For some reason there's a whole pile of media stories in today's papers, so we thought we'd take a page from our weekday friends and start the morning off with one of our famous Gawker media news round-ups. Let's ease into things today.

  • A MarketWatch reporter named Bambi Francisco (pictured) resigns on charges of stirring her own soup. Execs at Dow Jones weren't happy when they heard she'd been writing about companies for MarketWatch that she had previously featured on her private website, a sort of classified space, as far as we can tell, where start-ups make videos to lure venture capitalists. Here's Bambi's blog, for some reason! [NYT]
  • Gordon Rynders, a Daily News photographer for 38 years, dies at age 90. The "dapper lensman," as the NYDN calls him, specialized in "burning ships and airliners in distress." In fact, he may have taken the famous "devil in the Twin Towers" picture, but we're absolutely just making that up. [NYDN]
  • The Tribune Co. files some SEC receipts, reveals that CEO Dennis FitzSimons received a cool $1.4 million in bonus pay last year, up about 500% from the quarter million he received in '05. According to the Chicago Tribune, FitzSimons stands to receive a severance package of $10.6 million if he jumps ship within 30 days of the 1-year anniversary of last week's sale. That's on top of the $22.9 million he'd get if he sold all his holdings. [Chicago Tribune]
  • In a fluffy interview carried both in Chicago and L. A., new Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell assures one of his reporters that he does not want to break apart the company, and that the dinner he had with David Geffen—who's been hungering for a piece of the L. A. Times—was just an occasion to see an old college roommate. [LAT]
  • On a related note, Newsday reports that "Oyster Bay power broker" and former NASDAQ chairman Frank Zarb wants to buy them. You can also read about this in Graphic Arts Monthly, but pretty much nowhere else. [Newsday]
  • Finally, as Zell yells about aggregators, Parisian news service Agence France-Presse settle their lawsuit against Google and allow them to keep posting their stuff. [MSNBC]