would enthusiastically support the deal; it's their only exit as well. So it would all come down to whether the Sulzberger family would accept the offer.

Fired L.A. Times Editor Rips Tribune's Priorities (WaPo)
Outgoing editor James O'Shea had asked for the $120 million newsroom budget to be increased by $3 million to $4 million to finance coverage of the presidential race and the Olympics. Publisher David Hiller had insisted on a one percent cut instead — and said yesterday that more reductions may be needed. E&P: Reaction to the firing of Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea, the third top editor to leave the paper in less than three years, is ranging from shock to concern over the paper's future.

Boston, New York Publishers Out at Metro (NYT)
Metro's freebie daily newspaper empire continues to unravel with the sudden exit of two publishers. Daniel Magnus, Metro New York publisher for the past two years, is out as of yesterday. Meanwhile, Stuart Layne, publisher of Metro Boston, resigned Monday in protest of changes being proposed by the Boston Globe, whose parent New York Times Co. owns a 49 percent stake in the Boston paper.

Times Co. Among Those Investing in Blog Company (NYT)
Automattic, the commercial arm of the popular WordPress publishing platform for blogs, has received $29.5 million in financing from four companies, including a small portion from The New York Times Company. WordPress is open-source software used by bloggers to publish posts. Its chief competitors are Blogger (owned by Google) and TypePad (owned by the software company Six Apart).

Heath Ledger: News — Or Whatever They Had — On a Deadline (HuffPo)
Rachel Sklar: Starting just after around 4:30 pm yesterday afternoon, Monday's snipfest at the Democratic debate was knocked off the air/front pages/most-emailed lists with the sad news of actor Heath Ledger's death. The story proved itself tailor-made for the Internet, with news being delivered via a raw streaming feed from the street outside the apartment and continuous updates generated by blogs. TVNewser: Covering the death of Heath Ledger from broadcast to paparazzi.

In Banner Election Year, a Dearth of Books (NYO)
The once-proud genre has been deflated by the Internet, which allows bloggers and Web journalists to spend infinite column inches dissecting campaigns at a level of detail that could once be found only in books. As a result, there's just not much of a market for campaign books.

Teen Sex Advice Podcast Gains Popularity (AP)
Nikol Hasler doesn't recommend the "pull and pray" method of birth control. She says you should not have sex on nature trails because of bugs and Sasquatch. And if you hate your body as a teen, just wait. The 28-year-old mother of three speaks from experience, and her video podcast, the Midwest Teen Sex Show, is attracting thousands of viewers.

Starz Draws on Stars to Add Flash to Shows (USAT)
Cable movie channels are taking an unusual route to get noticed by — original series. Starz, the pay-cable movie network, is the latest entry into series production with two new comedies premiering tonight, Head Case and Hollywood Residential.

Because of Niches, Magazines Still Strong (Journal Star via Folio:)
Newspaper publishers fret that younger readers go online for their news, but magazines continue to command loyal audiences, many of them young. "There are more magazines than ever before," said Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi. "There are more specialized magazines today than there were in the mid-1960s."

Hillary in Harper's Bazaar (WWD)
Hillary Clinton was careful enough to sidestep the pages of Vogue, but not enough to avoid Harper's Bazaar. The senator pulled out of a photo shoot with Vogue in the fall for fear of appearing too feminine. But Clinton appears alongside a model wearing a miniskirt and platform heels in a spread called "The Politics of Fashion" in Bazaar's February issue.

What The Wire's David Simon Doesn't (And Does) Understand About the Newspaper Business (Slate)
Jack Shafer: It was Simon's good fortune that his career at the Baltimore Sun, 1983 through 1995, coincided with some of the most profitable years in the history of newspapering. His Sun could afford a newsroom staff of 500 and assign reporters to the specialized beats he so admired — prisons, poverty, labor — because unusually high earnings made it all possible.

Hardball? Hardly. Chris Matthews Plays It Soft (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: NBC News tough guy Chris Matthews looks like a big weenie right now. We all know Mr. Hardball, a fixture on NBC News and MSNBC, both owned by General Electric. He talks tough, takes no prisoners, gives no quarter, and blah blah blah (or as Matthews, who occasionally lapses into Yiddish-speak on the show, might say, yadda, yadda yadda). Yeah, right.

Why Doesn't The New York Times Stand Up for Linda Greenhouse? (Slate)
Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick: It took some kind of amazing footwork for Clark Hoyt, The New York Times public editor, to pull off what's turning into an annual ritual: dragging the paper's multiple-award-winning Supreme Court correspondent out to the woodshed for appearing to have opinions in her private life or — even worse — sharing a toothpaste tube with those who do.