We try not to get too self-referential here at Gawker, mainly because it's boring, but also because it fucks up the carefully-crafted media strategy which we sit through countless monthly seminars learning to apply. On the other hand, when an article like Jack Shafer's most recent Slate piece appears, it seems silly not to address it. You can read it on your own if you like and adjudge its merits as you see fit. We just want to point out that any article that uses the phrase, "Charming and approachable, he puts people at ease and makes himself a sympathetic source," in reference to Nick Denton is clearly devoid of research, accuracy, or a basic grasp of reality. Get off the pipe, Jack; it's not doing you any good.

• Apparently Joe Lieberman has some sort of bet going to determine how stupid voters in Connecticut really are. [YouTube]
• When an outfit like The Nation calls something "the stupidest press release ever" you need to sit up and take note: It's got to be egregiously dumb to stand out amongst all the touts for new bongs and "progressive netroots" conferences. [The Nation]
• American Apparel flack responds to 2005 resignation letter; apparently, Dov Charney is so saintly that if you threw him out of a plane, he'd float up. [Consumerist]
• Philadelphia follows lead of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, bans smoking. Racist cheesesteaks still available. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• Britney Spears has no plans to birth newest Federline in Namibia, decides it's just as easy to sob yourself to sleep here in the U.S.A. [People]
• The Daily News doesn't need a touching quote to make us cry - they can just keep running that unsightly picture of Lloyd Grove each day. [Observer]
• Jack Shafer's not gonna be happy until every single American child is on the drugs. Also, he ran with a tough crowd in high school [Slate]
• Ann Coulter calls for assassination of Pennsylvania congressman; weary nation yawns, wonders who said it first. [ThinkProgress]
• A heartwarming story about respect. [OINY]
• OMG, this is SO. FUCKING. CUTE. [Corporate Casual]

• Times covers TMZ; remains too dainty to use the phrase "firecrotch." [NYT]
• Slate's Jack Shafer has a big old man crush on business journo Joe Nocera; in fact, he loves him more than meth. [Slate]
• Saveur food editor's bag of honey shuts down entire airport; thousands unable to flee the hell that is Tallahassee. [AP]
• Freelance Internet "reporters" pretty much just make shit up. Surprised? Yeah, us either. [Straight Up]
• Advertising agencies are white white white. You mean black folks don't actually think of fast food burgers as hors d'oeuvres? [NYT]

• Networks sue FCC to make it stand up to Parents Television Council right-wing nutjobs. One can dream. [WSJ]
• Joanne Lipman wants to steal James Stewart from The New Yorker for her new Conde biz mag — which nearly has a name. [NYP]
• More books were sold in 2005 than 2004. A sales uptick for a print medium? How unusual. [NYT]
• Former Conde editorial director James Truman has a prototype for his new Culture & Travel, which is not — not at all, he says — the art mag Si wouldn't let him do. [NYP]
• Mike Wallace once tried to kill himself. [NYDN]
• Hachette to launch Shock mag next week. It's "Life magazine for the new millennium," says founder Mike Hammer, formerly of Maxim and Stuff. We suppose this means its gross pictures — such as one of a rotting human head in the first issue — are shot by Margaret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. [WSJ]
• In his forthcoming bio, Ed Kosner is not very nice to Mort Zuckerman. We're just shocked. [WWD]
• Jack Shafer, de facto Times ombudsman, doesn't care for Howell Raines' new memoir. [Slate]
• NYTer Sharon LaFraniere wins $25K Michael Kelly Award. [Kelly Award]

• Jacob Bernstein reports that ineffectual Times public editor Barney Calame is considered either: "[L]ike Kenneth Starr," unable "to step back and ask what any of it means"; unable to see the forest for the trees; like a "mosquito," always biting but never wounding; an "umpire," merely calling balls and strikes; or "a judge, not a prosecutor." None of these are compliments. [WWD]
• CBS Evening News wasn't in third place last week for the first time in years. To reward Bob Schieffer for this significant accomplishment, naturally they're replacing him. [USAT]
• Bids are in to buy Knight Ridder's two Philadelphia papers from McClatchy, and Mort Zuckerman and his Daily News crew are among them. [NYT]
• Alessandra Stanley is no more accurate when covering politics than when covering television. [Wonkette]
• AMI loses a top exec, and faces circ trouble across its titles. Fun! [NYP]
• Jack Shafer is tired of magazines' anniversary issues. [Slate]
• To be clear: Endeavor agent Ari Emmanuel is not backing Radar. [WWD (last item)]

• The New Republic has its first "bloodless transition" of editors in many years, as nebbishy-novelist-brother Franklin Foer takes over for incumbent Peter Beinart, on whose watch the magazine lost 40 percent of its circ. [NYT/NYO]
• Sale of Spin closes today for "well under $5 million." In 1997, it was sold for $42 million. [Ad Age]
• Jack Shafer is bored with Barney Calame now, too. [Slate]
• NBC's Winter Olympics coverage had worst ratings in nearly 20 years. [USAT]
• Online ads are getting more expensive. Which is a trend we can only endorse. [NYP]

• Dow Jones reorg combines print and online editions of WSJ. [AP via Yahoo]
• New Meredith editorial director Mike Lafavore fires Fitness EIC Emily Listfield and then gives himself the job, at least for now. How very Wennerian. [NYP]
• Carl Icahn's Time Warner breakup plan had a 37-page chapter on why Time Inc. doesn't fit with the rest of the company. How does John Huey react to that? "I didn't find it a very compelling chapter." Of course not. [NYO]
• Jack Shafer prefers his newscasters brunette. [Slate]
• Maxim redesign to remove "a layer of goofiness"; Graydon promises his next car will be a hybrid. [WWD]
• Breaking: Newspapers sometimes create sections as vehicles to attract advertising. [NYO]
• LAT NYC bureau chief to take on book-publishing beat, too. Because there's just not enough going on in the city itself to keep a reporter busy. [LA Observed]
• Eleven mags missed their rate base in the last half of 2005 — and that doesn't even court the half-dozen AMI titles set to miss in the next go-round. [BW]

Slate's Jack Shafer has so much sympathy for New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller that he's returning to the well once again to shed more tears into a bucket and defend his honor. If you haven't been paying attention, this is the story of how the Times sat on a Carvel whale-sized scoop that the Bush Administration was tapping phone calls without a court order.

We're never really the sorts to say told you so, but we thought we'd point something out. Yesterday afternoon we suggested that Google's media coverage might soon jump the shark, turn from universally adulatory to something more nuanced and even occasionally negative. Our point wasn't that Google itself would soon start failing as a business, but simply that a combination of factors would cause it to become less of a media darling. Commenters were, for the most part, dismissive.

Slate lone gunman Jack Shafer has the top story on the site today, a slapdown of journalists' obsession with all things Apple. He persuasively makes the case that writers hype Apple's every new product launch (like this week's unveiling of the Video iPod) with the unquestioning enthusiasm of a not-so-bright golden retriever without ever acknowledging the mediocrity of many of said new products (like the Video iPod).

• Gannett's profits have "slumped." To blame: newsprint, lack of political ads, oppressively high reading level of USA Today. [Yahoo]
• Newspaper readership is down! Again! And average reader age is up! Again! [Strib]
• Is Yahoo Public Enemy No. 1 For Big Media? [MediaChannel]
• Related: Will Google Kill News Media? [PC World]
• Jack Shafer on how no possible good can come of this Plame business. [Slate]
• That Freilich — what a card! [Romenesko Letters]

• Everybody who's anybody — and many who are nobody — turned out for a tribute to Peter Jennings at Carnegie Hall yesterday. [WP]
• The New Yorker/NYPD's Ed Conlon signs for first novel, gets $550K advance. Also, AMI shrinks Enquirer to save money. [NYP]
• Katrina shows Big Media are snobs, too. [VV]
• OK! America could pay up $2 million for pix of Britney's baby — unless the dreaded paparazzi get there first. [Radar]
• The Times further stokes Jack Shafer's ire — and this time rips his flesh, too — this time with a bogus trend story. [Slate]
• Elizabeth Spiers, who is friends with Dana Vachon, says the "continued prospects" of Men's Vogue "are positive." Si Newhouse exhales in relief. [MB]

• Are things as bad, business-wise, at Dow Jones and the Journal as you've heard they are? Yes. Yes they are. [NY Mag]
• Inc. mag looks at how it got sold. [Inc.]
• What will the Times of the future look like? Tabloidical, quite likely. [Ad Age]
• Once again, soft news beats hard news: Celeb mags see good newsstand numbers, and the newsweeklies don't. [Mediaweek]
• Jack Shafer hates TV news. [Slate]
• Simon Dumenco calls AMI chief David Pecker stupid. [Ad Age]
• Poppy Bush criticizes the media for picking on his son. [E&P]
• Coming to a Sirius receiver near you: Cosmo on the radio. [WWD]

When we watched the news Monday morning and saw footage of New Orleans evacuated to the Superdome, we thought to ourselves: Interesting how almost everyone is black. We knew the socioeconomic reasons for what we were seeing, but we waited for the journalists on the scene to address what, to us, was an obvious issue. Of course, no one really wants to discuss some of America's more serious, deep-rooted problems, so Slate's Jack Shafer speaks up:

• God bless Jack Shafer, who writes what most journalists know but don't say: That readers are two-faced nincompoops. [Slate]
• BusinessWeek gets hammered by new circ rules; other pubs likely to follow. [NYP]
• Natalee Holloway's Aruba disappearance is, while bad for Natalee, very, very good for Greta Van Susteren. [AP]
• Explaining the baby-mag boom. [Mediaweek]
• Esquire announces five-year-plus series on building the Freedom Tower. [NYT]
• More proof of Simon Dumenco's very strange fantasy life: An imagined Thanksgiving at the Murdochs'. [Ad Age]
• Mediabistro's Elizabeth Spiers doesn't like women's magazines. Also, she is friends with people who are friends with Christopher Hitchens. [mb]
• On the recently wrapped MTV reality show Miss Seventeen, 17 girls compete to win an internship from Atoosa. [WWD, second item]

One of the many things we love about Slate's Jack Shafer is, despite his hyper-intelligent writing style and non-ruffled coat demeanor, that he's not afraid to hop in the scrum and rough it up a little. He throws some more fluid on the Peter Landesman fire today, responding to Landesman's response to Shafer's response to Landesman's response to ... oh, it's all kind of confusing.

Well, Jack Shafer couldn't leave well enough alone, could he? In January 2004, Peter Landesman published an NYT Mag piece about the sex traffic industry. Within days, Shafer, spurred on by resident blog dude Daniel Radosh, took the piece apart, and continued to, until ultimately NYT watchdog Daniel Okrent (inventor of fantasy baseball!) and NYT Sunday mag editor Gerald Marzorati dug their feet in for a fight. The catfight went on for a while, with accusations of plagarism, lawsuits and the occasional wearing of Capri pants. Eventually, as these things tend to do, it died out, because, you know, it's nice outside. Sometimes it's good to go out there. (The whole thing is detailed thoroughly here, if you dare.)

It's fun for everyone when talented, angry writers fight!

· Men's shopping mag Cargo must be doing great; you can even get a 4-year subscription on eBay for .98 cents. [eBay]
· Regarding Jack Shafer's anonymous source on James Surowiecki's outside speaking engagements: yes, we know Surowiecki's been dating Slate's Meghan O'Rourke. We can connect dots, too.
· We think it's first and maybe the best Year in Review. [Fimoculous]
· Since Leslee Dart was sacked from Pat Kingsley's PR mecca, celebrity clients are running out the firm's bejeweled doors in droves. [Page Six]
· MTV VJ-turned-blogger Adam Curry is back with Podcast, a subscription service in which listeners receive updates of Adam Curry's playlists. [Newsweek]
· Carlos D may have given you herpes, but at least Paris Hilton didn't give you genital warts (spin-offs rule, right?). [Paris Hilton...]

Slate's journalism top cop Jack Shafer spends part of his 'Press Box' column this week beating himself up for indulging an anonymous source in his examination of New Yorker writers Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki's outside speaking engagements.