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MoveOn Pays Times $77,508 for Ad Cost (NYT)
MoveOn.org said yesterday that it paid The New York Times $77,508 after the newspaper revealed that its advertising department had undercharged the organization for an advertisement that ran two weeks ago and proved controversial.

ABC News Reorganizes, Focuses on Digital (B&C)
In a major reorganization that affects all of its top executives, ABC News president David Westin Tuesday appointed a single executive to oversee all programs. Dave Davis, formerly general manager of WABC in New York, was named executive vice president responsible for ABC News programs including Good Morning America, World News, 20/20, Nightline, and the overnight broadcasts.

CBS Baer-ish on Films (NYP)
CBS Corp. has tapped Amy Baer to lead its newly formed film unit CBS Films as president and CEO. Baer, 41 — who has shepherded films like My Best Friend's Wedding, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Adaptation onto the screen during her nearly 10 years at Columbia Pictures — is being given a blank slate by CBS boss Les Moonves to chart the future of the division. LAT: Despite the volatility of the movie business, Moonves has said that he was looking for ways to diversify CBS to reduce its dependence on television and radio advertising and syndicated programming sales. NYT: The announcement comes as CBS' Showtime unit is in talks with Paramount over extending their pay-TV output deal. Hollywood Reporter: Plans call for the CBS unit to develop and produce four to six movies a year with production budgets up to $50 million per film.

Bill O'Reilly's Comments About Harlem Restaurant Draw Fire (AP via USAT)
After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly told a radio audience he "couldn't get over the fact" that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia's and other restaurants. "It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun," he said. "And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

Us Weekly to Up Cover Price (Mediaweek)
Celebrity gossip is about to get more expensive — again. With the Oct. 12 issue, Wenner Media's Us Weekly is moving to a $3.99 cover price up from $3.49, becoming the latest celeb weekly to adopt a price increase. An Us Weekly increase was not unexpected, as several of its competitors have been moving up in cover price in recent months.

Wenner Wooing Outsiders for Top Men's Journal Slot (NYP)
In the past month, Jann Wenner has chatted with Michael Hainey, the No. 2 at GQ, and Mark Healy, a one-time GQ staffer who now runs Penthouse as editor-in-chief. Other names believed to be on Wenner's list are John Homans and Jon Gluck, both of New York, and Men's Journal's No. 2, Brad Weiner — the interim editor who is seen as a long shot for the permanent gig.

New Yorker Quietly Wades Into Online Video (Folio:)
There are currently 25 videos uploaded to The New Yorker's YouTube account — content ranging from New Orleans jazz parades to an odd high school graduation — used mainly to accompany blog posts by the magazine's New Orleans correspondent Dan Baum. Nearly all of the clips are original ... and nearly no one is watching.

Smirking Ahmadinejad Suckers the US Media (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave an enlightening lesson in how to manage the US media: Be vague. Obfuscate. Smile mindlessly — a lot. Be friendly. Nod wisely instead of speaking foolishly. Say absolutely nothing threatening or menacing. Turn their image of you on its head. And, for God's sake, man, say nothing of substance.

Dan Rather's Last Big Scoop (NYO)
Felix Gillette: What might Dan Rather be hoping to uncover with his lawsuit against his former employer? Through a spokesperson, Rather declined to comment. "We want to see anything that can shed light on the merits of Dan's case," said Rebecca Hughes Parker, one of Rather's attorneys on the suit. But, through conversations with some informed observers, a picture has begun to emerge. Page Six: "What Dan Rather is incensed about is, CBS has done to him what he did to Walter Cronkite," Don Hewitt was overheard saying.

NBC Seizes on Nielsen Rule Change (Variety)
NBC is taking advantage of a new Nielsen rule that lets networks combine the ratings for multiple runs of a show — and then report them as one supersized number. The network decided to do just that with Monday's episode of Heroes. The episode will be repeated Saturday night, and the numbers for both broadcasts will be counted as one when Nielsen releases final numbers Oct. 2.

Queen of Teen Lit (NYO)
In the publishing industry, Cynthia Eagan, the mastermind editor behind the Gossip Girl series of teen paperbacks, has long been dominant. "I'm not aware of anyone else at Cindy's level," wrote Benjamin Schrank, president and publisher at Penguin's rival teen-lit imprint Razorbill, in an email to The Observer. "She knows the reader and she loves the reader and the reader is all she cares about."

Online Work Emerges as Big Issue in Hollywood (LAT)
The online rush has heightened tensions between the major studios and networks and the unionized actors and writers who fear being shortchanged by this new digital frontier. The issue of how to compensate talent for work distributed online is central to contentious contract talks with writers — and could trigger the first major strike in Hollywood in nearly two decades.

What's Wrong With Serious Women Writers Exposing Their Soft Underbellies to the World? (Salon)
Rebecca Traister: So why would someone like Katha Pollitt — so far out of the trenches of confessional journalism — dive in headfirst? Well, perhaps she feels she has a lot to say about the way human beings trust and love and how the smartest among us willingly go deaf and dumb, how the most confident of us go soft, how the savviest get blindsided.

At 9pm Wednesday, in One Ring, 3 Contenders (NYT)
The three new series that ranked highest in a closely watched industry survey are facing off tonight — all at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The shows — Kitchen Nightmares on Fox, Private Practice on ABC, and Bionic Woman on NBC — came in first, second, and third in the top box, a category in preseason polls that ranks the shows respondents said they would definitely watch.

Santa Barbara Publisher Testifies at Labor Hearing (AP)
Santa Barbara News-Press owner and co-publisher Wendy McCaw testified that concerns about biased reporting and disloyalty, not union activity in the newsroom, led to the firing of eight reporters earlier this year. McCaw said she began directing managers to correct what she saw as biased reporting soon after buying the paper in 2000 because the problem was hurting the paper's credibility.