In your gloomy Monday media column: Troubles at PBS, a National Magazine Award-winning story re-examined, ladies love Nooks, Newsweek staffers are constantly griping (with good reason!), and Reuters gets a new op-ed editor.

  • Trouble in the idealistic environs of PBS! The NYT says that some PBS member stations are considering dropping their PBS affiliation, because they can't afford the annual dues. Don't worry, though: soon, PBS shows might have ad breaks just like real, crappy networks. When you consider these difficulties at PBS, and then you consider the other recent troubles at NPR, don't you think they could all be cobbled together into some inch-deep trend story? I bet they could. Politico?
  • In Adweek, Alex Koppelman has a long examination of Scott Horton's Harper's story "The Guantanamo Suicides," which (controversially) just won a National Magazine Award. Koppelman lays out why a lot of people think the story's bullshit. He also includes lengthy responses from Horton. Well worth a read.
  • Report: female humans like to read their electronic magazines on the Nook Color, rather than the iPad. Hey, okay.
  • Newsweek staffers are pissy because Tina Brown "will order up double what she needs, so the cutting-room floor is getting very cluttered." Not to worry—now that cutting-room floor detritus will include shit by Simon Schama, too.
  • James Ledbetter, former editor of Reuters.com, is Reuters' new op-ed editor. Can he be trusted? We always assume, in the early days, that any op-ed editor is a closet fascist. Prove us wrong, James.

[Photo: CDBerrios/ Flickr]