The World Economic Forum is an elite, invitation-only event in Davos, Switzerland, where the most powerful people in the universe gather to talk about how they're going to carve up the world in the coming year. This year, the invitees included A-list bloggers Arianna Huffington and John Battelle So where's all the Davos coverage? Locked up in the bloggers' feverish brains, since most events at Davos are off the record. Battelle is left stammering: "You'll have to trust me that the insights, conversations, and information I gathered will certainly inform the musings I post here. I just can't be specific to the who, what, and where." Well, that leaves when, why, and how, at least. Could this be a weird kind of reverse-psychology buzz-generating trick by the Davos organizers?

• Nobody watched "I'm From Rolling Stone." [WWD]
  

Earlier today, we looked at the blogging oeuvre of Della Turque-Henneberger, the ten-year-old who got to traipse around with her mom and Arianna Huffington. We expressed some ambivalence as to whether or not young Della's words were really her own, since they seemed a little too sophisticated for one of such few years. As it turns out, we were wrong to make that assumption: Della is the daughter of Newsweek contributing editor/HuffPo contributor Melinda Henneberger and the Washington Post's Bill Turque; writing is in her blood! Either that or, you know, Mom punched things up a little. But let's not be uncharitable.

When I heard that Nancy Pelosi was third in line to be president, I asked my mom, "So if Bush got impeached and Cheney had an accident hunting, she'd be president?''

• Fashion magazine editor in chief documentary fever has risen to such a pitch that there are even cameras following around Marie Claire's Joanna Coles. Where will it end, Life& Style?? [NYT]
  

In times like these, we're really grateful that being a lawyer is so sucky. Why? Because it means that the lawyers who've defected to the blahhgosphere can give us plenty of expert legal analysis. Over at the HuffyPo, ex-lawyer Rachel Sklar and co. provide some much-needed insight into whether or not Judy will triumph in her wrongful termination suit against HarperCollins. Their conclusion? Basically, yeah. Their contention is that HarperCollins couldn't use the OJ book as a reason to fire Regan because it was greenlit by her higher-ups, so they pulled her "anti-Semitism" out of a hat. But her previous slap on the wrist for the mezuzah thing might ruin their case:

• Federal government trying to make Times op-ed page less boring. [NYT]
  

• Arthur Sulzberger may try to take the New York Times private rather than see it fall into the hands of Hank Greenberg or Jack Welch. [BW]
  

Today, screenwriter John Ridley responds to the four pages of hyperventilating comments that his Esquire excerpt provoked by . . . uh, we're still not sure. The title of his new essay is 'Nigger v. Queer: How Gays Got it Right," which seems to imply that he equates the way gay people have "reclaimed" the word queer with how he wishes black people would nullify the stigma associated with "nigger." Wait, is that what he's saying? "There is not one individual on this planet who can make a black into a nigger. We can only do that to ourselves."

The release of the newspaper circulation number has been a revelation, and it's not just the kids over at News Corp who are giving each other fives. James Boyce of the Huffington Post does a little dancing on the grave, picking on his hometown Boston Globe, whose circulation fell 6.7%, and touts the emergence of blogs, sounding much like the G.O.P with its "mandate" about two years ago.

In 1996, when the tech boom was still ramping up, Wired Ventures already proved that content outlets would miss out on the money. The company dropped its IPO plans after investors backed off. Wired, unable to pay its bills, had to sell itself off piecemeal. Lesson learned: Content may be king, but only in the sense that the Queen rules the UK.

The Huffington Post runs a cute parody imagining "What Right-Wingers See When They Read the New York Times." Hover-mouse humor at its finest. We could only wish for these kinds of features in TimesSelect, though; now that would be $50 well spent.

With heavy heart, we must announce the loss of our beloved intern Amanda Dobbins to those poaching fiends at Huffington Post. Amanda did yeoman (yeowoman?) work assembling the To-Do list that daily graced these pages, freeing us up for mojitos and The View. We'll miss her professionalism, humor, and downright spooky reliability, but we understand that transcribing Arianna's thoughts on vacation in the Caribbean requires more time than she would be able to dedicate to our pedestrian pursuits.

So everybody loves Contagious Festival, right? Oh, you know, HuffPo's monthly contest that allows "original work by talented designers, activists, filmmakers and comics" to share their Snakes on a Plane parody with the world? Still not ringing a bell? Eh, either way, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Accusations of favoritism and manipulation have reared their ugly heads. Look:

The problem with tossing off a side note about media incest is that you can never go back enough generations to reveal the original sin. Regarding the $5 million shot in the arm coming to the Huffington Post, we mentioned that one of the investors would be venture capitalist Alan Patricof, who was in on the ground floor at New York magazine several decades back. We've since been reminded that Patricof and NYM's founding editor Clay Felker shared a legendary antipathy — one that caused or at least contributed to Patricof selling out and Felker getting fired — and that their enmity was recounted by media critic Michael Wolff for the magazine's 35th anniversary. Wolff bore no love for Patricof on his own account either, as noted in his 1998 book Burn Rate. A taste, after the jump.

Screw that Web 2.0 crap, it's time for Blog Bubble 19.0. According to the New York Post, the Huffington Post has scored a $5 million investment package from a group led by endearingly named venture capital firm SoftBank. Also in the mix is tech-media VC daddy Alan Patricof, shown at right while chillin' in the Hamptons in 2002 (no idea about that creepy guy behind him, but let's just say the least objectionable other person we cropped out was Inside the Actors' Studio lizard James Lipton). Patricof is on something of a blogspending spree, since his Greycroft Partners also threw money at PaidContent back in June. In addition to our standard IncestWatch note that Patricof was a founder and chairman at New York magazine, it's worth noting that Patricof is himself a HuffPo contributor of relatively recent vintage. Way to monetize the bloggers, Arianna. Now you just need to latch on to some of that sweet Bono money.

"Why don't my Huffington Post blog commenters understand me? I just want to be loved. Loved hard. Hard and rough."

You ever think to yourself, "Jesus Christ, the advent of cheap digital video equipment has resulted in an awful lot of crap that would have never been made previously"? Or, "You know, just because you have the ability to record something doesn't mean you need to." No?

Gawker Media's shake-up is all over TechMeme today, thanks to a well-timed New York Times profile of my boss Nick Denton (pictured here being better than you).

• The GOP apologists at National Review want the White House to revoke the Times's press credentials. [NR]
• The White House, thankfully, doesn't think so highly of the idea. [E&P]
• Knight Ridder is officially no more. [SJMN]
• Dan Rather had to die so that CBS News could live. [NYSun]
• People style spinoff TK? Perhaps. [WWD]
• There are no mags for teenage boys, and, for some reason, the Eat the Pressers are upset about this. [HuffPost]