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Wenner Breaks Off Us Weekly Sale Talk (NYP)
It's shaping up to be the summer of no deals in the world of magazines. The biggest deal not getting done is Us Weekly, as Wenner Media owner Jann Wenner, who was said to be quietly testing the waters to sell the celebrity weekly for a blockbuster price of $750 million, has apparently broken off the talks. "It's not happening," said one insider with knowledge of the discussions.

Foreign Press: All Obama, All the Time (Politico)
Barack Obama's face adorns newspaper and magazine covers worldwide, as reporters flock to foreign capitals for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's five-country tour following stops in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It seems that there are no other news stories in Germany than the Obama visit," said Cordula Meyer, a Washington-based senior correspondent at Der Speigel.

Disney Names New At the Movies Hosts (Chicago Sun-Times)
One day after Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper signed off as hosts of At the Movies, Disney ABC Domestic Television announced their replacements along with a new format for the Chicago-based syndicated movie-review show. Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz were named Tuesday as co-hosts of show when its new season begins Sept. 6.

Church Cuddles Up to State: Media's Glossy New Reality (NYO)
The traditional, cozily amorphous job of the editor -- rumpled visionary, bold procurer, acid social critic, lover of words! -- is starting to look very different. Sort of ... crisper. "You're looking at the inevitable loss of print ad revenue," said Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5, a boutique ad agency. "The editor's role is to figure out where the ad revenue is to keep a book alive."

Austin Paper: Snarky News Story on Netroots 'Compromised Our Standards' (Austin American-Statesman)
Editor Fred Zipp: Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.

Is 2008 the Worst Year in Modern Newspaper History? (NYO)
It trickles in day by day: more news of lost jobs and tumbling stocks for major newspapers and their parent companies. But as bad as newspapers have been doing -- it's been conventional wisdom for a few years now -- the industry is actually doing much worse than most ever anticipated, and that's become painfully clear over the past two months.

Media Tongues Start to Wag Over McCain Flubs (WaPo)
Howard Kurtz: The McCain camp yesterday sent out a mocking video compilation of pundits praising the Illinois Democrat, saying: "The media is in love with Barack Obama." But there is a counter-narrative, which has taken root on the left, that McCain is the one being treated with journalistic kid gloves. In this view, Obama's every utterance is scrutinized, while McCain pays little price for blunders.

Frey Goes Arty: 'The Idea Was to do a Cool Book That Would Piss People Off' (FishbowlNY)
Controversy-friendly author James Frey and photographer Terry Richardson don't much believe in rules, so the two intentional outsiders teaming up on a book/photo project makes a sort of sense. "I'm much more part of the art world than I am the literary world," Frey said. "I wanted to make a cool, sort of radical, fun art book. I have no interest in being called a memoirist. I'm a writer."

Perez Hilton Sues Perezrevenge.com for Cyber-Squatting (LAT)
Celebrity celebrity-blogger Mario Lavandeira, better known as Perez Hilton, is quite possibly better at dishing it out than taking it. The Los Angeles-based cultural authority, whose moniker could conceivably have something to do with the name of Paris Hilton, is going to court to protect said moniker.

The Technology Behind Esquire's Flashing Cover (Folio:)
"The cover is made up of microcapsules that are thinner than a human hair and are very small in diameter," said E Ink vice president of marketing Sriram Peruvemba. "How it basically works is that the microcapsules contain black and white pigments. When a charge is added, depending on the polarity, the pigment particles rise to the top creating the image you see."

A Midsummer Harvest of Bogus Trend Stories (Slate)
Jack Shafer: The bogus trend story thrives thanks to the journalists who never let the facts get in the way when they think they've discovered some new social tendency. Take, for example, the story on page one in yesterday's New York Times titled "A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss." Its first sentence declares, "Eating locally raised food is a growing trend."

Newspaper Book Reviews Are a Debt of Honor -- Welshed Upon (Inside Higher Ed)
Scoot McLemee: The Los Angeles Times Book Review was one of the last freestanding literary supplements in an American newspaper. Preserving it would have been a matter of pride to anyone capable of grasping that a newspaper is one part, potentially an honorable part, of print culture itself. Instead, the publisher is grasping dollars, and honor has nothing to do with it.

Portfolio Fashion Blog Returns (WWD)
Portfolio.com's fashion blog is back -- although with a changing cast of characters. Instead of hiring one writer to cover the beat, the Fashion Inc. blog will feature a number of guest writers with "serious experience in fashion journalism." This week, Lisa Marsh, formerly of the New York Post, has posted entries about Mulberry, Hermes International and Revlon, among others.

Hachette Filipacchi Forms Luxury Design Group (Mediaweek)
In a bid to grow its clout with luxury marketers, Hachette Filipacchi Media announced yesterday that it has combined its two upscale shelter titles, Elle Decor and Metropolitan Home, into a single entity called the Luxury Design Group. Deborah Burns, vp, publisher of Met Home, was promoted to head the group with the new title of senior vp.

Why The Nation Is Getting Sex Appeal (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: I've always suspected that the liberal-leaning Nation, while producing a consistently thought-provoking product, took itself a wee bit (too) seriously to publish a sex column. JoAnn Wypijewski, who is writing the new "Carnal Knowledge" column, sees the exploration of sex as a natural corollary to examining politics.