• Vibe is rising from the dead. A group of investors led by former cable exec Leo Hindery and its luxury magazine publisher Uptown Media have acquired the magazine. They plan to resurrect the website in a few weeks. [WSJ]
• Laura Ling is shopping a book proposal with her sister, Lisa Ling. [WSJ]
• Twitter was the victim of another denial-of-service attack yesterday. [NYT]
• Facebook is testing out something called "Facebook Lite," which may or may not be a Twitter competitor, depending whom you ask. [ABC News, Guardian]
• CBS had planned to change up this year's Emmy Awards. But then everyone complained, so now it plans to go back to the way it was. [THR]
• A launch party for a new magazine? Could it be? Really? [AdAge]

In your sweltering Monday media column: Don Imus may be back in the big(ish) time, one reporter gets arrested in pursuit of Deion Sanders, another reporter narrowly escapes beheading by the Taliban, and you kill photojournalism.

• Two years after he was booted from MSNBC and CBS Radio for making racist comments, Fox Business is now in talks to team up with Don Imus. [LAT]
• Is Hachette selling Elle? The company seems to be hedging. [AdAge]
• Magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to slap their ads just about any place they want these days. They're also planning to keep printing those annoying subscription cards until the end of time. [NYT, AdAge]
• ABC is planning a big programming push for the fall with seven new series set to debut, which is roughly double what NBC and CBS have planned. [USAT]
• CNBC's ratings are down big, in case you haven't heard. [Guardian]
• G.I. Joe was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $56 million. Julie and Julia came in second place with $20.1 million. [Variety]

• News of Walter Cronkite's death on Friday evening didn't generate a Michael Jackson-like reaction, but the hour-long CBS News special honoring him on Sunday proved a ratings winner. In related news, the network will continue airing Cronkite's voice-over introducing the CBS Evening News. [NYT, NYT]
• Is Janice Min leaving Us Weekly? That's the rumor, at least. [P6]
• Fashion magazines are looking a little thin this fall, not surprisingly. [MW]
• Padma Lakshmi is in talks with NBC to star in a sitcom. [Variety]
• More changes are afoot at Interview: Evan Schindler is the troubled mag's new president. And Stephen Mooallem has been named editor-in-chief. [NYT]
• As expected, the new Harry Potter movie mopped up at the box office this weekend with $79.5 million in ticket sales. The big loser? Brüno, which fell to fourth place as sales plummeted 73 percent. [EW, Variety]

When Fox Business News anchors "throw" a story to a "correspondent," that correspondent may know something, or may just sit there looking flummoxed and terrified. This may happen several times in a row! They do not know anything, these people.

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.

The New York Times reports video of Bernie and Ruth Madoff "lounging on their yacht, visiting a winery and relaxing in an upscale hotel in San Tropez [sic] in southern France" will air on Fox Business News tonight at 7pm. In totally unremarkable news, it also seems reporters at the Times don't spend much time visiting luxe French resort towns. [NYT/Dealbook]

• Scribner won the non-race to publish Laura Bush's memoir. [AP]
• The Times is now selling ads on the front page of the paper. [NYT]
• Movie ticket sales totaled $9.6 bil. in 2008, down 1 percent from '07. [NYT]
• Is HuffPo worth $200 million? Not so much, says Simon Dumenco. [AdAge]
• Publishing companies are cutting perks, in case you haven't heard. [NYT]
• Howard Kurtz profiles Liz Claman, who left CNBC for Fox. [WaPo]
• Michael Phelps will now be pitching Mazdas in China. [Bloomberg]
• Marley & Me was No. 1 at the box office for a second week. [THR]

Fox Business caught up with Bernie Madoff's sketchy accountant, David Friehling, after he made an appearance today at the Clarkstown, NY police department. Friehling refused to answer a Fox Business reporter's questions, but his son did take a moment to dump water on the network's van. Now that's a classy way to handle the situation, isn't it? [Fox Business]

• Tough times for Sumner Redstone: His debt issues haven't been resolved, he's feuding with his daughter, and he's a lot poorer, too. Once worth $8 billion, "today it is questionable as to whether he is worth even $1 billion." [NYT]
• It's about five years too late, but the music industry has finally decided to stop wasting its time suing people who download music illegally. [WSJ]
• A few predictions of what's in store for the movie biz in 2009. [THR]
• Fox Business is mocking CNBC again; this time it's via a TV ad. [HP]
• Further evidence that Malcolm Gladwell has reached his tipping point. [BG]
• Mark Felt, the man better known as Deep Throat, is dead at 95. [WaPo]

Fox News is famous for its pathologically agressive flackery—hiring the meanest flacks in the business, and smearing reporters, detractors, and competitors. But rival CNBC is learning to be just as bitchy as Fox itself!

So nice to see CNBC and Fox Business setting aside their differences and making a special effort to get along this holiday season! Fox Business sent out an amusing Christmas card yesterday depicting CNBC's (ridiculous, unreliable) Jim Cramer as the Grinch and mocking him for recommending Bear Stearns and Wachovia just before both companies tanked. (Click here for a larger pic of the card.) Naturally, CNBC was quick to fire back, telling the Post today that "if Fox Business News sends a card to every viewer, advertiser and individual who has ever seen or even heard of FBN it would be the smallest holiday card print run in history." You wouldn't expect that quote to go unanswered, would you? Replies a Fox insider: "Perhaps the humorless, out of touch folks at CNBC should pull their heads out of Englewood Cliffs and embrace the reality of a viable competitor." Looks like it's your turn, CNBC! In the meantime, we'll take some comfort in knowing that while the financial markets are thoroughly depressing these days, the feuds between financial news networks are as entertaining as ever!

Fox Business Network's Christmas card is here! And their nemesis, CNBC screamer Jim Cramer, appears as the Grinch. They hate him because he works at a network people actually watch. Click for big pic:

Leave it to the Fox Business Channel to figure out a way to tie the Plaxico Burress brouhaha to the economy at large, but the network managed to pull off just such a feat yesterday when a business reporter turned up to list off 5 people who shot themselves in the foot over the past year. Coming in at No. 5 on the list: Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman, who made the list for the lavish 60th birthday party he held last year, not surprisingly. "This guy is crazy!" the reporter explains to anchor David Asman when he asks why Schwarzman made the list.

♦ Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson says the paper's newsstand sales have risen 20 percent in the last few weeks. [Portfolio]
♦ Fox Business is keeping up its attack on CNBC's Jim Cramer. [NYP]
♦ Comedian D.L. Hughley has signed on to host a show on CNN. [Variety]
♦ Colin Callender, the president of HBO Films, is leaving by the end of the year to start his own entertainment production company. [NYT]
♦ The Atlantic has launched a redesign and a new ad campaign. [AdFreak]
♦ Indian author Aravind Adiga won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for The White Tiger. [Time]
♦ The National Book Award nominees for fiction and non-fiction are in. [NYO, NYO]

You may have a lot more to worry about than watching your stock portfolio go up in smoke or losing your job. Like getting shot to death in your cubicle by an angry co-worker. According to Fox Business, yet another byproduct of the troubled economy is that "desk rage" is on the rise. That slightly unbalanced colleague who kicks the copy machine when it malfunctions? Now he's liable to crack entirely and bring a rifle to work! Unfortunately, the mild-mannered psychologist that Fox Business interviews doesn't have much useful advice on how to deal with an enraged colleague. He suggests using "reflective listening" to defuse the situation, which sounds a lot less effective to us than, say, turning in the other direction and running for the door.

♦ Last night's face-off between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden generated the highest ratings for a debate in 16 years. [THR]
♦ SNL has booked Queen Latifah to play debate moderator Gwen Ifill tomorrow night. [People]
♦ What does Palin have to say about Katie Couric? Nothing good. [HuffPo]
♦ CNN incorrectly reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack. [Reuters, SAI]
♦ Fox Business hit a ratings high on Monday—a scant 81,000 viewers. [NYT]
♦ Google may hire an ad agency for the first time. It's had discussions with Wieden + Kennedy and Ari Merkin's Taxi New York. [WSJ]
♦ Jesse L. Martin is in discussions to star in a new NBC drama called The Philanthropist. [THR]
♦ The Economist is stamping its brand on pizza boxes. [NYT]

An ad for Fox Business that appeared in today's New York Times and Wall Street Journal. [FBNY, THR]

• Remember back when News Corp.'s Roger Ailes promised that Fox Business would crush CNBC? It turns out the upstart network is attracting 8,000 viewers during daytime hours, compared to CNBC's average of 250,000 or more. [NYO]