In your hopeful Wednesday media column: someone gives Capital New York some dough, Chris Rovzar leaves New York, Elisabeth Murdoch has tons of News Corp shareholder cash, Village Voice sex lawsuit dismissed, and the world's highest paid authors.

Tipsters report: the NY Daily News gossip' team's down one, as Laura Schreffler's out. Is the NYDN gossip desk growing rust? We know one person who turned the gig down. Update: Ben Widdicombe's on the move: TMZ!

For years, internet publisher Matt Drudge has responded to questions about his reported homosexuality by obfuscating and dodging. It would appear he's still at it.

Two sad gay dudes and a lady nerd talk to a Canadian about Gossip Girl.

Departing gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe's innuendo-laden items for the Gatecrasher column in the Daily News were always designed for two audiences: the tabloid's middlebrow readers, who weren't intended to get the joke; and the Australian gossip's counterparts, who could be expected to pick up on the camp subtext.

Like all good cabals, the New York Times' contingent of gays has some known members-and other figures who remain in the shadows, the uncertainty adding to the paranoia of homophobic right-wingers.

The bizarre Gawker colonization of (or assimilation by!) New York magazine continues. Following in the footsteps of founding editor Elizabeth Spiers, who spent a year at the magazine, and her former Gawker co-editor Jesse Oxfeld, who was recently booted upstairs to the position of senior editor, Jessica Coen, most lately of Vanity Fair's website, is taking a position as New York Senior News Editor, managing their ever-growing online presence. (Forty-something staff and growing!)

• Meet the man who's obsessed with Hillary Clinton—the political editor of the New York Post. [The Politico]
  

• Above: dog poop, Boerum Hill.
  

Meta-gossip: over at the Daily News, George Rush & Joanna Molloy's two beloved stringers, Chris Rovzar and Jo Piazza, have legally emancipated themselves from their gossip family. After two years of alcoholic reporting, they're both moving up to the News' feature section, where they'll bend to the mercurial will of editor Orla Healy. If they can handle the mandatory late nights at Bungalow, surely they'll be able to endure the Irish terror.

First, the official news, straight from lowdown Lloyd Grove: He's got a new Hudette. The Lloydster emails: