Amazon.com bought Zappos, the beloved online retailer of shoes, for $920 million, mostly in stock. Amazon's announcement was as direct as its business model; while reporters were calling the company in vain, CEO Jeff Bezos was dishing via YouTube.

Earlier this week, we heard the Onion was in talks to sell to a large media company; now we're told there's some sort of announcement or internal meeting scheduled Monday in relation to the rumored buyout.

The Onion this month told staff that resisting advertiser pressure is a "losing game." But it seems the humor publication isn't just keen to sell its soul to sponsors; we hear The Onion is talking about selling everything.

Who says foreign investors are done handing money to risky Americans? Russia's Digital Sky Technologies just started cashing out employee shares in Facebook, a $100 million investment. The move was expected; the implications will take longer to settle in.

After pawning off his highbrow cultural shopping newsletter on the New York Observer, what does Barry Diller buy? Sites for people with fetishes for the "Big and Beautiful," Black Baby Boomers and Italians. Diller, after all, knows from picky. (Pic)

Nikke Finke has sold her web site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, to Jay Penske's Mail.com, and will be hiring a reporter in New York to expand the site's coverage. So get those résumés ready, kids.

How is shopping newsletter Very Short List doing on the second day under the New York Observer's ownership? Poorly enough to motivate mogul wannabe Jared Kushner to hire some dedicated staff, perhaps.

The first edition of email newsletter Very Short List is out for the first time under the control of New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner. What advertiser do you think he lined up?

While everyone is busy fretting and fussing over Conan O'Brien's freshman Tonight Show run, his steady-as-she-goes CBS competitor, David Letterman, has been quietly inking a deal to stay on the air through 2012. With, sigh, a bit of a pay-cut.

The surrender of AOL was a humiliating enough denouement for Time Warner, the old-line media conglomerate once imagined invincible. But there's talk it could get worse. What if Time Warner ceased to exist as an independent concern?

The 21st century dawned with news that two media megaliths, AOL and Time Warner, were to merge. Critics howled that the vast tentacles of a combined AOL-TW would subsume us all. Today, Time Warner confirmed it's spinning off AOL, ending a business saga that defined whatever you're calling the 2000s.

Facebook accepted a rumored funding round, taking $200 million from a Russian investment group. The deal values the company at $10 billion, a third less than what the company was supposedly worth a year and a half ago. But it could have been far worse.

Hello friend, my name is Ade Ogunjobi. I received your contact information in good faith from our mutual friend, Mr. Bernie Madoff, and my corporation, Toks Inc, is prepared to offer the sum of $100 trillion ($100,000,000,000,000) for Mr. Madoff's business. Please respond quickly.

Downside: You're a laid-off autoworker. Upside: Free trip to see Eminem in LA. Downside wins.

San Francisco Chronicle journalists are trying to talk investors into buying the foundering daily newspaper and restructuring it as a nonprofit, writes the SF Appeal. Who are the ink-stained wretches courting?

Financial scammer of epic proportions Bernie Madoff may be getting ready to plead guilty to his crimes. It looks like he's cutting a deal.

No one will confirm it, and considering the secrecy around the project, Universal may never disclose the rumored seven-figure price tag accompanying its deal for Jonah Hill's new screenplay Adventurer's Handbook. Still — seven figures?

Leno-less Letterman negotiates for post-2010 latenight domination. [B&C]

Mickey Rourke's paycheck: less than 1/3 of Charlie Sheen's. [/film]

Though AMC recently set an optimistic summer return date for the next season of Mad Men, show mastermind Matthew Weiner (whose contract dispute remains unresolved) has a much gloomier forecast, he tells E!