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Knopf Pays Advance of About $9M to Publish Blair's Memoir (NYT)
Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, has agreed to sell his memoir for an advance of around $9 million, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations. After a four-day auction, the book was bought by two divisions of Random House: Alfred A. Knopf in the United States and Canada, and Hutchinson in Britain.

FCC Commissioner Calls for News Corp.-Dow Jones Inquiry (B&C)
FCC member Michael Copps has asked chairman Kevin Martin to open an inquiry into News Corp.'s purchase of Dow Jones. Copps said he is concerned that the $5.6 billion combination would result in control of a network and two of the nation's five largest newspapers by a single company, and would result in the ownership of two newspapers and two TV stations in New York, the nation's top market. LAT: Several Democrats, including presidential candidates John Edwards and Sen. Christopher Dodd, have raised concerns about the additional media clout the deal would give Murdoch.

Condé Nast Commits All Titles to Audit Bureau's Rapid Report (AdAge)
Condé Nast has decided to commit every one of its titles, from Glamour to Vanity Fair, to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Rapid Report program, bringing one of the last holdouts into a system intended to update magazines' traditional practice of reporting circulation figures only twice a year. The move follows the decision last month by Time Inc. to join Rapid Report in full. Mediaweek: Hearst Magazines fully commits to ABC's Rapid Report.

FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be ... FEMA (WaPo)
Al Kamen: FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, vice admiral Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing. Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices, and questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters.

New Poll Suggests Colbert Could Be Presidential Frontrunner Within a Month (E&P)
Less than a week ago, shortly after he announced for president, a little more than 2 percent of Democrats picked Stephen Colbert as their favorite for the nomination. Now, a Rasmussen Report national telephone survey has found that he gains 13 percent of voters in a matchup with Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Clinton. LAT: They were once comrades on The Daily Show, but has Stephen Colbert now surpassed Jon Stewart in popularity?

AP Board Approves New Pricing Structure (AP)
The board of The Associated Press on Thursday approved a major overhaul of the way the AP prices and packages news for its member U.S. newspapers. Instead of offering news feeds defined largely by the volume of news delivered, the new plan is centered on a core service of all national, state, and international breaking news, with options for adding other services or purchasing stories individually.

Based on Facebook Valuation, MySpace Would Be Worth $65B (NYP)
RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank applied the $357 Microsoft ascribed to each of Facebook's 42 million registered users in Wednesday's deal to its larger News Corp. rival's 185 million registered users. Bank put the eye-popping hypothetical MySpace valuation in a report yesterday as a way to illustrate that Facebook's implied $15 billion market capitalization isn't an accurate reflection of its actual worth. BusinessWeek: For Microsoft, the deal underscores the rising importance of online advertising.

Indie Web Sites May Win With Writers' Strike (NYP)
A Hollywood writers' strike would be a blow to the traditional TV and film business, but it could be just the thing for those looking to make shows pay on the Web. While writers battle the major networks and studios over the future use of shows on the Internet, cellphones, and other new media, dozens of companies have sprouted up that focus on creating content for the Web. LAT: Studios offer new propsals to avert strike.

Portfolio Ads Swell While Editorial Wanes (NYP)
Keith Kelly: Joanne Lipman, the editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, and David Carey, the magazine's president and publisher, were on the road in Boston yesterday. And although they were traveling together, it appears each faces a very different road. Carey seems to be sitting pretty, while Lipman is sweating it out.

BBC's Johnston Retells Gaza Kidnap Story (Guardian)
The BBC's former Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston, has spoken in detail for the first time about his abduction, saying he was punched in the face by one of his captors and thought he would die by having his throat slit. It has also emerged that the BBC received an email directly from his kidnappers in which they said they would send the corporation a video of him being killed if they did not get a "positive message."

Mainstream Blogs Open Floodgates for Political Coverage (WaPo)
Howard Kurtz: Campaign officials have learned to feed the bottomless pit of political blogs on newspaper and magazine Web sites, leaking favorable tidbits — a new poll result or television ad — and quickly disputing negative items. In short, journalists and political strategists find themselves sparring more and more over smaller and smaller items on shorter and shorter deadlines.

Fox News Fans Flames in Fire Coverage (CJR)
Liz Cox Barrett: Here's Fox News' analysis: A 2003 memo from FBI's Denver office + suggestion made by a commentor on a FoxNews.com blog + "guy" spotted in California by "hovering helicopter" and picked up on suspicion of arson = Al Qaeda set fire to California! Folio: Magazines see less effect from — and opportunity in — SoCal fires than newspapers.

The Winter of Our Content (BusinessWeek)
Jon Fine: The fundamental question at this juncture in media history is whether true dominance lies with story or software. So let me clear this one up. Millions of people tell stories now — on blogs, on MySpace, on Flickr — for free. There is a surfeit of storytelling. Millions of people do not sit around writing software for free. Advantage: programmers.

Proposed Postal Rules May Require Magazines to Rethink Cover Design (Folio:)
One of the biggest changes in the new postal rules would be to mailing labels. Under the proposed terms, labels would likely cover a magazine's nameplate — needing to be either parallel to and within three inches of the top edge, or perpendicular to and within two and a half inches of the top edge.

New York's Adam Moss Has All the Answers (Marketwatch)
Jon Friedman: More than most magazines, New York consistently features covers that confound, intrigue, and attract readers. There is a fine line between exhibiting wit and employing gimmicks, and the magazine tends to avoid crossing it. These days, only Time can consistently match New York in terms of making people take notice.