Garrison Keillor—the man who has figured out how to simultaneously be a down-how aw shucks Minnesota icon and King of That One Variety of Unbearable Liberal Elite—says he's going to retire in 2013. Because he needs to find his replacement. Ohhhhhh, just hurry it up! Jesus. Anyone who can talk slowly and breathe heavily and tell stories that are set in a small-town diner would work.

You can't take Garrison Keillor down. He'll only come back stronger and folksier, and will beat the urban out of you until you're pissing hay. Keillor's back on the show only three weeks after suffering a stroke, bitches. [CBS News]

In your clinically insane Thursday media column: We reveal Julia Allison's freelance rate, Mark Whicker says more unfortunate things, laid-off journalists hustle, and Garrison Keillor suffers a stroke. Possibly after hearing Julia Allison's freelance rate.

Demi Moore won't respond to the British Prime Minister's wife. Victoria Beckham won't respond to questions about her tits. And Hugh Hefner doesn't respond well to his wife's infidelity. Oh, yes, it's your Thursday morning Gossip Roundup!

• A long list of media luminaries and politicians, including President Obama and former president Clinton, turned out for this afternoon for a memorial service at Avery Fisher Hall in honor of Walter Cronkite. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Stephen Farrell, a New York Times reporter taken hostage by militants in Afghanistan, was freed early this morning following a raid by British commandos; his Afghan interpreter, however, was killed. [NYT, E&P]
• The McKinsey consultants who have been reviewing operations at Condé Nast are finishing up their work and will be submitting their findings shortly. So what changes are in store for the magazine conglomerate? No one knows for sure, but further budget cuts and a closure or two are entirely likely. [NYO]
• McGraw-Hill, the parent company of BusinessWeek, reports that 93 different buyers have expressed an interest in acquiring the struggling magazine. [BN]

Funnyish radio celeb Garrison Keillor, of Lake Woebegone fame, dropped a restraining order against his stalker after she said she wouldn't bother him again. "I guess he realized it was all just a big misunderstanding," the stalkette told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Right! The 43-year-old woman, Andrea Campbell, had been visiting his neighbor and sending "bizarre" gifts of a "petrified alligator's foot, dead beetles and poems," the Baker City Herald reports. Hey, what's one person's "stalkerish" is another person's "romantic."

Last night at Capitale, The Moth celebrated ten years of storytelling. Media polymath Kurt Andersen, Jewy comedian Andy Borowitz, Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, potter Jonathan Adler and Lili Taylor all sat at one table in the front. Harper's figurehead Lewis Lapham didn't show. The main event: The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik would engage in heated storytelling duel with co-worker Malcolm Gladwell. Real estate mini-mogul Adam Gordon sat at the same table as Garrison Keillor, who was there to receive the first-ever Moth Award Honoring the Art of the Raconteur. Keillor looks like Dwight Schrute from "The Office" and is much funnier in person than on his overly precious show. Also he spat chevre on my hands and I haven't washed them since. Nikola Tamindzic was there, drawn like a shutterbug to an event.

"Garrison Keillor has gotten a restraining order against a Georgia woman he claims has made telephone calls and sent him explicit e-mails and disturbing gifts, including a petrified alligator foot and dead beetles." [AP]

• "The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men — sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control." [Salon]