I mean can you believe the nerve of this fuckin' guy, coming on CNBC and saying amateurs should follow a proven successful passive investment strategy and shouldn't try to time the market according to the rantings of a man whose stock picks have a losing record? The nerve of this fuckin' guy. Shove your "index funds" up your tight ass!

• The first quarter wasn't such a hot one for NBC Universal: Earnings dropped 45 percent as the ad market continued its downward spiral. [WSJ, TVWeek]
• The world's largest newsprint maker has gone bankrupt. [NYT]
• Rolling Stone is closing up shop in San Francisco. [Portfolio]
• Ads sales figures at The New York Times Co. are looking pretty ugly. [E&P]
• Some good news, at least for impoverished porn addicts: Time Warner no longer plans to charge customers based on bandwidth usage. [Wired]

So now a CNBC insider says GE overlords did not apply political pressure in a meeting with the network, as previously reported. The financial network is perfectly capable of flagellating itself.

When a waiter approaches Diller with a plate, he sniffs, "You're actually bringing food?"

We're not sure why CNBC would have picked Michael Wolff, of all people, to come on to talk about how disgraced CEOs and celebrities can go about restoring their damaged reputations—and it's also a mystery why Wolff would have accepted such an ironic invite—but maybe he was just hoping to pick up a tip or two from the other guests on the panel? Unfortunately for Wolff, just as he got done explaining why a Lindsay Lohan reality show would be a huge rating success—you think?—some sort of technical glitch occurred and kind of ruined Michael's moment. Oh, well. We'll just have to look forward to next week when Wolff appears on camera to talk about what qualities to look for when you're hiring an intern.

• The Times is folding in several sections of the paper (City, Escapes); scrapping the weekly fashion spread in the New York Times Magazine, and cutting the budget for freelance writers. Grim times, indeed. [NYT, Gawker]
• NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is reportedly concerned that CNBC has become too conservative and is becoming "the anti-Obama network." [P6]
• The new Ben Silverman? That would be ABC's Stephen McPherson. [NYP]
• Bill O'Reilly tends to ambush liberals more often than he does conservatives. Could that mean he, like, has an agenda or something? How surprising! [NYT]
• Twitter on fire: Traffic is up 131 percent from February. [AdAge]
• Gannett Co. reported a 60 percent decline in first-quarter profit today. [AP]

Top GE and NBC Universal executives called a dinner meeting with CNBC bigwigs inside 30 Rock recently. This much is agreed upon. Still unclear: Whether CNBC was pressured to bash the president less.

Jim Cramer can't stop talking about Jon Stewart, and this week he told a college newspaper that Stewart "ambushed" him and that the show lured him into the mauling with lies.

• The publisher of the Los Angeles Times is defending his decision to put an ad disguised as a news story on the front page of the paper yesterday. [LAT]
• A Fox Entertainment employee has reportedly been arrested for stealing the personal information of other Fox employees. [TVN]
• NBC is developing a sitcom based on George Gurley's Observer column. [P6]
• Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham and Lauren Conrad were among the "most salable cover faces" for fashion magazines in 2008. The least? Nicole Kidman, Carrie Underwood, and Rachel Weisz. [WWD]
• Dylan Ratigan talks about his departure from CNBC and move to ABC. [BI]
• Speaking of covers, are struggling celebrity tabloids paying for them? [NYP]
• The Daily Beast, Tina Brown's website, will introduce ads shortly. [AdAge]
• Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, have purchased another local newspaper in Putnam County. [Portfolio]
• NBC will air a "comedy showcase" featuring Jay Leno on May 19. [NYT]

Did some CNBC staffer forget to take off their mic before heading to the bathroom? It certainly sounds like it! A clip of some live toilet-flushing on CNBC earlier today is below.

• To celebrate 1,000 episodes (and 35,892 sound effects), CNBC's resident buffoon, Jim Cramer, rang the opening bell of the NYSE today. [CNBC]
• Sales of romance novels are on the rise, since in times like these, we all just want to indulge in happy endings. Or something along those lines. [NYT]
• Why is the New York Times Co. frantically looking to cut costs at the Boston Globe? For one thing, it's on track to lose $85 million in 2009. [NYO, Portfolio]
• It's hard getting people to pay for newspaper content they now get for free. Let Coke guide you, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.: "Coca-Cola took tap water, filtered it and called it Dasani, and makes millions of dollars a year." [NYT]
• Magazines are blurring the line between editorial and advertising by putting ads on the cover. If they don't, they go bust. Rock, meet hard place. [NYT]

In the vulva corner: Gloomy, sky-is-falling, party boy economist Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini. In the bug-eyed corner: Jim Cramer, hollering CNBC stock shill. They're fighting, and we all win!

Stocks were up big today after regulators agreed to change an accounting rule and world leaders at the G-20 summit pledged more than $1 trillion to revive the global economy. So you know what that means: Jim Cramer now says the depression is over! Feel better now?

In your blustery Monday media column: The NYT's folding its City section, Sam Zell's a white devil, Fulcrum and Brandweek are teetering, and Dylan Ratigan's a populist:

• Madonna's kicked boytoy Jesus Luz to the curb and is thrilled to be single again, reports Britain's Daily Mail based on the things she's been telling fans on Twitter. But as the Times reminds us today, lots of celebs only pretend to use Twitter, so you don't have to give up hope entirely just yet. [DM]
• In related news, Madonna is expected to arrive in Malawi this weekend so she can add another baby to her collection of human accessories. [NYDN]
• Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond Jr. only broke up recently, but she may have already moved on: She was spotted at a "rebound dinner" earlier this week. [P6]
• More trouble for CNBC: The network's golden boy, Dylan Ratigan, may be heading out the door after clashing with management. [P6]
• Ivana Trump may have reunited with her ex, Rossano Rubicondi. [P2L]
• Mega real estate broker Kathy Sloane has been hit with $248K tax lien. [P6]

• A new poll finds that one-third of Americans under 40 think The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are replacing "traditional" news outlets. [HP]
• Nickelodeon is asking kids to unplug their TVs and gadgets for a minute on Earth Day to signal "a commitment to helping the environment." Just a minute, though! Then they can go back to filling their heads with mindless junk. [AP]
• CNBC's Larry Kudlow will not be running for the Senate. Crushing! [NYT]
• Ratings for President Obama's telecast last night "showed some audience slippage compared with his two most recent live events." [THR]
• The Chicago Tribune and LA Times are combining their foreign reporters into one unit. Meanwhile, the AJC is cutting 30% of its staff. [E&P, AP]
• How is Twitter going to make money? Good question! [WSJ]
• William Morris is likely to seal a deal with Endeavor this week. [TDB]
• Verizon says it plans to launch its own local TV channel in NYC this summer. It will be just like NY1, minus the incomparable Pat Kiernan, of course. [WSJ]

• Hachette is looking to sell a big bunch of magazines, including Road & Track, Car & Driver, American Photo, Boating, Cycle World, Sound & Vision, and Flying. Package deals available; financing not so much. [AdAge, MW]
• Dick Parsons will step down from the Time Warner board in May. [Crains]
• Time Warner is buying a stake in Ron Lauder's European TV company. [PC]
• Discovery chief David Zaslav is "cable's fastest rising star," according to Forbes. Also: You're welcome to call him "Zazz" if you'd like. [Forbes]
• More on the media tour that Eliot Spitzer has been on recently. [NYO]
• It seems the Obama administration is looking at ways to avoid the "filter of the mainstream media." That sounds familiar, doesn't it? [Politico]
• Further proof that CNBC sucks, assuming you need some. [MediaMatters]
• Barry Meyer and Alan Horn will spend two more years at Warner Bros. [THR]
• George Lopez has a new talk show on TBS. Contain your excitement. [NYT]

CNBC's Mark Haines used to anchor Squawk Box. Now that the money's gone, he wanders around the floor of the New York Stock Exchange talking to himself. Or maybe drinking. Here's a compilation:

Maxim is covering the financial crisis the only way they know how: The new issue of the mag features a piece on the hottest business reporters on CNBC and Fox Business. ("Foxy financial reporters are fixing the recession in our laps," the story starts.) It's no surprise that they're taking that approach, of course, but to assign Maria Bartiromo a hotness level on par with Lou Dobbs? Ouch! Clearly the makeup department at CNBC has been pretty busy today touching up Maria's tear-stained cheeks. The charticle is below.

• Former president George W. Bush has signed a deal with Crown to publish a memoir. Rumor has it he landed a $7 million advance for the book. [AP, NYP]
• For his part, Barack Obama has two books in the works with Crown. He plans to release an abridged, youth-oriented version of Dreams From My Father as well as write a nonfiction book once he leaves office. [CBS News]
• CNBC's keeping it classy. Larry Kudlow set a dollar bill on fire today. [CJR]
• Jim Cramer is still rattling on about Jon Stewart. [Gawker]
• NBC is planning to launch a "singing competition series" that sounds a lot like—yes, you guessed it—Fox's American Idol. [THR]
• CBS is keeping Two and a Half Men on the air through 2012. [NYT]
• The finalists for the Man Booker International Prize include E. L. Doctorow, V. S. Naipaul, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa and Alice Munro. [NYT]
• The noms for the National Magazine Awards are out. [AdAge]
• The cable channel Starz would like to remind you that it exists. [NYT]
• How screwed is the newspaper biz? Here's a pic that sums it up nicely. [BI]