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Apology for the Unavoidable DeLay? (Reuters via Yahoo!)
U.S. House of Representative Majority Leader Tom DeLay accused NBC on Thursday of slurring his name by including an unflattering reference to him on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent. NYP: In his letter to NBC, DeLay wrote, "This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse." Boston Herald: Annabella Sciorra to join Criminal Intent.

25th Hour (NYP)
The New York Daily News Sunday insert 25hours has closed down after a run that lasted barely 25 weeks. One of the problems was the 10-day-to-two-week lag time in the production cycle made all the splashy layouts and photos appear to be stale and dated.

King's Ran-Sum? (NYDN)
Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone took some heat yesterday at the company's annual meeting as investors groused about his mega payday and the media empire's flagging stock. NYT: Viacom split will come in June.

Big Alt-Weekly Merger in Works? (SFBG)
Opponents of newspaper consolidation are starting to worry about the flurry of rumors and unconfirmed reports that there's some sort of merger in the making between the nation's two largest alternative newspaper chains.

Machine-Gun Kelly (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: They don't make reporters quite like the New York Post's Keith Kelly any more. Unlike the journalists who dream of writing exposes and plugging them on Good Morning, America, Kelly lives to get scoops. That's it. No nugget is too small for him to chase down.

Oy Yoy Hoy (E&P)
The Audit Bureau of Circulations says it can no longer vouch for the numbers from 1999 to 2002, because of poor record-keeping by independent contractors, newsstands, and stores that sell the Spanish-language paper.

HST Cannon Fodder (Chicago Sun-Times)
A member of Hunter S. Thompson's memorial committee said details of how gonzo journalist's ashes will be scattered were being worked out. Thompson himself wanted them fired out of a cannon from a 100-foot pillar topped by a statue of his ''gonzo fist'' emblem.

Couch Trip (NYT)
Sliding box-office attendance may reflect a change in the way Americans look to be entertained--by TiVo and DVD's at home rather than a trip to the theather--a change that will pose serious challenges to Hollywood. LAT: TiVo loss narrows, stock surges.

Marketers Follow TV to Web (NYT)
Television programmers are looking to make the Web a lot more like TV, and advertisers are showing a growing interest in the approach.

Media in the Crosshairs (WaPo)
E. J. Dionne: Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations--and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Baltimore Sun: "Liberal media" shoulder no blame for the mess in Iraq, writes Trudy Rubin.

Freudian Slip? (Media Matters)
Intervieing Sen. Trent Lott, Fox Newser David Asman revealed bias by using the pronoun "we" in asking about the proposed "nuclear option". Why compromise, Asman asked, "if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it."

Reporter's Firing F-in' Unfair? (NYT)
Clyde Haberman: "It's a gross overreaction," said Al O'Leary, a spokesman for the police officers' union. "To sacrifice Arthur Chi'en's career on the altar of political correctness is just wrong."

Euro Tab Push (CSM)
Nothing could better show that "the myth that big papers are respectable and small papers are sensationalist has been blown away completely," says Jim Chisholm, strategy adviser to the World Association of Newspapers. E&P: Why The Patriot decided to add a tab edition.

Saving Analog (Mediaweek)
Congress on Thursday began debating whether to end traditional analog TV by 2009, with Democrats calling for extensive subsidies so consumers don't lose their TV pictures.

Kratochvil Out of InStyle (Photo District News)
After a quiet first few months, the turnover at In Style following the arrival of design director John Korpics has begun. The first major departure to hit the magazine is founding photography director Laurie Kratochvil, who has overseen more than 130 covers since the magazine launched in 1994.

Dark Season for NBC (WaPo)
Lisa de Moraes: Only the peacock network had nothing to crow about, having plunged from first place to fourth in the key age bracket that is the basis for sales of all its ad time.

Post-Rupe (CJR)
Neil Hickey: What if Rupert Murdoch is hit by a bus tomorrow? More than any other media baron Murdoch is the walking, breathing incarnation of his company, which more than once has seemed a house of cards, and which came close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

When 'Smoking Gun' Misfires (Chicago Reader)
Michael Miner: When journalists get a big story wrong it's always embarrassing, sometimes catastrophic. But journalists go wrong much less often because they play fast and loose with the truth than because they're way too certain what the truth must be.

Pax Punk'd (SF Weekly)
Harmon Leon: I cooked up a criminal past and convinced producers on PAX TV I was serious. The resulting show absolved me of my past misdeeds.

Aural Lit (NYT)
The popularity of audio books is redefining the notion of reading, which for centuries has been centered on the written word.

Radar Giving Itself Away (Jossip)
It seems Maer & Co. have scraped together three of our valid email addresses, thrown them into a database and spit out free trial issue offers. That's right, folks, we received a whopping trend-worthy number of solicitations--and that's after we got our screener copy in the post.

Newsweek Slow on Uptake? (LA Weekly)
Newsweek put Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, beaming in a suit and tie with the Malibu surf in the background, on the cover. But the headline, "Latino Power," suggests the East Coast-based magazine just woke up from at least a decadelong slumber.

—David S. Hirschman