In your torpid Tuesday media column: Bill O'Reilly has another idiot book coming out, MSNBC is doing poorly, Salon.com relaunches, James Murdoch's flack quits, and speculation on Time Inc's next CEO.

  • Here is an NPR story in which cuckolded small-town police booster Bill O'Reilly says his typical boneheaded and clearly un-self-aware things about "the media." But can we talk about the fact that Bill O'Reilly is about to publish a book entitled Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever? Good one, Bill, did you come up with that yourself? What Lincoln scholarship in America has been dying for is Bill O'Reilly's take on the assassination. He brings something to the table that none of the previous 3478 books on the topic had: breathtaking lunkheadedness. Bill O'Reilly likes to hit his head on a cement wall for fun, while dictating his book about Honest Abe. We look forward to it.
  • How is MSNBC doing in the post- Keith Olbermann era? Kind of shitty! MSNBC is now just barely ahead of CNN in primetime viewers. (Both are still doing about half of what Fox News does.) Instead of blaming it on losing a host here or there, though, let's blame it on their stupid, stupid ad campaign.
  • Salon.com is "relaunching" itself, which means it is bringing back founder David Talbot as CEO and also unveiling a bit of redesign, which did not work as of this morning. (We feel ya!) Can Salon become the NPR of the internet, relying on reader donations for its livelihood? Yes, as long as they get an heiress to give them $200 million at some point.
  • News Corp scandal scion James Murdoch's PR advisor has quit "amid disagreements over the way the media group dealt with the phone-hacking scandal." The last straw was when her common sense advice, "Shoot yourself," was left unheeded.
  • Lucia Moses has a rundown of the various leading candidates to take over as CEO of Time Inc. Spoiler: they're all media executives. Try again next time, Carrot Top.

[Photo via AP]