HarperStudio has pushed a seven-figure stake through the hearts of aspiring wordsmiths everywhere by giving a $1 million, 10-book deal to Twitter-abusing videoblogger Gary Vaynerchuk. Does anyone believe in books anymore?

• Bill O'Reilly is already threatening to totally ruin 2010: He says he's working on a book about Barack Obama which will come out next year. [NYP]
• Twitter fan Gary Vaynerchuk is getting seven figures to write 10 books about Twitter. And some think the publishing world doesn't "get it"! [WSJ]
• Hollywood is cutting back on the big pay packages for A-list stars. [WSJ]
• Ed Schultz is taking over the 6pm slot on MSNBC with a new show. [HP]
• No joke: Delta will soon sell its in-flight magazine on newsstands. [WWD]
• More on the recent round of layoffs at Condé Nast Digital. [PaidContent]
• Ad man Peter Arnell's disastrous rebranding of Tropicana also led to a 20 percent drop in sales in January and February. Nice work. [AdAge]
• Jon Stewart had a few words of advice for Rush Limbaugh last night. And Stephen Colbert went to town on Glenn Beck. [HP, Buzzfeed]
• NBC will air the final episode of ER tonight with a three-hour "event." [NYT]

Why does the tech world get a throwdown in Austin when the banks have had to cancel their bashes? The news out of South By Southwest shows that Web hipsters are every bit as bankrupt.

A mortgage exec (and hardcore Jets fan) named David Findel was the one who paid $400,000 for the rights to the two best seats at the team's new Meadowlands stadium. (The bad news: The team only sold off 620 of the 2,000 licenses in the exclusive "Coaches Section" of the stadium.) The losers: Gary Vaynerchuk, the owner of winelibrary.com, and restaurateur Drew Nieporent. [NYP, Crain's]

Maybe it's just me, but I smell a bromance fermenting between Digg's Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline.Yesterday's winner: "It's gold, Jerry! Gold!" by null. (Photo by Andrew Mager)

Revision3 videoblogger Martin Sargent began the closing keynote at Ad:tech — also a live taping of his talk show Internet Superstar — with a video tour through the conference floor. The best part was when Sargent walked over to a booth. "So you're Smiley Media?" he asked. "That's us." Sargent: "What the fuckk are you so happy about?" The Daily Show's Rob Corddry couldn't have done it better. It was a good moment for Web TV, made especially sweet by the fact that hundreds of ad buyers — Revision3's prospective clients, many of them — were looking on from the audience. Too bad that was the keynote's last watchable moment.

Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuck has no boobs, but he's been on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, he's got a book deal, and went from successful small businessman to having The 250 drink his entrepreneurial Kool-Aid. How did he do it? Free booze. Party like an Internet Rockstar at Medjool with Gary Vee and see how it's done. (Photo by Brian Solis)

Can't get enough of Wine Library TV's hyper host? Preorder Gary Vaynerchuk's 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight and Bring Thunder to Your World today. (Photo by freshtopia.net) [TV Week]

Gary Vaynerchuk, host of WineLibraryTV, thinks the tech world of 2008 has a lot of similarities to the hip-hop world of 1985. I'm not sure if his comparison of Robert Scoble to Russell Simmons is quite right, but he does make an interesting point: "This is the National Anthem in a 18-inning baseball game." As today's tech-savvy tweens and teenagers grow up, tech and new ways to communicate will be embraced more and more by the mainstream. Just as SMS messaging, social networks and video sharing have exploded in recent years, there will be new technologies that we haven't thought up yet. Will Scoble be at the forefront? I doubt it. Will the live, mobile video broadcasts that Scoble is boring us with become much more mainstream? Absolutely — and just like Google figured out search, someone will figure out how to make money from it. Have a look at Vaynerchuk's video after the jump.

Wine Library TV host Gary Vaynerchuk took an even more select subset of The 250 up to De Loach Vineyards in Santa Rosa for a wine tasting. Among the guests were Laughing Squid's Scott Beale, egoblogger Robert Scoble, Facebook evangelist Dave Morin, 4-Hour Workweek author Tim Ferriss and Digg's Kevin Rose. One of the tastings took place on a farm. On this farm there were some sheep. One of these sheep didn't like Kevin Rose very much — and chased him up a hill. Robert Scoble took photos. Scoble showed those photos to MadPod's James Donnelly, who filmed them and put the result on the Internet. Much to Rose's dismay, we are sure, we present that video to you.

Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV has found a way to carry on her idea of celebrating the best in video podcasting. Under PodTech, where Slutsky brought the awards last year, the event was badly mismanaged. Slutsky left Podtech, but the "Vloggies" name remained with PodTech. Former CEO John Furrier "openly" trademarked "Vloggies" shortly after firing the event's organizer. At the Winnies, in a dig to PodTech, which failed to have a sufficient number of Vloggies awards made last year, attendees will bring their own, old trophies to swap "instead of wasting money on 'made in Hong Kong' trophies." Oh, and it gets better.

Continuing the semifinals in our Vlog Hot reader poll, here's the first log cabin full of hearty male specimens. Voting will run through this week and conclude at noon Eastern time on Sunday, March 11. You can vote in all heats once per day by clearing browser cookies from polls.gawker.com. In this heat, enjoy Kevin Nalts, Gary Vaynerchuk, Josh Shipp, and Jonathan London. Vote for your bestie after the jump.

If you can't see the voting mechanism below, we can't help you. We don't know how it works either. You might try turning off firewalls and turning on cookies. Note that you can now vote more than once! And why not? You should be able to vote once per day in any of these polls, showing true devotion to your favorite vlogger by suborning the more casual, ephemeral love showered on her or his opponents. Again, if you have technical problems with that, don't call us. For amusement only, far as you're concerned.

There's light at the end of the tunnel, but not before you render an opinion on another crop of aspiring videoblogging he-men. Well, okay, there's one more round of men after this, but really, that will be it. Promise. Don't hold that against Greg Rose, Gabe Mac, Rick Rey, Chris Ritke, and Gary Vaynerchuk. They have every right to be here, and are, after the jump, where they await your vote.

If you can't see the voting mechanism below, we can't help you. We don't know how it works either. You might try turning off firewalls and turning on cookies. Note that you can now vote more than once! And why not? You should be able to vote once per day in any of these polls, showing true devotion to your favorite vlogger by suborning the more casual, ephemeral love showered on her or his opponents. Again, if you have technical problems with that, don't call us. For amusement only, far as you're concerned.