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Not Unexpectedly, Spellbinding Sales for Harry Potter (CNN/Money)
The final book in the Harry Potter series sold an estimated 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of sale, setting a new record for the book industry, according to U.S. publisher Scholastic. Borders Group, the second-largest U.S. book chain, said it sold about 1.2 million copies of Deathly Hallows worldwide on the first day, the highest single-day sales of any title in its history. NYT: The numerous leaks before the official release, including photos of every page of the book that circulated on Internet file-sharing services last week, failed to dent the enormous pent-up demand for the book. Reuters: Newspaper editors employ speed-readers to review book.

Family Meets Today to Hear the Complexities of a Bid for Dow Jones (NYT)
As it assembles at the Boston Hilton today to consider selling Dow Jones & Company and its main prize, the Wall Street Journal, to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the controlling Bancroft clan faces some stark choices. Financially — and journalistically — the stakes are high. AP via Yahoo: Meet the Bancrofts.

NBC Moving 1,000 Employees to Jersey (NYP)
Almost all of the network's digital employees, from online units such as iVillage and NBC Weather Plus, as well as the stations group operations division are being relocated from Midtown to a new digital campus at a corporate park in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, just blocks from the George Washington Bridge. NBC will transport everyone in and out of Manhattan with a fleet of 18 buses.

Newspapers Rejected Condi Op-Ed (SF Chron)
A few months ago, Condoleezza Rice decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, as a co-author. No one would publish it. Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.

After Tonight, Will Leno Stay at NBC? (Variety)
Three years ago, NBC announced with pride that Conan O'Brien would take over the Tonight Show in 2009. But now that the date is fast approaching, the net is beginning to panic: How do we anoint O'Brien but still keep Leno in the Peacock's nest? Aside from turning around NBC's primetime, the biggest challenge facing new co-chairmen Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff is how to keep Leno away from Fox or ABC.

First Female President on 24 (Hollywood Reporter)
Cherry Jones has reportedly been appointed president on the upcoming season of the show. 24 producers had been contemplating having a female president next season for some time. Their decision to go for it adds another wrinkle to the closely watched Democratic Party's presidential race, in which Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner.

Andrew Lloyd Webber Eyes Reality Show (Variety)
Move over, Simon Cowell and Donald Trump. Andrew Lloyd Webber is ready for his TV close-up. The composer has signed with WMA, taking his first Hollywood agent ever because he wants to make a network deal for an American reality show that he'll topline, searching for a young unknown to star in one of his stage musical productions. WMA will not handle his stage business.

Some in Congress Pushing for Reinstatement of Fairness Doctrine (LAT)
n 1987, the Federal Communications Commission stopped requiring broadcasters to air contrasting views on controversial issues. The move is widely credited with triggering the explosive growth of political talk radio. Now, after conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage helped torpedo a major immigration bill, some in Congress have suggested reinstating the Fairness Doctrine to balance out those powerful syndicated voices.

Debates to Connect Candidates and Voters Online (NYT)
The first of a new kind of presidential debate is scheduled for tonight, one in which members of the general public pose questions to the candidates via homemade video. The debate is the latest front in the candidates' running battle to keep up with the fast-paced changes wrought by the Internet on politics. NY Sun: While debate organizers are billing the event as a novel approach aimed at engaging a new generation of voters, the format has drawn criticism from some who say it could cheapen a campaign discourse already dominated by sound bites.

Reilly's Fox Shows Now Take On His NBC Ones (NYT)
Kevin Reilly recognizes the unusual position he is now in: managing the programming of one broadcast network, Fox, as it goes into competition against the programming he put together for another network, NBC, just two months ago. "I don't think this has ever happened before," said Reilly, who officially started work at Fox last week.

Wholesalers Pressure Publishers to Up Cover Prices (Mediaweek)
Prompted by rising delivery costs and pressure to grow profits, leading magazine wholesalers are making unprecedented steep distribution cuts across all magazines, with a sharp focus on their least-profitable ones, those with a $2.50-and-under cover price. The News Group and Source Interlink Cos. have made significant cuts since May 1, following a similar move by Anderson News Corp., which sources said cut 140 million copies in a six-month test begun last fall.

Fox to Redo Show After Virginia Tech Shootings (WaPo)
A campus shooting scene that was filmed before the Virginia Tech killings is being redone on a new Fox drama series based on the Terminator flicks, Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori told TV critics Sunday. Meanwhile, scripts for the upcoming season of 24 will be vetted from a "dramaturgical" perspective, not from a political point of view, Liguori said.

Second Life 'May Be the Internet's Next Big Thing' (Newsweek)
Just as Google sexed up the way we search, and instant messaging altered the way we interact, Second Life is fast becoming the next red-hot tool on the Internet. The numbers tell the story. Philip Rosedale launched Second Life in 2001, but it got off to a slow start, reaching only 1.5 million registered users in 2006. In the past year, membership has soared to more than 8 million users — 2 million having signed on in the last two months alone.

Hunter S. Thompson Honored With 'Gonzo Edition' of Newspaper (AP via IHT)
The pioneering journalist was honored Saturday with a special issue of the Aspen Daily News. The so-called "Gonzo Edition," named for Thompson's "gonzo" form of hard-living journalism, was edited by his widow, Anita, and ran three days after what would have been his 70th birthday. Thompson shot himself in 2005 in his home in Woody Creek, near Aspen.

A 'Secret' Business Genius (New York Mag)
Simon Dumenco: The fact that mediabistro.com happens to have a prominent Web site made it seem like Laurel Touby got to benefit from the current new-media bubble. In fact, she'd created, over the course of 14 grinding years, a rather substantial company with multiple, steady revenue streams. Touby's company isn't at all sexy, so just about everybody underestimated it. MBToolBox: Alan Meckler buys mediabistro.com, vows Borg destruction.

Scavenging in the Old Times Building (New Yorker)
Nick Paumgarten: A walk last week through the denuded ex-headquarters of the Times, on West 43rd Street, was kind of spooky for a citizen already in an apocalyptic frame of mind. The paper's empty offices, mid-gutting, suggested the twin desolations of war and obsolescence. But in the eyes of the "architecturologist" Kevin Browne, who searches modern ruins for loot, these wastes were full of possibility.

Times Tiptoes Around the Family Business (NYT Public Editor)
Clark Hoyt: Today's Times is caught in unprecedented changes sweeping through an industry whose readers and advertisers are decamping from the printed newspaper to the Internet, where content is mostly free and the advertising rates that support newsrooms are comparatively low. Amid all this turmoil, aggressively reported and analyzed in the paper, there has been a comparative silence in the paper about its own owners, their challenges and their strategy.