Scott Donaton announced a few weeks ago that he's leaving Ad Age, where he was finally named publisher back in February, for the publisher slot at Entertainment Weekly. In an email sent to pals last week (one that reads very much like a cover letter to a job application!), he enthuses about "how much passion" he carried for the "brand" of Ad Age and how excited he is to move on to a "great brand," particularly because his new job is located at the intersection of all things he holds dear, including... branding.

Hearst isn't the only magazine company doing the self-congratulation thing these days. Yesterday was Henry Luce Awards day at Time Inc., and Time Inc. honcho John Huey judged the winners in 11 categories along with some other current and former top editors. So who's in favor with the top brass?

In case you were still wondering whether, despite earlier denials, George Clooney was responsible for leaking that unflattering footage of David O. Russell berating Lily Tomlin to the internets, George would like to make one thing very clear: he doesn't even know how to work the damn thing! "The last thing in the world I would have done is stick it on the Internet. I don't even know how to get onto YouTube," he told Entertainment Weekly. For someone so unfamiliar with the information wide superhighway, Clooney does have some strong opinions about it, which isn't surprising: as longtime Gawker readers will recall, he was an earlier, cuter hater of the Stalker Map. "I just think the Internet is a free-for-all now. Ultimately a lot of crap comes out ... Until someone figures out how to tame the wild wild west then I don't really know you can put the genie back in the bottle."

Details are starting to trickle in concerning the carnage at Time, Inc. Here are a couple, there will be plenty more to come.

In one of the sadder examples of sycophantic censorship, Adrants notes that Entertainment Weekly has bravely refused to run ads for coatier Cloudveil Mountain Works — meant to run during Sundance — that made almost undetectable fun of breast implants and scientology. These are not edgy, border-pushing ads, but apparently EW has no interest in even slightly offending the large-bosomed theta-fighting demographic. The injurious ads are after the jump; click to enlarge for the full horror.

In a four-hour interview with Entertainment Weekly (and honestly, if that's not a sign of career demise in and of itself, we don't know what is), Mel Gibson responds to an interviewer's oblique reference to Michael "Kramer" Richards' recent bout of racist Tourette's at the Laugh Factory with a declaration of sympathy. Apparently, he sort of understands what the dude is going through.

Though we don't much follow the inner machinations of Entertainment Weekly, this might be worth noting: Mark Harris, the only remaining EW staffer who's been on board since founder Jeff Jarvis delivered it from his womb, is leaving the magazine in order to work on a book. There's no official departure date, but the underlings, many of whom actually care about the publication (such earnestness is unheard of nowadays, don't you think?) are already said to be sniffly about his resignation. Currently Harris serves as editor-at-large, but he's also functioned as the staff's spiritual leader, guiding them through the murky waters of Jay-Z and Eva Longoria covers and reminding them, when needed, of what the magazine is supposed to be all about. (Granted, this should be the job of the EIC, but Harris has some sort of Yoda-like hold over the staff.) We can't really tell you what this means, if anything, for the future of the mag — but without Harris' input, assigning a letter grade to the next Seann William Scott movie will be sheer hell.

An email sent to the EW staff earlier this week:

From a fullpage ad for Junior, Macaulay Culkin's new autobiographical novel, in Friday's Times:

For years now, Entertainment Weekly has been throwing New York's big fancy Oscar-night party for big fancy Oscar-night people. It's at Elaine's, of course, and it attracts old-Hollywood types who aren't old-Hollywood enough actually be in Hollywood. (Last year, at its 11th annual shindig, the mag boasted of attendees Joan Collins, Liza Minnelli, and Tony Danza.)
But now the newly upstart New York magazine, as part of what seems to be editor Adam Moss's plan to colonize as much of the celebrimedia world as possible, is throwing a rival party.

We just received in our inbox Time Inc. chief John Huey's announcement of three high-level promotions at Entertainment Weekly. The news — Jay Woodruff to managing editor of EW.com, Henry Goldblatt to executive editor responsible for front-of-book, and Mark Harris to executive editor responsible for film coverage — was reported in the Post this morning, so we were finding the memo rather uninteresting. Until we noticed a certain snippet of each man's bio caught our eye:

• Wireless-entertainment provider Kargo Global sues Cargo magazine for copyright infringement. Also, one imagines, for poor newsstand. [Mediaweek]
• Freelancers often go without health insurance. Who knew? [MetroNY]
• Are Americans getting growing tired of celeb news? God we hope not. [Economist]
• Time Inc. EIC John Huey — who ousted Jim Seymore to install Rick Tetzeli as Entertainment Weekly's editor a few years ago, is now jumping back in to shuffle Tetzeli's top editorial ranks after a crappy 2005. [NYP (second item)]

• Megalomaniacal Jann Wenner is now picking on Us editor Janice Min, which doesn't seem like a smart thing to do. [WWD]
• Now The Washington Post has a staff blogger, too. [Washingtonian]
• Jon Friedman visits an EW focus group and finds that subscribers really, really love the magazine. Freakishly so, to be honest. [MW]
• Daily News readers overwhelming think Bob Schieffer should stay on permanently as the CBS Evening News anchor, according to Richard Huff's "highly unscientific" poll. [NYDN]
• If you look really closely, you can find Warren Buffett's hand in Time's Person of the Year issue. No, it's not holding cash. [NYP]

We can't wait to see next week's issue, containing the highly-anticipated essay on Kung-Fu Hustle as a post-post-modern homage to Six Feet Under, plus exciting new changes to the masthead.

If it's Thursday, it must be the launch of another two more celebrity magazines. Let's see, today we've got TV Guide's Inside TV ($1.99) and American Media's Celebrity Living ($1.89! Cheap!). Though both new mags claim to be "warm and fuzzy," reports of intimidating ground tactics counter that claim. A Gawker correspondent reports from the streets of Manhattan:

So who the hell do these Entertainment Weekly dictators think they are? Democracy extends to celebrity babies, you know.

According to the profile of The Aviator star, Leonardo DiCaprio, (and his director, Martin Scorsese) in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, the actor had an rather unpleasant encounter with celebrity scourge (and Bush family member) Billy Bush at the premiere of his film:

Clearly, we need to spend more time looking at photos of beautiful women in their pantyhose, since, as yet another kind reader tells us, the photographers of both Lohan and McPherson were drawing from this image of Brigitte Bardot.

This had been bugging us since we saw Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Entertainment Weekly two weeks ago and we were sure we'd seen that pose before. We thought maybe it was a vintage Ann-Margret shot or an old cover of Esquire, but we couldn't track it down.

This week's Entertainment Weekly features a promising exposé on how plastic surgery is destroying Hollywood.