In your scandalous Friday media column: a reporter has an affair with a police chief, another reporter's charged with assaulting an old man, Meredith is the new queen of magazines, and Reader's Digest increases its pap quotient.

A journalist who wrote a "glowing" profile of the Milwaukee police chief also had an affair with the police chief around the same time. "Perceived you instantly - knew you were a good person who does things for the right reason...As a result, I began to struggle with the story - having to give time to vitriolic baseless attacks," she wrote to him, about the story. The reporter, Jessica McBride, also teaches journalism ethics to college kids.

Boston Herald reporter O'Ryan Johnson has bee charged with "kicking a 74-year-old man with emphysema in the chest at a laundromat." And here is his actual Facebook photo which clearly shows him punching somebody, establishing his innocence.

The hottest magazine company today: Meredith. Fitness, Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and More all posted big ad page gains in July, bucking the industry trend. Meredith: the hot magazine publisher. Not Conde Nast. Not Time Inc. Meredith. Glamorousness!

Reader's Digest is remaking itself by becoming more conservative, if you can imagine such a thing. Rather than fill the magazine with content "considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media," they will fill it with more worthless crap.