In your sultry Wednesday media column: HuffPo's scapegoat gets her job back, WSJ reporters mildly defend themselves, Tablet magazine redesigns, a military reporter reflects on death, and Jim Romenesko is the new Yelp.

  • The Huffington Post hired young Amy Lee to aggregate the hell out of stories, and then very publicly suspended her when someone complained about it. Now, after getting a shitload of bad PR for being so craven "an internal review of the process and policies relating to the publication of stories on HuffPost," they've hired her back. Welcome back to hell, Amy! This is probably the best chance for internal sabotage you will ever have in your career. Bitchy tips about the inner workings of HuffPo can be sent here.
  • Journalists at the Wall Street Journal are feeling a bit defensive about the fact that the taint of their parent company's ethics scandal is rubbing off on them. Michael Calderone has a catalog of anonymous quotes from staffers, both defensive and honest. Has Rupert Murdoch been good for that paper, all things considered? Yes, at least in the sense that it's not laying everyone off in the foreseeable future.
  • Tablet magazine is undergoing a redesign, and they've hired senior editor David Samuels away from Harper's. The most high profile centerpiece of their new look with be the writing of Jeffrey Goldberg, who they lured away from The Atlantic. Too bad he's such a shit.
  • UPDATE: David Samuels sends the following correction:

  • Dear Hamilton,

  • It just came to my attention that Gawker published an item last week stating that Tablet "hired senior editor David Samuels away from Harper's." I was and continue to be a Contributing Editor at Harper's, which means that I write for the magazine and they give me a spot on their masthead only a few rows away from Tom Wolfe. I have never worked as a senior editor at Harper's or anyplace else: The only real job of any kind I have ever held was as a waiter in a coffee shop called Cafe Pamplona which was run by an old Spanish woman named Josephina who wore black every day of her life to mourn her fiancee who died fighting in the Spanish Civil War. I have been working as an editorial consultant for Tablet for the past year and a half, helping to reshape their news and politics section while assigning and editing long-form reporting and essays. Now I will reshape the Arts and Culture section while continuing to assign and edit long-form reporting and essays. In return for these services I get to join the ranks of people who hold the title "Literary Editor," which I think sounds cool.

  • To recap:
    1. I was never a senior editor at Harper's.
    2. I continue to be a Contributing Editor at Harper's.
    3. No one hired me away from anywhere else.
    4. I have a new area of responsibility at Tablet and a fancy new title.
    5. My parents are proud that I finally have at least half a job after barely working a day in my entire life.

  • Yours,

  • David Samuels

  • Marine Corp Times reporter Dan Lamothe writes here (via FishbowlDC) about the suicide of a soldier he befriended while on assignment. Well worth reading. Because, you know, soldiers: still dying, still being written about, but somehow still failing to hold our interest very long!
  • If your newspaper is going to sell an iPad app that's broken, don't sell it to Jim Romenesko.

[Photo: AP]