Hobo broadsheet the New York Times, last seen telling its reporters that text messages are too expensive, has found another way to save precious nickels: getting freelancers to pay their own reporting expenses. With virtual panhandling!

• How many networks covered the Jackson memorial? Count 'em yourself: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, HLN, MTV, VH1, VH1 Classic, VH1Soul, BET, E!, TV Guide, TV One, Univision and Telemundo. [AdWeek]
• The WSJ is planning a weekly New York-only arts-and-culture section. [NYO]
• Condé Nast will launch a version of GQ in China in October. At last! [NYT]
• The view from Sun Valley: Barry Diller doesn't think Twitter is ever going to make any money. But Disney chief Bob Iger says we're all going to be paying for online content in the near future. So everyone is in agreement. [WSJ, WSJ]
• OK!'s $500K cover of a dying Michael Jackson wasn't a big hit. [DF]
• The New York Times has pulled down a gallery of photos that had been digitally manipulated, presumably without its knowledge. [E&P]
• Coming in 2010: An entire cable channel devoted to Olympic sports. [THR]
• The adult entertainment industry is phasing out "narrative arcs" and dialogue, and it's supposedly because the Internet has shortened attention spans. [NYT]

Happy Counting Day! The time is currently 12:34:56 on 7/8/09.

College: where drunk kids are guinea pigs for social science. The funnest college-kid studies involve race, because they make everyone uncomfortable! Now comes a new study of interracial college roommates that proves we're all terrible. A racial breakdown:

Not only is Karl Lagerfeld not planning to retire until the day he has to be hauled out of Chanel's offices in a bodybag, he also isn't going to restrain himself from making bitchy comments to reporters. A couple of weeks ago, the Kaiser staged a verbal assault on Heidi Klum and Seal. Today he delivers a milder attack on Audrey Tautou, who stars in Chanel's new TV commercial for Chanel No. 5, but had the audacity to suggest recently that she doesn't actually wear the label from head-to-toe every day. Karl's response? Among other things, he says he wishes he'd recommended Penelope Cruz for the perfume campaign instead. [WWD]

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly still investigating whether Apple misled investors about Steve Jobs' health. That the company's stock has nearly doubled in the intervening six months is apparently beside the point — as it should be.

Famed literary journal and titty mag Playboy acquired the exclusive serial rights to the unfinished final novella of author Vladimir Nabokov. They won the rights with flowers! And also lots of money. And also The New Yorker turned it down.

We knew that newsstands have been treating GQ's July cover, featuring a nude-but-not-all-hanging-out Sacha Baron Cohen is like porn. But a tipster at a Hudson News in Manhattan has noticed the decision has lead to some interesting juxtapositions.

What is it about Mexico that provokes such drama from reality shows? There's sandy, stupid Real World. The Cabo adventures of the Hills gang. The lonely journey of Danielle from Jersey (mostly made up by me). And now, PC.

Last weekend the New York Times Magazine published a beautiful set of photos of abandoned buildings and such, as a chronicle of the end of the gilded age. Now they've pulled them for probably being Photoshopped. Fakery!

Last week, Ezra Merkin, the disgraced financier who funneled a couple of billion to Bernie Madoff and has since been slapped with civil fraud charges, agreed to give up his prized collection of art as part of a deal with the attorney general's office. Like you, we found the news deeply troubling. Can you imagine what it must be like to spend years buying up one priceless Rothko painting after another, only to have Andrew Cuomo come along and run off them? Not fun! As always, though, we're here to help: We just sent a lovely Rothko poster to Merkin at his 740 Park Avenue duplex. Just because you aided and abetted the biggest crook in American history doesn't mean you should have to stare at bare walls all day!

Barack Obama threw an exclusive "backyard bash" on the Fourth of July, with hot dogs, Stoudt's American Pale Ale, and entertainment by the Foo Fighters. Politico's Mike Allen rated an invite, but he doesn't really want you to know that.

Whoa, Harry Reid just realized that he's the Majority Leader of the Senate, leading a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats, who also control the House and the White House! Maybe he read a newspaper? Maybe Al Franken told him?

Oh that's cute. Because the economy is dumb these days, famous celebrities have gotten it into their bone-swaddled, pea-sized brains that they can dress themselves. This means no more work for scary skeleton stylist ladies like Rachel Zoe!

Was the absurd stalemate in Albany not quite enough drama for you? Great, because more of it is coming your way: "In a shocking and legally questionable effort to end the month-old Senate stalemate, Governor Paterson is considering naming a lieutenant governor today during a 5 p.m. televised address, sources said. Such an appointment would defy the advice of the state's attorney general and decades of accepted legal wisdom that a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor could not be filled until the next statewide election." [NYP]

Maximilia "Ava" Cordero, alleged underage lover of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein, sued the New York Post two years ago after it ran a story saying she was born a man, and was slutty. The decision is in! Sexlaw frontiers, here.

A man who spent 10 weeks as an alternate juror in the trial of Brooke Astor's son but was removed last week for unknown reasons, is now speaking out. If you were thinking the parade of famous faces on the witness stand would have had an influence the jury, well, that doesn't seem to be the case. Frank Waring, a retired maintenance worker, says the whole thing has been bewildering more than anything else: "Mr. Waring said he was sure of two things: The trial was confusing, and it was exhausting. 'You don't know who's doing what or who's telling the truth,' he said. 'To me, it's a very confusing trial.' [NYT]

Ruth Madoff is getting her passport back, so that she may—if she's smart—flee this country for an isolated life far, far away. Our poll of public sympathy for her did not come back with encouraging results:

It's hard keeping all the blonde Voguettes named Lauren apart, isn't it? The Post reports today that real estate honcho Michael Hirtenstein has gone into contract to sell his Gramercy Park South townhouse to "newlyweds Lauren DuPont, a Vogue staffer, and Andres Santo Domingo, a billionaire Colombian heir." If that took you by surprise and you wondered if Dupont and Santo Domingo had left their respective spouses to get married and buy a new home, well, worry not.