In your beautiful Wednesday media column: MSNBC's doing fine without Olbermann, network news is on the rise, a crazy NY Daily News rumor, the AP plays footsie with North Korea, David Cho to Grantland, and a Village Voice strike update.

  • How is MSNBC doing now that Keith Olbermann's show is up and running on Current? Just fine: up 3% in prime time since last year. Those unbearable ads really work! Just kidding, it's America's undying love of Ed Schultz that's keeping the network. (Just kidding.) Don't worry Olbermann-and-MSNBC-put-together, there's enough room for both of you to get stomped by Fox for years to come.
  • And hey, whattayaknow, for the first time in a decade, all three network newscasts saw their ratings rise last quarter. You really are getting boring in your old age, America.
  • Keith Kelly reports what is apparently a real rumor that exists: that hyperlocal news site DNA info, which is owned by a couple of billionaires, is interested in buying the NY Daily News from Mort Zuckerman. A Daily News source tells us the newsroom consensus is that "this is BS." We concur. On common sense alone!
  • Good news, aspiring journalists: the AP is hoping to open a bureau in Pynongyang, North Korea soon! It could become a reality, thanks to some "memos of understanding" that the AP signed with the Korea Central News Agency, which should make everyone in journalism very, very nervous, on general principle.
  • David Cho, who's been publisher of The Awl since it launched, is leaving to take a job at Bill Simmons' well-funded new sportswriting venture, Grantland. They are throwing around money like I don't know what over there! At Grantland, we mean.
  • One more day until the Village Voice strike deadline! Will the newsroom actually strike, for the first time ever? We asked Voice editor Tony Ortega, who said "Every three years we negotiate a new contract with the union. Every three years, the union authorizes a strike vote. And every three years, our negotiations go back and forth until a new agreement is made, usually late on the night of June 30. It's just how this works." He'll be proven extremely right or extremely wrong very soon!

[Photo: MSNBC]