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Dennis Puts Maxim, Blender, Stuff On Block (FBNY)
One of the oldest rumors in magazine publishing is now official: Dennis Publishing has hired a media investment firm, Allen & Company, to explore the sale of its U.S. publishing assets, including Maxim, Blender and Stuff. All 31 international editions of Maxim are also up for sale. Dennis' popular newsweekly, The Week, is not included among the properties for sale. Mediaweek: While Maxim and Stuff paved the way during the laddie phase in the late '90s, the category has matured in recent years, with the titles experiencing slower growth. Radar: Dennis had been involved in hush-hush negotiations with one eager buyer in September — the rumored asking price was $250 million — but the deal fell through. NYP: As recently as January, Felix Dennis thought he had someone lined up to buy the company.

Olbermann Re-Ups With MSNBC (TV Week)
Keith Olbermann has signed for four more years as host of MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann. An MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment on speculation that Olbermann accomplished his goal of effectively doubling his salary to some $4 million per year. TVNewser: Olbermann will also contribute occasional essays to NBC Nightly News, as well as two prime-time Countdown specials a year on NBC.

3 Longtime Execs Advance at NBC (NYT)
Jeff Zucker, newly-installed chief executive of NBC Universal, announced a series of executive promotions yesterday. All had been expected. The moves give three longtime NBC executives — Marc Graboff, Beth Comstock and Jeff Gaspin — many of the duties previously handled by Zucker when he led the NBC Universal Television Group. PaidContent: Gaspin and Comstock explain their approach to digital. TV Week: The thinking is that aligning ad sales with marketing, research, and digital media better positions NBCU to meet multiplatform marketing needs of clients. LAT: "The priority is growing like crazy in the digital space, and advertising is who we are," Comstock said. "My job is to make sure that we pull all of those resources together."

SF Chron Reporter Says Paper Did Not Seek to Reveal Source in BALCO Case (E&P)
Lance Williams, one of two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who received a reprieve from jail when an attorney revealed he was their confidential source on the BALCO steroid story, said the newspaper played no part in the admission, and declined to even confirm that he was the source.

Mag Editors Still Sweet on 'Money Honey' (NYP)
CNBC's Maria Bartiromo has been under fire since her close friendship and globetrotting trip on the corporate jet with Citigroup head Todd Thomson first came to light. But she is still keeping her day job and her easy money side jobs as a magazine columnist for Business Week and Reader's Digest — where she is estimated to be pulling in another six figures in pocket change.

Hollywood Weighs Copyright Protections (WSJ)
Hollywood executives believe it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections on music spreads to include digital movies. As such, studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course for the future, with technology executives and engineers calling for Hollywood to at least re-examine the issue.

Baquet: Let Them Know You Care (Poynter)
"My advice to editors is go edit," says newly-installed New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet. "If there was ever a time people want to be led on news, it is now. Take a day or two out of the week and put a moratorium on the word 'revenue.' Talk about the news. That's how we got the job. Structure your job so that you can get out into the newsroom just to talk about stories."

FCC Report Suggests TV Violence Limits (LAT)
Congress could authorize the regulation of excessively violent television shows without violating the Constitution, according to a draft of a long-awaited report by the Federal Communications Commission, which also found that increased blood and mayhem on TV has at least short-term effects on children.

Gemstar-TV Guide Buys TV-Focused Web Sites (Marketwatch)
The company said yesterday it has acquired several television-focused Web sites, including TVShowsOnDVD.com, TV-now.com, and FansofRealityTV.com, as well as certain assets of eVoke TV Inc. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Gemstar-TV Guide said the sites, along with recently acquired JumptheShark.com, will broaden the reach of TV Guide Online's network.

DVR Users Don't Always Skip Commercials (NYT)
It turns out that a lot of people with digital video recorders are not fast-forwarding and time-shifting as much as advertisers feared. According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads. One big reason is that many with DVRs still tune in to watch about half of their shows at the scheduled start time.

Michelle Malkin's Conservative Fight Has Others Coming Out Swinging (WaPo)
Howard Kurtz: This daughter of Filipino immigrants plays pretty rough. Whether on her blog, her Internet talk show or her Fox News appearances, Malkin delights in sticking her finger in the eye of the liberal establishment. "The donkey party," she wrote last fall, "is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow."

Gannett's New Lease on News (BusinessWeek)
Gannett stresses the kind of Web 101 that local newspapers should have been doing all along, ramping up news-breaking efforts on the Web and rethinking the product to deliver on many platforms. Things really get interesting, though, in its pro-am blend. "The pros do the heavy lifting and build the framework and structure," says an exec. "And the audience can come in and fill in."

Can Liberal Bloggers Be Both Partisan Kingmakers and Independent Journalists? (Salon)
Joan Walsh: Why did either John Edwards or Amanda Marcotte enter their relationship so seemingly unready for what was likely to happen? Either Marcotte would blunt her commentary, and lose the constituency Edwards was attempting to court, or else she'd alienate a whole lot of other people, and Edwards would spend the whole campaign defending her. CSM: Electoral campaigns must recognize that they are not only hiring the writer, but taking on a full body of work.

Rattner Dances Around the Future of the Newspaper Biz (Slate)
Jack Shafer: Steven Rattner's recent WSJ piece neglects to mention that for better than 50 years newspaper companies have feasted on their advertisers, charging steep ad rates everywhere. Now that the Web is underselling them and other media are stealing eyeballs, they should stop the blubbering, quit wishing for the return of 1975, and start competing.

In Leak Case, Jurors Given Plethora of Reasons To Acquit Libby (NY Sun)
Lewis Libby's defense has offered a hodgepodge of arguments, including innocent failures of memory on the part of the defendant and similar shortcomings in the recollections of prosecution witnesses. The defense also has advanced at least three seemingly separate conspiracies involving NBC News journalists, CIA and State Department officials, and White House aides protecting Karl Rove.