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Say It Ain't So, Bob (NY Sun)
Washington Post scribe Bob Woodward is under attack for publicly opining on the investigation into the Plame leak without disclosing that he was told of her CIA employment by a senior Bush administration official. E&P: Leave my buddy alone, yelps Carl Bernstein. NYT: Could Cheney be key to the Woodward questioning? WaPo: Woodward apologizes to the Post for his silence. E&P: Walter Pincus believed as far back as 2003 that Woodward had some involvement in the case but did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to. E&P: Ben Bradlee defends Woodward. Huffington Post: Hear that hissing noise? That's the sound of the air being let out of Woodward's reputation, writes Arianna Huffington. NYT: With the blessing of Post management, Woodward has juggled his roles as star reporter, assistant managing editor and best-selling author, managing to keep those roles from colliding. But collide they have, and in spectacular fashion. WaPo: A surreal day in the Post newsroom, writes Howard Kurtz. Slate: It's not a cover-up, but what the hell is it, asks Jack Shafer. LAT: Rampant speculation about the identity of Woodward's source. Baltimore Sun: Woodward's disclosure is likely to focus even greater public scrutiny on journalists' dealings with government officials, as well as on the workings of newsrooms. WSJ: The lack of accountability to one's bosses about one's sources has been a recurring theme in the past few years. AJR: Woodward's statement hardly undoes the damage, writes Rem Rieder.

Vollmann, Didion Win Top Honors at National Book Awards (USAT)
Garrison Keillor, host of the ceremony, told the winners that the award "will be in the second paragraph of your obituary, unless you're convicted of a felony, in which case it will be in the third paragraph." WaPo: "I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech," said Vollmann, an intense and prolific novelist and journalist who has never been able to shake a reputation as a cult writer.

Post Reporter in Contempt in Wen Ho Lee Case (AP)
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said that "in order to avoid a repetition of the Judith Miller imbroglio," Walter Pincus must contact his sources to inform them of the court's order in case they wish to release him from his pledge of confidentiality.

Trib Expecting Large Staff Reductions (E&P)
The Chicago Tribune expects large layoffs in the next three weeks, likely "fewer than 100," Publisher David D. Hiller said in a memo to employees. Tribune Co. papers in Los Angeles and Orlando also announced dozens of job cuts yesterday. AP via NYP: The Los Angeles Times is cutting about 85 newsroom jobs, or about 8 percent of its editorial staff, the paper said yesterday.

Learning Annex Head Pays $1000-Per-Minute for Lunch With Rupe (Guardian)
Bill Zanker, the founder and president The Learning Annex, has announced he is the winner of the eBay charity auction of lunch with the News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch. But will they dine at Michael's?

Top Penguin Editors Defect to Doubleday (NYP)
The departure of founding editors Celina Spiegel and Julie Grau from Riverhead Books, the imprint responsible for The Kite Runner, was a major loss for Penguin.

Mercury News Avoids Layoffs With 52 Buyouts (Grade the News)
Executive Editor Susan Goldberg announced that "there will be no layoffs," despite the fact that the newsroom had been reduced to about 280 people as part of Knight Ridder cost-cutting.

Rejoice, Ye Laddies (WWD)
American men may end up getting a weekly lad magazine after all. Keith Blanchard, the former Maxim editor in chief who spent several months developing a prototype of a magazine called Bullet for Hearst earlier this year, has relocated to Bauer Publishing.

BBC Plans Channel in Arabic (WSJ)
The British Broadcasting Corp. is trying to create the first broadly accepted Arab-language television channel funded by a Western government.

CBS Kills Report on Pellicano Case (Radar)
The special was going to examine how Anthony Pellicano built his business digging dirt for such industry luminaries as Tom Cruise, Michael Ovitz, and even Brad Grey, chairman of CBS sister company Paramount, who at the time was still running management firm Brillstein-Grey.

British Reality Show Out of This World (London Times)
A new television show is aiming to pull off the biggest hoax in TV history—by persuading a group of nine Britons that they have been blasted into outer space. The Onion: (parody) Animal Planet reality show to put bear, antelope, hawk, cheetah in same house.

HBO: We're Gonna Whack Housewives (NYT)
The cable channel says it's unfazed by the success of ABC's Desperate Housewives, and remains confident about its own Sunday-night prospects, including the return of The Sopranos in March.

Fairchild Fearful of Braunstein on Run (Lowdown)
Insiders say security at Fairchild has been beefed up since the Halloween attack. But some Fairchild employees feel management hasn't gone far enough to calm fears.

Whither the Critical Eye? (Prospect Magazine)
Michael Coveney: High culture, and the serious critics who support and explain it, have gradually become marginalized in the mass media. Critical clowns have stormed the citadel of Shaw, Tynan and Porter.

Full-Court Press (Inside Higher Ed)
Scott McLemee: The most subtle and cogent analysis by a rhetorician of how The Times or CNN frames its stories has all the pertinence to a reporter or editor that a spectrographic analysis of jalapeno powder would to someone cooking chili.

What's the New Mary Jane? (NY Press)
Scott Indrisek: High Times is to pot as Playboy is to naked chicks. But while onanistic fantasies about women fall somewhere in the vaguely depressing category, quasi-sexual longing for dewy, moist marijuana plants is just plain creepy.

Flickr, Buzznet expand Citizen Journalism (OJR)
Mark Glaser: Traditional journalists and newspaper sites tap into online photo communities to gather visual research and allow readers to contribute and interact. It's just the tip of the iceberg.

Alt-Weekly to New Times Big: Drop Dead (SFBG)
How can Mike Lacey announce, even before the deal is approved by Justice, that he plans to eliminate the endorsements and editorials in the Village Voice and VVM papers? Is Russ Smith right, that New Times plans to clean house? Alas.

MSNBC's Matthews Plays Hardball (Reuters via Yahoo!)
Jon Friedman: If you like idiosyncratic television personalities, you've got to love Chris Matthews. The host of MSNBC's Hardball is a rare breed. He's loud. And brash. And intense. And confrontational.

Mad Dogs and Englishman (Seattle Weekly)
Jonathan Raban has become the Northwest's premier man of letters. He's more at home inside his head than anywhere else, yet with an immigrant's fresh eyes he's able to shed light on his adopted home and country.

—David S. Hirschman

IN YESTERDAY'S MB BLOGS:

Pipeline: $25 Per Year/Trial For 99 Cents? [TVNewser]
CNN Pipeline is now in its final beta testing stage, TVNewser has learned.

Woodward: I Knew Plame First [FBDC]
Post superstar Bob Woodward testified Tuesday that he knew about Valerie Plame a month before her identity became public.

Ariannaparty:T-minus seven hours and counting [FishbowlLA]
Rumors we're hearing about tonight's big Huffington Post / Gawker Media party...

AOL Coaches Ready to Play [Galleycat]
Earlier this afternoon, Sarah and I got to fulfill a mutual ambition to lunch at lunch at Michael's—well, the back room at any rate (but we'll take whatever we can get).

Lunch at Michael's: This is What Happens When You Send the Help [FishbowlNY]
Laurel Touby couldn't get out of Chicago in time for lunch, so she asked me to fill in.

Book Advice for the Rest of Us [MBToolbox]
Investigative reporter Allen Salkin has no grievances to air right now: his book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us is selling quite well this holiday season.

Bombay Sapphire Wants You [Unbeige]
Every year the Bombay Sapphire martini glass competition rolls around, and every year we thank that great big marketing genius in the sky for giving us yet another shot at drinking for work.