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Harold Pinter Wins Nobel Prize for Literature (Nobel Foundation)
The British playwright, poet and political campaigner uses spare and often menacing language to explore powerlessness, domination and the tyranny of the state. AP via LAT: Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said. The chilling, understated style of his work even inspired an adjective all his own: Pinteresque.

Beyoncé Too Black for VF? (Radar)
Beyoncé Knowles is the first African-American woman to front the glossy since 1993, but a high-level source is alleging that the mag digitally altered Beyoncé's image to appear several shades lighter.

Will the Times Come Clean on Plamegate? (Salon)
Farhad Manjoo: Is the paper poised to finally publish its account of reporter Judith Miller's role in the leak case, which it has been promising to do since shortly after Miller was mysteriously sprung from jail two weeks ago? Salon: Arrogance, poor editing, and getting too close to her sources led to Miller's fall, writes Juan Cole. NYT: The time is now to fully explain Miller's crossing, writes Times Public Editor Byron Calame. Huffington Post: Rarely has so much been riding on a single article, writes Arianna Huffington.

MTV Buys IFILM, Expands Web Presence (Reuters)
The network expects to increase IFILM's reach to more than 10 million users a month and boost ad revenues by promoting IFILM with other MTV-owned sites and offering MTV content to IFILM users.

McClellan: Press Room Doyenne Thomas Opposes 'War on Terrorism' (E&P)
Questions yesterday from longtime White House reporter Helen Thomas caused White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to declare that she opposes the war on terrorism. E&P: Restrictions on the number of journalists allowed to tag along on advance trips to foreign countries to be visited by President Bush have raised objections from White House reporters.

AOL Opens Curtains (Collective Shrug to Follow) (NYT)
Stuart Elliott: Curtains, a large blue pair to be exact, are the images being used in an estimated $50 million campaign to promote AOL.com as a free Web portal.

Men's Journal Without a Captain (NYP)
Jann Wenner hasn't gotten around to addressing the troops at the mag, but General Manager Kent Brownridge urged staffers to read The New Yorker to find out what an 'A' magazine was all about. [Second item.]

Trib-ulations (Bloomberg via NYT)
The Tribune Company, publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, said that its quarterly profit fell 80 percent after it set aside $150 million to pay a tax claim.

They Want Their MTV Payoff (Lowdown)
Lloyd Grove: A Russian mother-daughter team is suing the Viacom subsidiary for "emotional distress" allegedly caused by a case of miscommunication on the popular reality show Date My Mom.

Best Life Ups Circ, Frequency (Mediaweek)
Rodale will increase the frequency of Best Life to 10 times a year in 2006 from seven issues this year. The company will also increase the title's rate base to 400,000 from 300,000.

Paper Trumps Pixels? (ProJo)
David Warsh: What's the newspaper of the future going to look like? Chances are that it will look a lot like today's Financial Times.

Former AOLTW Chief Levin Founds L.A. Spa (LAT)
Gerald Levin is a "spiritual advisor" to the Moonview Sanctuary, a psyche-spa for the burned out, depressed and the anxious elite who are willing to pay $175,000 a year for the latest innovations in mental health.

Freebies Take Their Piece of the Pie (Grade the News)
Michael Stoll: While free papers have increased awareness of hometown issues ignored by the metro press and local TV newscasts, they also are replacing the paid dailies in some people's lives.

Apple of Their Eye (Slate)
Jack Shafer: I possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.

The Googling of Advertisers (BusinessWeek)
Jon Fine: It's tempting to overstate the significance of all things Google, and it has been overstated, many times. The thing about Google, though, is that Google's offerings actually... work well.

Don't Blame Stewart for Mags' Woes (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: The Daily Show's Jon Stewart recently gave the beleaguered magazine industry a wake-up call. I hope the nation's editors and publishers are smart enough to take him seriously.

Media Through With Bush Free Pass? (Media Citizen)
Timothy Karr: It seems our media eagerly pile scorn upon a president when his numbers are down, but give him the benefit of the doubt when they're up.

Blood on the Tracks (New Times Broward-Palm Beach)
Bob Norman: A racing freight train couldn't stop Sean Rowe, but can he survive the wild world of book publishing?

—David S. Hirschman

IN YESTERDAY'S MB BLOGS:

War Correspondents' Saffer-Simpson Scale: "Jesus Christ" & "Holy S***" In Baghdad [TVNewser]
FNC war correspondent Steve Harrigan continues to blog (and presumably formulate chapters for his book) in Baghdad. Earlier this week, he said "one step up from "Jesus Christ" on the fear meter is when you shout, "Holy s***!" which I just did a moment ago."

Miller: More Harmful Than Blair [FishbowlDC]
Judy Miller has now done more to harm the reputation of the New York Times than Jayson Blair. A reporter said it to us over drinks last night, and now Howard Kurtz is saying the same thing.

The Remains of the Yester-Day [FishbowlNY]
Here's what I missed while wasting away from hunger in the name of the Lord: Now, back to the news that matters: Page Six has an update on the John Mariani/Huffy Chef story: apparently Huffy Chef Homaru Cantu's former publicist Janet Isabelli told them that her ex-client made the whole thing up.

Breaking Out the Dread Rubber-Glue Gambit [GalleyCat]
Have you seen Steve Almond's nuclear assault on blogger Mark Sarvas in Salon yet? Now, it's true that Sarvas has said "the adulation accorded Steve Almond constitutes one of the blogosphere's enduring mysteries" and called him "the most self-absorbed writer working\ today."

The Circle of Life--In Connecticut [UnBeige]
Scientist Jonathan Rothberg has, according to today's wack-tastic House & Home section, built Stonehenge in his Sachem's Head backyard. The zinc-clad Cesar Pelli observatory didn't go over so well (something about a plethora of yellow buses), which reduced him to an arrangement of 700 tons of stone that can withstand a dumptruck being driven into them at forty miles an hour.

The Zoo: Week Fifteen [mbToolbox]
Today is the fifteenth in a series of posts by San-Diego-based writer Thomas Shess who has decided to keep a journal on his journey to find a publisher for his novel.