There's an orgy of Murdochracy in today's Times. Richard Pérez-Peña and Louise Story report that, should Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones fail, layoffs at the Wall Street Journal are a near certainty. (Guess what? Same deal if he succeeds.) Perhaps aware of the impending cuts, editor Ellen Pollock has jumped to BusinessWeek, where she will become the Executive Editor and presumably keep an eye out for other talent ready to desert the rapidly sinking WSJ ship. Seeking to avoid Murdoch ownership, certain Dow Jones board members (including the Bancroft clan's Leslie Hill) are meeting with Ron Burkle to see if the grocery magnate can put together a rival bid. ("It is unclear what kind of offer, if any, Mr. Burkle would propose," reports the Journal, "but he has been exploring a structure for Dow Jones that would incorporate an employee stock-ownership plan, according to people close to him.") Finally, the Times talks to Andrew Neil, who swore up and down on Friday that the deal was done, and continues to swear up and down despite denials from both parties.

Rachael Klein is a member of Georgetown's MBA class of 2008, and in her year of business school, she has learned quite a lot. "I am informed. In a few (and I mean a very few) cases, I am informed, more so than my PhD mother, MD father, and CPA grandfather. I know more about (a very few) certain things now than they do. I am pursuing information in a field that is beyond informed common knowledge." Congratulations, Rachael! But as she heads into her New York City ("the City") summer internship, there are a few areas in which, Rachael admits, her knowledge is still lacking. "Will my suit be the wrong color? Do East Coast professionals wear black in the summer? Do women wear bright colors to a bank? Are they going to ask me to figure out how to calculate arbitrage with bonds (something we learned but I need to "review," to say the least)? How do I prepare? Oh, and are white shoes a screaming faux pas?" We don't know about the white shoes, Rache, but being a pompous little know-it-all twit is generally frowned upon.

One Intern: Informed And Insecure [BusinessWeek]

• Tradey mag-man Keith Fox will be the president of your Business Week. Headshots with suspicious head cropping always make us wonder how bald a fella is. That's okay. [Ad Age]
  

When it came time for Business Week assistant managing editor Bruce Nussbaum to do jury duty in New York City last week, he found himself assigned to a high-profile case. The suspects—who had been charged in some sort of gang activity—were so intimidating, so menacing, that he feared not only for his life, but also for his family's: "One of [the connotations] that crossed my mind was, you know, a nationally organized gang, very powerful, that could reach out and try to influence members of the jury." Of what horrible gang could Nussbaum have been so very afraid? Especially since the tough guy admitted he was himself in a Lower East Side gang in the 1960s. (That experience must serve him well in the corridors of Business Week!)

The inmates at BusinessWeek Online are getting restless—and not just because one of the mag's staffers isn't using toilet paper! Some of them, at least, are hoping that the break that BusinessWeek.com Editor-in-Chief (and mag Executive Editor) Kathy Rebello is taking to tend to family in Oregon is a permanent one. We vividly remember Kathy Rebello, because she brought in former Forbes.com editor Charles Dubow as New Products Director, and he's the freak who wrote that memo instructing the copy desk not to change the headlines on which he worked so very hard. Now a source reports that Rebello "has been placed indefinitely on ice."

While we were all marveling at the so-crazy-they-just-might-work internet schemes of Atoosa "Alpha Kitty" "Big Momma" "'Toos" "The 'Toos" Rubenstein on Friday, Jon Fine was scraping the floor for quotes that didn't make the cut the first time around. The result could sort of be considered his 'The Beales of Grey Gardens:'

Today, BusinessWeek's Jon Fine takes a long, hard look at what a certain former Editor in Chief, a young woman named Atoosa Rubenstein, has been up to since leaving Seventeen. We already know, of course, that she's been spending a lot of time on MySpace. So what's her strategy for building the brand that will make her "the new Oprah?" Well, it's hard to say, exactly, but an important component of the plan seems to be . . . spending a lot of time on MySpace.

Amid all the kerfuffle over her BusinessWeek cover story, and subsequent book deal, there's one salient fact about Sarah Lacy that most commentators are way too politically correct to mention: she is the hottest reporter in the Valley. No, make that the hottest reporter in the tech world — ever.

Valleywag contributor Theo DP shreds BusinessWeek's typically gushy cover story on Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos.

Apparently immune to self-inflicted irony, BusinessWeek's online division has launched an Orwellian campaign to catch an internal leaker, while publishing a Halloween-themed article entitled "Scary Co-Workers." After all, "who hasn't indulged in the guilty pleasure of office scuttlebutt with a Gossip, or been marginally entertained by The Pessimist's conspiracy theories?" BW management has done neither, apparently. The personhunt has been launched to track down who leaked internal emails relating to speculation about the identity of a commenter ("Martin Smithers") who habitually and suspiciously praises the mag to the heavens. We hear that a "forensic audit" of emails has been ordered to figure out whence the leak sprung, and all IMs will now be surveilled. An even stranger rumor has boss Kathy Rebello hiring some sort of prose expert to compare the writing of employees versus that of the leaker, thus snaring the perpetrator in some kind of Da Vinci Code literary trap. Perhaps now is the time to report to the public square for a voluntary self-criticism session, before it becomes mandatory.

When perusing BusinessWeek's "America's Best Young Entrepreneurs," you will find no Martin Smithers. However, you will encounter 25-year-old Noah Glass, who started GoMoBo, a company allowing you to place restaurant takeout orders via cellphone. That's all well and good, but just what is this guy on? He looks as though he emerged from his morning buttermilk bath, put on a scratchy new suit, popped out on his roof terrace, and unexpectedly beheld a stretch buffet of hot, willing poontang laid out and waiting. "Upsurge in business" indeed.

We hear that after a recent redesign of the story pages, the level of reader commentary at BusinessWeek's site has dropped precipitously, whether for technical or aesthetic reasons. This prompted exec editor Kathy Rebello to perform some field tests:

Business Week has pulled a NYT and does a calorie-free article on Google. Headline: How Google's Garden Grows. Makes you want a chop a tree down, don't it? The cell phone with faked google screen has nothing to do with the article, CNN.com must be handling BW's graphics now.

A selection of BusinessWeek headlines from the last 12 months:

As the Big Lebowski says, new shit has come to light. Sarah Lacy, who co-wrote the BusinessWeek cover story "How this kid made $60 million in 18 months" (about Digg founder Kevin Rose, who now jokes constantly with friends and Digg users about the $60 million he doesn't have), will leave the magazine for a year to work on her book about Web 2.0, she said in an e-mail.

Call it "How this BusinessWeek writer made $500k with one bubble" — Sarah Lacy (pictured right), co-writer of the BusinessWeek cover story that pumped up boys of the bubble and gave Digg founder Kevin Rose a made-up valuation of $60 million, scored a lucrative book deal on the same subject.

• Time needs Newsweek like Slate needs Salon: as a measuring stick for comparative suckitude. [Slate]
• MTV needs videos like Time needs Newsweek: as a differentiator for younger, hungrier competitors. [BW]
• BusinessWeek needs Brandchannel the way MTV needs videos: to run the same thing you saw last week into the ground. [BW]
• Tony Kornheiser needs to be put down. Seriously. This is not a joke. Nice job, though, Weingarten. [WP]

"'Witch Hunt' in the Silicon Valley," says BusinessWeek.

Remember the fuss over BusinessWeek's cover story, "Valley Boys," a few weeks back? I know, we forgot about it too. But a few alert readers pointed out that feature writer Sarah Lacy has a little undisclosed connection to the story.

• Tech blog GigaOM explains why Fox Interactive won't buy YouTube. For why no one else will, see this Valleywag list. [GigaOM]