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Bad (Last) Day at Black Rock for Rather (NYO)
Rebecca Dana: Dan Rather could not call the shots at CBS any longer yesterday. All he could do was refuse to let CBS call the shots. When the long, sometimes awkward, always passionate marriage between man and network came to its end, it happened on neither Mr. Rather's own terms nor CBS's. NYT: Beneath the kind words and gestures, a smoldering anger was palpable, particularly in a statement that Rather issued through a publicist several hours after the network announced he was leaving. WaPo: How could a network for which the former anchor has done so much and served so loyally treat him so shabbily as the curtain falls? WaPo: Many CBS staffers believe that Rather badly damaged the news division with his mishandling of the Guard story and that his departure is overdue. NYDN: New Today host Meredith Vieira calls tratement of Rather "tacky." TVNewser: Adding up the "smoldering anger" between Rather and CBS.

Publisher Merrill Apparently Shot Himself On the Bay (WaPo)
Philip Merrill, the prominent publisher and former diplomat whose body was found on Monday in Chesapeake Bay, suffered from a heart condition and apparently took his own life, his family said last night. Merrill was found with a shotgun wound to the head and a small anchor tied around one or both ankles.

New York Times to Sell Ads on Front of Business Section (NYT)
The ads are expected to sell at a premium rate because of the prominent showcase the front of the section affords. They will appear in a strip along the bottom of the page. Editor Bill Keller also said the paper was considering cost-saving measures, including shrinking the width of the paper.

U.K. Broadcasters Plan to Mark Anniversary of London Bombings With Silence (Guardian)
Channel 4 will join the BBC's television and radio outlets, ITV, Channel Five, Sky One and Sky News in marking the two minutes of silence, organized by the government to mark the first anniversary of the attacks on the London transport system, in which 52 people died.

Timesman Sewell Chan Racks Up 422 Bylines in One Year (NYO)
Gabriel Sherman: At a paper populated by reporters with sharp elbows and brazen ambition, Chan's singular, nearly inhuman work ethic stands out.

Tribune Chief: We Won't Delay Stock Buyback (E&P)
At the Newspaper Association of America's Mid-Year Media Review in New York, Dennis FitzSimons, the Tribune Co.'s chairman, president, and CEO, again defended the tender offer, saying it "benefited all shareholders." LAT: The Chicago Cubs buy was a hit for Tribune, as the Major League Baseball franchise's value has soared more than 20-fold since being bought by the media company in 1981.

Ad Research Group: Longer Is Better (Mediaweek)
A whitepaper to be presented today finds that viewers of both video on demand content delivered via cable boxes and video delivered on the Web actually gravitate to longer ad spots, and that advertisers have more to gain by producing longer form creative executions.

MySpace Draws Ads With 'Safe' Content (WSJ)
The News Corp.-owned Web company has quietly begun building an array of new sections meant to be "safe" for advertisers that want to market to the site's core teenage membership but don't want to be associated with unsavory material.

Report: Media Spending to Reach $1.8 Trillion in 2010 (Reuters)
Global entertainment spending will reach $1.8 trillion in 2010, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study released yesterday. Consumer spending on entertainment through online and wireless channels will more than triple to $67 billion from $19 billion in 2005.

Ailing Gray Lady Sees Hope ... in Real Estate (NYP)
As the New York Times continues to struggle amid weak advertising demand, the paper's much-maligned splurge on a new Midtown headquarters is proving a winning bet, two top Times execs boasted yesterday at a conference sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America.

Univision Auction in Disarray (NYT)
The auction of the nation's largest Spanish-language media company, was sent into confusion last night as a consortium of investors led by the Mexican television giant Grupo Televisa, the group tipped to win the contest, missed the deadline to submit an offer. LAT: It could mean offers will be lower than desired, analysts say.

New Yorker Cartoonist Donald Reilly Dies (NYT)
Reilly, who began drawing for the magazine in 1964, did 1,107 cartoons and 16 covers. His work also appeared in Playboy, Colliers, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Mad, Harvard Business Review and elsewhere.

VF Tweaks Content Ahead of Portfolio (NYP)
Keith Kelly: Vanity Fair EIC Graydon Carter is planning to rev up business coverage at the monthly magazine. Oddly, it comes at a time when Condé Nast is putting much of its resources into Condé Nast Portfolio. Could there be an internal tug of war for business edit talent brewing?

Hell's Kitchen Chef Ramsay Wins Libel Suit Against U.K. Paper (AP via USAT)
Hot-tempered celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has won a libel action against a newspaper that accused him of faking scenes on his British TV show. The Evening Standard claimed that parts of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares had been exaggerated to make an average restaurant look like a health hazard.

New Documents Show FBI Trailed Playwright Arthur Miller (AP via SF Chron)
His files only became available after his death, but the government's interest in Miller was well-established in his lifetime. In 1956, Miller refused to give the House Un-American Activities Committee names of alleged communist writers with whom he had attended meetings in the 1940s.

Is the NSA Spying on U.S. Internet Traffic? (Salon)
Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation.