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176 Newspapers to Form a Partnership With Yahoo (NYT)
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat. Reuters: Yahoo internal memo urges major shake-up, job cuts.

Naming NBC's Heir Apparent (Newsweek)
NBC Universal CEO Bob Wright will reportedly be in place until 2008. And his successor? An insider says the media company will announce a new executive lineup that will make the succession clear as early as the first quarter of 2007 and definitely by July. The heir apparent will be named to a newly-created position one rung below Wright, allowing for a transition of 12 to 18 months. NYT: The twilight of Wright's run is curiously characterized by the same questions he faced in his early years: In a fast-changing media world, does the company have the assets to succeed? Can G.E.'s corporate formality succeed over the long haul in such a creative and freewheeling business? Or is G.E. simply steeling itself to finally sell NBC Universal outright? NYP: Anxious NBC awaits Vivendi's next step.

Fox News Channel Preps Right-Leaning Satire Show (Hollywood Reporter)
Fox News Channel might air two episodes of a Daily Show-like program with a decidedly nonliberal bent on Saturday nights in late January, with the possibility that it could become a weekly show for the channel. "It's a satirical news format that would play more to the Fox News audience than the Michael Moore channel," said the show's executive producer Joel Surnow.

Perez Hilton's 'Open Closet Policy' (LAT)
The slightly pudgy, recently blonded 28-year-old Cuban American blogger has leveraged his reign as "queen of all media" to become a one-man celebrity outing operation, doing his best to uncloset as many gay celebrities as he can, because, as he sees it, they have forfeited their right to privacy on that point.

Sawyer to Take ABC Anchor Spot After '08 Election (Page Six)
Diane Sawyer will take over for Charlie Gibson when he steps down as anchor of World News Tonight after the 2008 presidential election, TV insiders agree. But there are different theories as to what the Good Morning America co-host will do until then. Don't believe the rumor that the brainy blonde will leave ABC for CNN to take over for Larry King.

O.J.'s Lawyer Calls Book Profits 'Blood Money' (Newsweek)
O.J. Simpson's book deal was such a closely guarded secret that even his lawyer, Yale Galanter, was surprised by the news. Galanter admits he's "pissed" O.J. kept him in the dark about it and says, "I definitely would not have approved this." Galanter says the whole thing is something of a bait-and-switch. NYT: Fox stations rebel against network's decision to run O.J. Simpson interview.

CBS Schemes to Pump Up Katie's Ratings (NYP)
Days after ratings for the CBS Evening News slipped below year-earlier ratings for the first time in the two months Katie Couric has anchored the show, CBS News & Sports president Sean McManus sent out a "no panic" message. "People who want to judge this as a success or failure after eight or nine weeks, I think are missing the big picture," he said. "Our commitment to Katie is long-term."

Select New Yorker Subscribers Receive Free Inconvenient Truth DVD This Week (NY Sun)
For some subscribers to the New Yorker, this week's edition brought a free DVD of Vice President Al Gore's documentary. The diskette, encased in cardboard and plastic wrapping, is taped to an advertisement promoting the film's DVD release tomorrow. A message inside urges recipients to watch, "share," and "donate" the film.

Time Warner's Post-Synergy Success Story (NYT)
David Carr: "Synergy" drove the worst transaction in media industry history, so the S-word does not come up much these days at Time Warner. But even as the concept has been left for dead, it is being put into practice, albeit in diminutive ways, at the current version of the company.

With November's Shouting Over, MSNBC Finds Its Voice (WaPo)
Howard Kurtz: The perennial third-place cable news channel enjoyed a nice bump in the ratings during the midterm campaign, in part because the likes of Brian Williams, Tim Russert, David Gregory and Campbell Brown broke away from their NBC duties to help out. "We've found a voice as of late, and a large part of that voice is politics," says MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams.

Cable 'Picking Up Slack' to Air Documentaries (USAT)
Documentaries on cable get a fraction of the audience that broadcast networks draw. But former 60 Minutes II producer Josh Howard, now at CNBC, says that by rerunning documentaries dozens of times on the cable channel, millions of viewers eventually tune in: an estimated 10 million for an American Airlines documentary, for example.

HBO's Digital Strategy (B&C)
While broadcast and cable networks have been building broadband players and putting shows on iTunes, the leading premium cable channel has offered little. But HBO says it is exploring plans to distribute its programming online — so long as those plans don't jeopardize its subscription-based business model or its licensing agreements with cable operators.

Mediabistro's TVNewser: A Force in the Industry (NYT)
Brian Stelter's mediabistro.com blog is read religiously by network presidents, media executives, producers and publicists, not for any stinging commentary but because it provides a quick snapshot of the industry on any given day. "The whole industry pays attention to his blog," said Jeffrey W. Schneider, a senior vice president of ABC News. "It would not surprise me if I refreshed my browser 30 to 40 times a day."

Daughter Remembers Journalist, NYU Professor Ellen Willis (Metro)
The recent death of journalist, feminist and cultural critic Ellen Willis sparked a flurry of tributes from writers who have been influenced by her. Willis was the New Yorker's first pop music critic, an editor at the Village Voice, and an NYU journalism professor. Her daughter, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, an editorial fellow at Salon.com, talks about her mother's career.

Poetry's Word Freak (NYT)
Poetic reputations are fragile and fleeting, and often hard to measure. Depending on which critic you listen to, Paul Muldoon, at 55, is "one of the five or so best poets alive," "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War" and a serious contender for the Nobel Prize, or else he is a victim of "pyrotechnical autism" who writes "artificially enriched, overinformed doggerel." Mediabistro: 2003 interview with Muldoon.