As recently as the mid-1980s, the newspapers that ostensibly own the Associated Press constituted 50 percent of its revenue. Over the past decade, with the explosion of syndicated news on wesbites and the proliferation of cable news channel, cashflows have come increasingly from new media customers, who tend to favor more soft news coverage on topics like entertainment and lifestyle. Smell like a recipe for disastrous internal strife? Funny, because that's exactly how it's turning out! It was one thing when the editor of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette likened AP's CEO to a Soviet apparatchik this past April. But now even the insane revolutionaries at Sam Zell's Tribune Company are staging a mutiny, moving to cancel the wire and saying AP is charging higher prices for less hard-news (think state and local) content:

PBS affiliate WNET TV is very proud of "Torturing Democracy," a documentary crafted by a Frontline producer and deemed "flawlessly journalistic" by the New York station's VP for content. But the show makes PBS suits a little, well, uncomfortable. According to the Times, they asked the producer if that provocative name couldn't be changed, and maybe a panel discussion tacked on, oh and also they wouldn't be able to air it until the day after George W. Bush leaves the White House. You see there's an animated sitcom called “Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns” that had higher priority, plus you can't air a documentary like this during the Olympics, so the summer was right out. As was the fall, apparently. Or so says PBS VP John Wilson (pictured), as he undermines the program:

In June, reports bubbled up in British tabloids that Madonna would divorce Guy Ritchie, her film-director husband of eight years. Today, Rupert Murdoch's tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic, the Sun and the Post, are reporting that a statement should come out shortly that the couple are breaking up after shouting matches over their careers and differences over whether to adopt another child. Though the prior reports didn't pan out, it's worth noting that this time around everyone from Time to the Associated Press is citing the tabloid reports, lending the impression an open secret has perhaps been breeched. Or maybe everyone is just chasing Web traffic! Then there's the level of detail in the Sun report:

Jim Downey was once fired from Saturday Night Live, along with cast member Norm Macdonald, for repeated "OJ Did It" jokes on Weekend Update. He eventually made his way back to the show as chief political satirist, which basically puts him near the center of both politics and pop culture this year, with his sketches, no less pointed than his OJ material, earning mention in televised debates and re-airing on cable talk shows. But the influence of Downey and his show has been artificially inflated, he tells the Observer, by fearful news networks, who would "like to make sarcastic comments about candidates , but their role as news people prevents that:"

New York magazine's daily online chats about the election are usually just mildly interesting, since the journalists involved tend to be overly polite to one another, because who knows who you're going to be sending a job application to someday? Even Gawker Media veterans and that Daily Kos maniac act all pleasant. But Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has never been one for such fraternal niceties, and when nymag.com threw him a sparring partner from National Review, the predictably caustic lefty went to work with his fangs, at one point typing, "tell me you're not ashamed." It was awesome and just really uncomfortable at the same time. Highlights:

Left out of today's NYT story on the elite NBC page program: the harrowing story of last summer's pooping NBC intern. "Paper of record" my butt.

Look, there's an incredibly lengthy new seven-part survey of journalists who blog, exploring how blogs have affected their journalism, and how journalism has affected their blogs, and what they think about blogs and journalism and the effects that they have upon one another, and also upon the journalists who sit astride these two dynamic fields—blogging and journalism. We haven't read it yet, because we already know (from personal experience!) the five-part process that all blogging journalists use: 1. Look at a blog in your beat (Romenesko for media, Deadspin for sports, Andrew Sullivan for politics, etc.). Find something there that looks interesting. 2. Chew pen for a few minutes. 3. Rewrite the item you stole, taking a slightly different angle than the original blogger. 4. Send what you wrote back to the original blogger, in search of a link. 5. Celebrate newfound internet fame. [Optional sixth step: fill out lengthy survey. Pic via CJR.]

The aspiring fashionistas at Teen Vogue know a hot trend when they see one, and they're not about to let Us Weekly, Saturday Night Live and the National Enquirer have a lock on randomly and unexpectedly influencing American politics beyond all reason. So they've started something called, adorably, the "Political Partier Blog," which is all about how hot college boys are reshaping the election and, like, other political stuff, such as a funny Peanuts website. Anyway, let's have a look at the five young people (four of them boys, squee!) mentioned, always with their ages attached, in blogger Lindsay Talbot's 10 posts:

Newspapers have always been selfish when it comes to giving credit to anybody else for anything. Good reporters are always conscientious about noting when someone else broke a story, but as a rule of thumb, the more self-important a news outlet is, the less likely they are to credit a competitor (or anyone else) for a scoop. But everything has changed now! Thanks to the internet and how it is beating the shit out of newspapers. Are you ready for a revolution in how you consume your news? Click through for a glimpse of the future of information! Newspapers—the forward-thinking beacons of journalism—have invented something totally new. Imagine this: you read the New York Times' website, and, abracadabra, you see a "link." This "link" sends you to a site that is not owned by the New York Times, where you can read information on a certain topic. NBC and the Washington Post are about to start doing it too! This could be big!

NBC political correspondent Andrea Mitchell is one of the network's news stars, so it's only natural that we've been seeing a lot of her lately. Even when the topic turns to the government's and the candidates' responses to the current financial crisis. But you will not see her, supposedly, when the discussion turns to "past economic decisions" that led up to the crisis. Because Mitchell is married to Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman who many say is basically responsible for the housing bubble. And that is their conflict of interest compromise: Mitchell will report as usual until the reasons we got to this point are discussed, at which point she'll quietly disappear from your television without explanation. Unethical! Or, you know, the standard way of doing business in political journalism. DC is an incestuous town and everyone knows and is basically friends with everyone else. The media-political complex has lots and lots of intermarried "journalists" and "operatives" and everyone has politely agreed to assume that everyone else is totally professional about it. So they get a bit tetchy when the Columbia Journalism Review is all "disclose your relationships or just be more independent or something" because what do those kids know? If Tom Brokaw wants to play golf with John McCain that is his business (note: we don't know if John McCain can play golf but the two are still definitely probably friends). The standard argument is that one has to find concrete evidence of "bias" before one can claim these chummy relationships are no good, but honestly the "bias" is so ingrained in the process that it's a useless task and one is best served by appyling a gimlet-eyed suspicion to everyone one sees on the TV and then voting for Ron Paul.

Everybody, quick, open an office in Abu Dhabi! The oil-rich desert metropolis is opening a new "media hub" consisting of bizarre, bubble-like office buildings, and major news outlets are rushing in. CNN is opening a whole new bureau there! And they'll be joined by the FT, the BBC, Reuters, and some book publishers. How the hell did a city that got its first paved road in 1961 suddenly become the place where news networks simply have to have their Middle Eastern headquarters? By offering reporters more cool futuristic offices, and fewer car bombs: Abut Dhabi took its billions in oil wealth and, through sheer force of will and money, made itself into a default location for news outlets to situate themselves. CNN, for example, can now cover the Middle East exclusively from the Middle East, while staying safely in the lap of luxury. Invest more in Baghdad, where the news is? Or invest in a state-of-the-art new facility in Abu Dhabi, which has far more world-class restaurants and fewer I.E.D.'s?

Asian and European stock markets are posting gains of 4 to 10 percent this morning thanks to a coordinated effort among several governments to recapitalize banks and insure interbank loans. The futures market is predicting a similar rise for U.S. stocks. For a few precious hours, at least, you'll be able to imagine that the worst of the crash is behind you. But heed the all-knowing Web photo editors, who time and again this morning have selected only slightly less terrified stockbrokers to illustrate their market recovery stories (see left). Maybe their enthusiasm is tempered by that story in the Wall Street Journal this weekend in which 18 economists said we've been doing the bailout all wrong:

When Barack Obama was 10, his grandfather would take him over to ole Frank Davis' house, where the two older men would drink whisky out of jars and play Scrabble. Sometimes Obama would help the men compose dirty limericks, or listen as Davis read poetry. This went on until the Democratic presidential nominee was 17, and during that time Davis acted as a mentor, according to Obama's memoir. It later emerged that Davis pseudonymously wrote a "hard-core pornographic autobiography" detailing his sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. This was all known in August, after a widely-blogged report in Britain's Telegraph, but the National Enquirer is now reporting it as an "Exclusive OBAMA SEX PERV SCANDAL," because Obama should be ashamed of almost being molested, or something:

Page Six is gloating this morning. Talent agency William Morris just sold its Beverly Hills headquarters for $143 million and the Post gossip section totally called it, even in the face of William Morris' heated denials. "We told you," brags Page Six. But here's the thing: It took three and a half years for Page Six's gossip to come true. So for their scoop to be valid, you have to believe the headquarters sat on the marker for several years, even though it listed during one of the most frenzied commercial real estate markets ever, only to find a buyer in the worst office downturn in four years. Or maybe a company "desperate... to raise cash" (according to Page Six) took three years to organize a fire sale. Not likely.

Wow, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds just unloaded a pissy rant on the Obama campaign, saying the Democratic presidential nominee is going to be punished for not coddling campaign reporters well enough. And it sounds like he thinks Obama deserves it. In a "reporter's notebook" posted to CBSNews.com, Reynolds complains that Obama's people pick up journalists' luggage at a very inconvenient hour. It keeps them waiting for up to two hours in parking lots with nothing to do, bored. And they sometimes force them to travel when they could be on live television, goosing ratings for their corporate overlords. Don't even get Reynolds started on Obama's weak-ass plane!

Once upon a time, back in the days when H.L. Mencken was prowling the metaphorical streets of journalism, drinking bourbon for breakfast and smoking cigars in theaters and making women do laundry for weeks on end, a reporter could dream of nothing better than being assigned to cover the State Capitol. He'd go on up there and sit around drinking bourbon and smoking cigars and subjugating women and occasionally filing stories, after which he would go out and engage in scandalous behavior with the politicians he covered. Life was sweet. But now guess what: penniless newspapers can't even afford the meager salaries of statehouse reporters any more! The number of reporters covering the NY state government in Albany has dropped from 59 to 42 in the last quarter century. And one count says there are just over 400 full time statehouse reporters in the whole country. The glorious days are gone!

Tom Brokaw was determined last night that he wasn't going to put up with any crap from presidential candidates or their running mates, who had their way with previous debate moderators Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill. So every time John McCain or Barack Obama broke one of the debate rules, Brokaw delivered a verbal slap. The NBC News commentator got increasingly frustrated with infractions as the night wore on, but both candidates seemed to be on their best behavior yet, even when Brokaw rather oddly insisted they yield a heated moment to a question from the entire internet.

Sharon Waxman is a former NYT reporter who quit the paper to go to LA and make her way on the wild World Wide Web, which has "endlessly rich tools to pursue our craft," etc. She sent out an email today to her Trusted Friends and Colleagues telling them that The Wrap News, "which will have a fresh approach on reporting news in the entertainment industry" (!) and will be a "multi-platform source," etc., is all set to launch in January, and by the way please take a survey. And who will the world have to thank for Waxman's new "news and community resource for entertainment professionals?" Heartless Gawker, which made her quit her real job, allegedly!: Waxman's schadenfreude on our recent layoffs:

Sure, it's "wrong" to date a source you quoted in 24 articles and/or a married man (and vice versa), but that very wrongness is what makes it seem romantic—until everything blows up in your face. Ex-Miami Herald and Boston Globe reporter, 27-year-old Tania deLuzuriaga, had a reported affair with a source, new Miami-Dade schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho, 44. It was uncovered when two dozen embarrassing e-mails ("don't shave") were anonymously delivered to media outlets across town. Carvalho's weaselly denials might cost him his new job—the school board has yet to vote on his contract. deLuzuriaga already resigned from the Globe, shortly after the e-mails were leaked. Now there are new e-mails!Sadly, they aren't as juicy as "Don't shave. Wanna are [sic] it." They say "I love and miss you too" and other boring crap like that. Oh, and this: "Keep texting. Keep clean as my daughter keeps lunging for it with those Carvalho quick reflexes.'' Almost as quick as the Carvalho denial-reflexes. [Miami Herald via Romenesko]

Last Friday a rumor went up on CNN's "Citizen journalism" site saying that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had had a heart attack. Apple stock plunged momentarily, but the posting was debunked within the hour. The suspicion now is that the rumor was planted by a short seller looking to capitalize on the skittish reaction of the market. So that means don't trust crazy internet rumors because the internet is lies! Right? No: The incident caused an uproar, but look at what it really was: one guy with a fake post on an unmediated citizen journalism site. Making any stock selling decisions based on that is approximately as risky as making the same decision based on a Craigslist post. It's an inherent gamble. Jeff Jarvis is sanguine: