In your crisp Thursday media column: success at the WSJ, Moe on DC, the government is very concerned about journalism, the Today Show is unafraid, and Vice is officially a part of the MTV generation.

  • Dow Jones boss Les Hinton says that the WSJ. weekend magazine and the WSJ's relatively young New York Section are both profitable enterprises. I guess we'll take his word for it.
  • Former Gawkerer Moe Tkacik writes an amazingly (considering the subject matter) thoughtful and interesting feature on Fishbowl DC and its place in the DC media ecosystem. Read the article, skip the rest of the DC media ecosystem.
  • "Journalism is in hour of 'grave peril,' says top government regulator." We're guessing hoping the writer of that headline gets the joke.
  • CBS' last-place Early Show brought in a whole new cast this week to try to goose its ratings. The executive producer of the first-place Today Show is decidedly not concerned a bit. He tries to be nice about it, though.
  • Last night I saw the premiere of Vice's upcoming new MTV show, "The Vice Guide to Everything." It's interesting—they report from North Korea and Yemen and Ghana, they interview a Russian mob boss—but it's edited to MTV standards, meaning "in a way that will keep the attention of a distracted 15 year-old." It would be great if the segments were 30 minutes each, instead of five minutes. But not a bad TV show, all around. Joe Pompeo notes the outsized amount of media coverage that Vice itself has gotten for years and years. Which, I think, just goes to show: if you're a media outlet that can cuss and talk openly about drugs and sex, you'll always get covered by reporters at other media outlets, who secretly wish they could, too.