• Plan to sex up National Magazine Awards event includes performance by Wynton Marsalis, an award presentation by Anderson Cooper, and maybe — if we're really lucky — an award presentation by Heidi Klum. And for the big finish, ASME president Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, will join Time's Jim Kelly for a choreographed performance of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better. [NYP]
• Rolling Stone reality show moving along nicely and set to start taping in July. But there's bad news, too: "[C]ast members will be selected based largely on merit as opposed to, say, sex appeal and a penchant for sociopathic behavior," which sounds no fun at all. [WWD]
• Times reporters continue to write books, continue to be confused — to the union's chagrin — about the rules under which they are or are not allowed to write them. [NYO]
• Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, and Tom Cruise moved the most mags in 2005. [MIN]
• Time Inc. reaches $4.5M settlement in subscription-renewal investigation. Now if they'd just do something about those fucking subscription-renewal cards. [Reuters]

Monday Washington Mutual bought you the Daily News. Yesterday Fresh Direct bought you the Post. Will the madness ever end? Oh, no; it won't. Here are today's reports:

Roving reporter Bucky Turco — who else? — provides us with photographic evidence not just that there are freebie Posts today but also of the ad on those freeibie Posts. And, frankly, we're shocked shocked that rightwing Rupe would print such a thing:

Yesterday was free Daily News day, courtesy of Washington Mutual. Today — as a tipster warned us — is apparently free Post day, courtesy of Fresh Direct. So far we've got two reports of Post giveaways at Union Square. Writes one tipster:

OK, back to the Daily News. It wasn't just Brooklyn Heights, clearly; there are reports coming in of free Newses being given away all over the city, many by people more attractive than your usual hawkers and many by people wearing some sort of Washington Mutual garb. What gives?

Has the struggling-to-stay-on-top Daily News adopted the Sun's give-it-away circ strategy? A favorite source files this report from Brooklyn Heights:

• Dow Jones reorg combines print and online editions of WSJ. [AP via Yahoo]
• New Meredith editorial director Mike Lafavore fires Fitness EIC Emily Listfield and then gives himself the job, at least for now. How very Wennerian. [NYP]
• Carl Icahn's Time Warner breakup plan had a 37-page chapter on why Time Inc. doesn't fit with the rest of the company. How does John Huey react to that? "I didn't find it a very compelling chapter." Of course not. [NYO]
• Jack Shafer prefers his newscasters brunette. [Slate]
• Maxim redesign to remove "a layer of goofiness"; Graydon promises his next car will be a hybrid. [WWD]
• Breaking: Newspapers sometimes create sections as vehicles to attract advertising. [NYO]
• LAT NYC bureau chief to take on book-publishing beat, too. Because there's just not enough going on in the city itself to keep a reporter busy. [LA Observed]
• Eleven mags missed their rate base in the last half of 2005 — and that doesn't even court the half-dozen AMI titles set to miss in the next go-round. [BW]

• Remember how Ad Age told us last week that when the biannual circ numbers came out they'd show the celeb weeklies way up and O, The Oprah Magazine way down? Well, they came out, and they did. [NYT]
• Designer working on WSJ overhaul is urging the paper to consider more fashion and celeb coverage. Dow Jones execs can't wait to catch the celeb-mags circ mojo — and we can't wait for the stipple portrait of Jessica Simpson. [St. Pete Times]
• Nick Kristof raises $727K to send Bill O'Reilly to Darfur. It's amazing how much money you can raise when people will never actually have to fork it over. [E&P]

The new batch of Audit Bureau stats on magazine circ isn't out till next week, but Ad Age's Nat Ives is growing restless. He's tallied up a bunch of early reports and finds a shocking amount of good news (for the industry, if not so much for society):

"Lurid Numbers on Glossy Pages! (Magazines Exploit What Sells)," by Katharine Q. Seelye, today:

So you know how there's a perpetual circulation battle going on between the Daily News and the Post? And you know how there's all sorts of circ scandals going on at papers across the country, the most notably local example being at Newsday? And you know how the Post keeps gaining on the News's circ margin, but we're supposed to think that because the Posties are incendiary and irresponsible and the Newsies are the good guys, if somewhat plodding?

• Things we never thought we'd say: Iranians have a delightfully level-headed reaction to the Mohammed-cartoons brouhaha; the country's biggest paper will run a contest for best Holocaust cartoon, which is an entirely reasonable response. [Reuters via WP]
• We're not quite sure how we forget this yesterday, but sullen Simon Dumenco is even madder than usual, this time at Bonnie Fuller. Which seems sort of a waste of energy. [Ad Age]
• AOL gossips say Meredith Viera is now the top choice to replace Katie Couric on Today, should Katie take her clickety stilettos to CBS. They also say Today might go to four hours, with Campbell Brown anchoring parts, and that there's a 70 percent chance of a Katie-to-CBS switch. Which seems an really oddly specific. [TMZ]
• Out magazine is so desperate for a new EIC five months after allegedly pro-baseball-player-dating Brandon Lemon left that now it's even considering straight candidates. You should know better, Out: Sure the straight guys will have the drink, and be a little flirty, but it's just too much work to get them to finally put out. [WWD]
• 90.7 million watched the Super Bowl, making it the most watched TV show in ten years. [THR]
• The increasingly touchy-feely WSJ is like "your boss at work — smart, well-connected, highly respected, passing judgment from afar — who suddenly asks you to hang out on the weekend," says Hamilton Nolan. [PR Week]
• AMI adopted new ABC circ rules early, and realized it would miss rate base on half its titles. The other publishers ain't taking the risk. [Ad Age]

In today's New York Post, media reporter Keith "Scoopy" Kelly plays catchup on the Suns-for-everyone story and confirms that we're not all just imagingind things. Scoopy writes:

More and more reports are flooding into Gawker HQ of unsubscribed to, unpaid for, and unwanted New York Suns being delivered to apartments around the city. In today's installment, we've got word of Sun spots all over the Upper West Side, plus dispatches from as far afield as Gowanus and Crown Heights.

It seems it's not just the Upper East Side that's getting too much Sun. A flurry of new email arrived after the earlier report of unsolicited New York Suns being delivered — complete with address label, as though actually requested — at an uptown apartment building.

A few weeks ago we reported a new marketing-and-circ chief at the little rightwing paper that could, The New York Sun. Apparently, he's hard at work targeting the paper's natural neighborhood, the Upper East Side. We received this report this morning:

As we said before, you get what you pay for. And that doesn't include a calculator.

Just a bit more than two years ago, in a surprise last-minute move, Bruce Wasserstein won the auction to buy New York magazine. Just a bit less than two years ago, in a surprise move, Adam Moss left the Times to become editor of New York. For the last two years, then, a common Manhattan media conversation starter has been, "So, what do you think of the new New York?" In a press release issued this afternoon and based upon various just-compiled 2005 statistics, the magazine itself thinks it has an answer:

It's not the best of weeks for American Media Inc., the publisher of all your favorite supermarket tabloids and a whole bunch of fitness books you never look at. Head honcho David Pecker told Mediaweek yesterday that the company will reclassify some of its circulation in anticipation of new audit rules, and that change means six of its dozen titles — including Bonnie Fuller's Star — will miss their rate bases, the circulation guaranteed to advertisers.

Oh, fuck you, Matt Drudge — piquing our bloodlust so early in the morning, just to cruelly turn on us and make it about newspapers. Leave it to the internet's top druid to take a story about dropping print circulation and liken it to media genocide.