In your springy Monday media column: reporters get great bonus opportunities, Katie Couric's future in detail, the SF Chronicle eyes a paywall, the freelancer purge at AOL, and Ken Auletta on Robert Thomson.

  • The publisher of the Daytona Beach News-Journal is offering reporters cash bonuses for selling subscriptions or ads. In the paper for which they are reporting. Sure, you might point out that such an arrangement is completely unethical. But before you go passing judgment, consider this: the publisher is a huge dumbass.
  • Even more goddamn Katie Couric news! THR says that Katie will end up with a syndicated talk show on either NBC or CBS, as well as "a production company and a content deal with one of the major Web portals." Now you know.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle, a thoroughly decimated newspaper, is reportedly going to put up a paywall. Good luck.
  • AOLHufPo is in the process of slashing its ranks of freelancers, although they put the whole thing much more politely.
  • Ken Auletta has a new profile of WSJ editor Robert Thomson in the new New Yorker—which is a writearound, since Rupert Murdoch hates Ken Auletta, so no News Corp people gave him interviews. The world is littered with media titans who wish they'd turned down Ken Auletta's interview requests.

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