In your bitter Thursday media column: Barack Obama to speak Spanish on the teevee, assorted sickening reminiscences and developments from the dying newspaper industry, and Perez Hilton is the future:

For your perusal. The salary cut memo:

Today show host Matt Lauer got in a fight with a deer while on his bike last weekend and kinda hurt himself. Now he's back on the show and his colleagues are teasing him mercilessly.

The Boston Latin School (which I trudged through for six long years) has a vampire problem. Kids are spreading rumors that the school is infested with blood-suckers. The headmaster now assures us: It's all lies!!

John Coale, currently advising Sarah Palin on running for president in 2012, is a Scientologist. And according to a memo obtained by Gawker, Coale once plotted to use friendly politicians to advance the power-hungry cult's agenda.

Lawrence Salander, the former operator of a prominent Manhattan art gallery, was arrested todayon charges of stealing $88 million from clients like Robert DeNiro and John McEnroe. Is he the art world's Bernie Madoff?

I think Motown is my least favorite of the Idol theme nights. The songs have all been sung too many times, they almost always sound dated, and it's racially embarrassing. Last night was no exception.

• It's been a dark day at the New York Times: Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Janet Robinson announced a five percent salary reduction for all editors and said 100 employees on the business side would be laid off. [Gawker, NYO, NYT]
• Blender has been shuttered; April will be the mag's last issue. [AdAge]
• The Washington Post is offering buyouts again. And if enough people don't take 'em, the paper says a round of layoffs will follow. [Politico]
• Richard Beckman is out as Condé Nast's marketing chief; he'll be heading up the company's Fairchild Fashion Group instead. [WSJ, Crains]
• It's getting a little stormy over at the Weather Channel! [NYP]
• Rod Blagojevich may have some sort of reality show in the works. [CST]
• ABC News has settled a lawsuit filed against Diane Sawyer. [NYP]
• Barry Diller is the proud new owner of SportsPickle.com. [PaidContent]
• The most newspaper-friendly city in America? Rochester! [E&P]

The New York Times has completed the first step: admitting it has a problem. The internal memo is out, confirming today's rumored pay cuts (and layoffs). This is big news.

With all the upheaval in the world, it's good to see that some people aren't losing sight of the bigger picture, like one benevolent genius who's so eager to provide blondes with an alternative to ravaging their hair with peroxide, that he's dedicated his entire career to creating a non-damaging bleach—and he's nearly there. Kenzo Koike, a Tokyo scientist, has discovered a fungus-based enzyme that "naturally degrades melanin and has the added benefit of fighting the effects of free radicals." Sounds like Japan's greatest technological innovation yet! [Green Right Now]

Last week, we learned from a bunch of facial readers that Bernie Madoff's shady tendencies should have been as obvious as night and day. (Or as obvious as a "thin lips" and "deep-set eyes," anyway.) Now it's the graphologists who are weighing in! And funnily enough, they, too, say the writing was on the wall. (Or pad of paper, at least.) Says Bart Baggett, a "personality profiler and forensic document examiner" who lives in California: "I would say he was seriously abused as a child because he has such trauma. The leftward leaning, backward strokes are an emotional withdrawn tendency, a lack of emotional connection with humans." In other words, not only were Sylvia and Ralph Madoff really shady, they were also bad parents. Could we now get them to focus their attention on Tim Geithner? Would be great to get a little advance notice this time!

Everyone bought dogs and went to Atlantic City and lost tons of money this week. Also, Ryan faced more worries about Iraq. Depressing and funny, this episode.

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that he's willing to support gay marriage in New York State. But he's really not sure "when the time will be right" for the passage of any legislation because, as we all know, the mayor never likes to move ahead with anything unless he has absolute consensus. "We see that the tide is turning, that support is mounting," the mayor told the annual dinner of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. "Make no mistake, the time will come... and we will pass this bill." Speaking of "time," the mayor should only have to keep repeating that line for 25 more weeks and hope the gay community turns out at the polls this November. [NYDN]

Blender, the music magazine, is dead. Its owners folded it this morning, eliminating about 30 jobs in the process.

You might not have heard, but there's a recession going on, which means that spending thousands upon thousands on designer clothes and show-offy accessories is suddenly and shamefully de trop. Drag! So Robert Burke, the luxury consultant and former fashion director at Bergdorf's, participated in a fun little game where he provided a list of purchases one would normally opt for—including, for men, an $8,375 Rolex steel-and-gold Oyster Perpetual Date watch and $520 Salvatore Ferragamo black lace-ups, and for women basic staples like a $995 Michael Kors black cotton zipper dress, a $995 David Yurman Cable Collection peace symbol necklace, and $330 Rock & Republic jeans—and challenged a couple of "avid shoppers" to find cheaper substitutes. Their discoveries will shock and amaze you!

Trouble just keeps piling up for scandal-plagued art dealer Larry Salander. In 2007, his Salander-O'Reilly gallery on the Upper East Side was shuttered amid charges he'd bilked clients out of millions. This past June, after filing for bankruptcy protection, most of his assets were sold off. And now? He's behind bars. Salander was taken into custody at his Millbrook home this morning and has been charged with 100 counts of grand larceny, forgery, falsifying business records, perjury, and other assorted crimes. On the bright side, at least Bernie Madoff will have a really knowledgeable person to consult when he decides to decorate his jail cell.

Quality mockery of Jeff Jarvis, et al. Always worthwhile.

If you were looking for an explanation for the slender physique that Harvey Weinstein has been showing off in recent months, you needn't look any further than the back of weight loss guru Dr. Louis Aronne's new diet book, The Skinny, which arrived in bookstores this week. Harvey was kind enough to issue a surprisingly cheerful blurb: "Dr. Aronne's new book is the most informative and intelligent approach to understanding weight loss and gain. Starting with page one, you will immediately feel healthier and better off. A must-read!" (As for that last bit, you can probably assume the "must-read" is just a gentle suggestion. Unless, that is, you're one of Harvey's poor assistants, in which case you should interpret it as an order.) But if you're one of those people who's been coping with the absence of Project Runway by binging on ice cream—and you're not inclined to shed the pounds by following Heidi Klum's suggestion and stomping up and down outside Weinstein's house—well, now you have an alternative.

Okay so you know that Swedish countess Marie Douglas-David needs $53K per week to live because her CEO (soon-to-be-ex) husband was overly generous and divorce-fetishy (and submissive), but did you know she made him rich?