'We Designated a Dog as the Employee of the Month'

In your bitter Thursday media column: Barack Obama to speak Spanish on the teevee, assorted sickening reminiscences and developments from the dying newspaper industry, and Perez Hilton is the future:

Will your American president Barack Obama ever stop appearing on various popular television events? I don't think so! Tonight, tune into "Premio Lo Nuestro,' Univision's longest-running and most popular music awards show," to hear a bilingual taped message from Barack. Can he speak Spanish better than George W. Bush? For the sake of Bush's legacy, let's hope not.

A former staffer of the recently shuttered Seattle P-I writes a good inside account of the paper's final weeks, as employees waited for Hearts to make its (inexplicably dragged-out) final decision on the paper's future: "The newsroom collectively screamed-via a chain of famous quotes with not too subtle undertones that staffers e-mailed out to the all staff list. (Samples: 'I wear black on the outside ‘cause black is how I feel on the inside' -Morrissey; 'Nothing so focuses a man's attention as the prospect of being hanged'-Samuel Johnson.) We designated a dog as the employee of the month."

Don't feel too bad today, NYT employees: The Washington Post is threatening layoffs if it can't get enough takers for buyouts, probably because the paper's publisher is already saying it will lose "substantial money" in 2009. It's just the way of the world.


The Christian Science Monitor has published its last regular print edition.

A new report says that the way for celebrity magazines to stave off their inevitable death at the hands of web sites is to make certain sites like Perez Hilton "acquisition targets." Eh, it would be cheaper to just sponsor his birthday party.