• ABC anchor, cameraman show improvement after surgery. [ABCNews.com]
• Ted Koppel is a sucky op-edster, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Even Dave Barry thinks newspapers are dead. [SFChron]
• Daily News TV editors doesn't get Jon Stewart's jokes, care much for the guy, or, it seems, care much for Stewart's fans. What was that, Dave, about newspapers being irrelevant? [NYDN]
• Syd Schanberg has misty water-colored memories of covering Donald Trump. [VV]
• Unsurprisingly, Pinch thinks everything at the Trib is just fabulous. When you're a scion, there is no rain on your parade. [AJR]
• Live like Anna: Vogue Living is on its way. [WWD]

• Lindsay Lohan admits to Vanity Fair that she's used drugs and struggled with bulimia. When we blow rails and boot our brunch, we usually go to Graydon Carter for confessional, too.
• Zeta Graff sues Paris Hilton for being a big, fat liar — but, as it turns out, her paid liar/publicist Rob Shuter might be just as bad.
• Peter Braunstein pleads not guilty to charges of sexual assault; guilty on all charges of looking incredibly frightening.
• Left befuddled by the state of the odd-amounted Metrocard, we fall victim to the strange intricacies of the card machine, only to find eventual redemption.
• Jon Stewart attempts to save the Oscars from total irrelevance.
• Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann and his wife, Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliot House, leave the company, but not without a handsome payoff.
• Marc Kramer is hired as CEO of the Daily News. Les who?
• Observer editor Peter Kaplan looks to save the precious pink paper with the power of Bruce Wasserstein.
• West Virginian miners die in tragic explosion; media runs inaccurate, opposite story in tragic miscommunication.
• And in more bad news: the health of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is not looking good .
• But cheer up, because Real Simple will soon suck on a tv near you!

· DGA members, fearing the wrath of Guild deity Steven Spielberg, nominate him for their best director award, causing the Maestro to drop his preemptive plans to throw together a highly personal film about his tragic snubbing by his contemporaries. Others getting the nod include George Clooney for the black-and-white one, Ang Lee for the gay cowboy one, Bennett Miller for the one nobody saw, and, sigh, Paul Haggis for Crash. [Variety]
· And you knew this already, but Jon Stewart will host the Oscars. The over/under on the number of times Stewart attempts to extricate himself from a failed joke by adjusting his tie and speaking in a strangled, schticky voice is 15. [THR, Variety]
· Vincent Young's dynasty-ending last-second Rose Bowl scramble leads ABC to a major Nielsen ass-kicking. [Variety]
· Trade news that actually makes us happy: Fox and Paramount are bringing Comedy Central's Reno 911! to the big screen with Reno 911!: Miami, in which the cops hit the beach for a law enforcement convention during Spring Break. [THR]
· Further proof that people will buy nearly anything if high enough while wandering a Blockbuster: Direct-to-video sequel American Pie Presents: Band Camp wins the week in DVD sales. [THR]

Last night, the Los Angeles Times' Oscar Beat blog (part of its Academy Awards OCD project, The Envelope) broke that Daily Show host Jon Stewart will host this year's Oscars. Um, yay? Were you actually planning on watching? Or at least staying awake and pretending to watch while you work on your knitting? And, if not, does the presence of Stewart actually change your position on the whole matter? Doubtful. If last year's host Chris Rock couldn't raise an eyebrow after the first 10 minutes, we doubt poor Stewart will be able to support your heavy eyelids.

The Envelope's Oscar Beat blog is reporting that Jon Stewart is the Academy's Chosen One, and that an announcement heralding The Daily Show host's appointment as emcee of Hollywood's Most Self-Important Night will likely follow tomorrow. Stewart's selection was reportedly arrived at following a marathon sit-down between high-level Gay and Jewish Mafias officials in a secure basement conference room at David Geffen's Malibu compound; the fabulous faction stubbornly threw its support behind movie star/respected song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman for the gig, but after a personal audition by Jackman featuring a musical Brokeback Mountain parody fell flat, the Velvets finally acquiesced and gave their approval to the safer choice of the universally loved Stewart.

• A few additions to the Big List, including Rodale tonight at Django. (Will Dave Zinczenko permit beer? So many carbs!) Full, updated list is after the jump.

As it turns out, before Daily Show host and fake news darling Jon Stewart was funny, he was a soccer jock. Too gentle for lacrosse and too petite for football, Stewart played kickball at William & Mary from 1981-1983 — until he realized that no Jew should have quadriceps like that.

• The Times's silence on Judy Miller has become absurd. [CJR]
• Even public editor Barney Calame doesn't understand why the silence continues. Which might just put an end to it — after all, this is the man who ultimately got Geraldo his correction. [NYTimes.com]
• But the Times's op-ed columnists, at least, all have excellent reasons why they haven't written about Miller Time. [E&P]
• Beyonce is too black for the cover of Vanity Fair. Of course, so are we. [Radar]
• Men's Health spinoff Best Life ups frequency, rate base. Which is what you get from worshipping at the altar of your readers. [Mediaweek]
• Former Time Warner chief Gerald Levin helps open super-high-end spa in Santa Monica. Next month, he'll merge it with eSpas.com and ruin the company. [LAT]
• Mag bigshots should — of all things — take Jon Stewart seriously. [MarketWatch]

• Did Jon Stewart kill magazines? Would anyone notice? If he didn't, would he consider killing Vogue, please? [Folio]
• Did Rick Kaplan get fired today or what? We stopped paying attention around noon or so. [Jossip]
• Does Rush Limbaugh call Daryn Kagan his "mistress in Georgia?" Yes. Eeeewww. [MMfA]
• Does every journalist in the country just envy Judy? Fuck yeah, they do — she's rich, bitch! [Times-Herald]
• Finally: Katie Couric gets a mammogram — watch free. There would've been a screengrab posted earlier, but the segment destroyed the Gawker Media television. [Today Show]

• Times reporter Judith Miller is finally released from jail, coming home to an awkward office party with cake and ice cream.
• Network morning shows compete for ratings and saved seats in heaven.
• Jon Stewart gives his two cents — and then some — on the squalid state of magazines.
• Conde Nast and Fairchild start to sleep in the same bed, Details finds itself but not its readers, and Vitals is anything but.
• Anti-everything novelist Jonathan Franzen tries to destroy any remaining hope you might have for creative literature.
• Comments get fiery over the sexuality of CNN's Anderson Cooper; we lose sleep over the implication of being a "power bottom."
• Predictably, coked-up supermodel Kate Moss enters rehab.
• And, last but certainly not least, New Yorkers are screwed when it comes to emergency management.

Choire Sicha speculates on what the celebrities in New York are doing right now: "Isaac Mizrahi is scooping Harry's shit off Fifth Avenue, using only a green plastic bag. Adam Yauch is eating day-old half-off vegan corn muffins from the Rastafarian Bakery on Lorimer Street. Jon Stewart is in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in a rent-by-the-hour Pink Pussycat motel with a 19-year-old Cuban-Korean transgender prostitute, and he is having the time of his life. Sandy Weill is shuffling on his marble-floored bathroom to a hot Missy Elliott remix. David Byrne is staring down a Norwegian subway accordian player, stealing music with his mind. Megan Mullally is having a lemon-ginger tea in her sunny-yellow kitchen nook, talking to a girlfriend about their first abortions and how much she didn't like Madonna."
Celebrity [Choire Sicha]

"Daily Show" host/comedian Jon Stewart engages his in-house "media analyst," Stephen Colbert on media coverage of the war in Iraq:
Jon Stewart: What should the media's role be in covering the war?
Stephen Colbert: Very simply, the media's role should be the accurate and objective description of the hellacious ass-whomping we're handing the Iraqis.
Jon Stewart: Hellacious ass-whomping? Now to me, that sounds pretty subjective.
Stephen Colbert: Are you saying it's not an ass-whomping, Jon? I suppose you could call it an ass-kicking or an ass-handing-to. Unless, of course, you love Hitler.
TV's boldest news show [Salon]

· Comedian Chris Rock's reaction to Matt Drudge's report that Rock had been instructed by DreamWorks not to badmouth President Bush while promoting their new film, Head of State: "I never met Matt Drudge, but if I see Matt Drudge, I'm going to take my red-blooded American foot and put it up his un-American ass for trying to disrupt the opening of my movie." [Page Six]
· Producer Scott Rudin goes sour on Paramount execs (including Paramount chief Sherry Lansing) planning an upcoming movie based on the Lemony Snicket children's books: "I found the amount of energy being poured into this circle jerk frustrating and debilitating and completely unrewarding and painful...These people can give you a lot of pain when they're trying to make a movie with you. Imagine what they can do when they're just trying to give you pain." [Page Six]
· Jon Stewart on Germany's refusal to join the U.S.-led coalition: "Poland wants to fight and Germany doesn't? That's crazy. It must be like the way an alcoholic doesn't want to go into a bar. They'd start bombing and wake up the next morning and say, 'Did I just invade Czechoslovakia last night?'" Richard Gere thinks that if Tibet were turned into a big spa resort, the Chinese government would allow the Dalai Lama to return to his homeland. [NY Daily News]
· The Word reports that CEO Steve Florio may be the next exiting executive at Conde Nast. [The Word