• 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.

To: NYT
Subject: MESSAGE FROM BILL KELLER
09/30/2005 02:20 PM

Judy Miller is deeply grateful to all the people on the staff for their support during her time in jail. She's eager to come in and say so personally — but we've ordered her to take the weekend off.

We expect her to come into the newsroom on Monday afternoon to give her personal thanks.

Bill

At 3:55 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has spent nearly three months in prison for refusing to testify in the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, was released from prison. Miller was released because she has agreed to testify.

• "ABC, CBS Secretly Search for Anchors," says AP hed. Yes, no one had any idea. [AP via Newsday]
• Shocker: Plame fallout makes sources less likely to trust reporters' promises of anonymity. [AJR]
• And another shocker: Bush SCOTUS nominee doesn't like the press. [NYT]
• Slightly more Americans trust the media than don't. Rejoice! [Gallup]
• Media more interested in Cocaine Kate than in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's stock sale. Can't imagine why. [Media Matters]
• Friday's kick-off party for The New Yorker Festival featured James Woolsey, Jonathan Franzen, and Gilbert Gottfried. [WWD]
• Mags hold benefits for Katrina victims. [MIN]

• Principled, uncompromising Judy Miller now in negotiations to compromise and get out of jail — which Reuters doesn't mention till graf six. [Reuters via HuffPost]
• Media continue to develop backbone, as newsweeklies say no to FEMA request for no corpse pictures. [NYP]
• CBS News's non-opinionated, non-ombudsman, non-media crit blog launches Monday. We don't know how we'll last till then. [Mediaweek]
• Craiglist could kill the newspaper classifieds biz entirely. Plus casual encounters! [SmartMoney]
• TWX honchos go to fashion shows, and chief Dick Parsons is sad there's not Tyra. [WWD]
• Henry Luce III, son of Time founder and longtime Time Inc. reporter and exec, dies at 80. [NYT]

You've got to admire a graceful acknowledgement that one's 15 minutes are up. From the internal Times blog:

You know you're really behind in your reading when even a few months in prison won't leave you enough time to catch up. We learn of this bibliocrisis from a memo sent yesterday to the Times staff.

• New York mag launches major new ad campaign that involves replacing subway billboards every day. Because that's the big problem with waiting for the train: Not enough new reading material. [NYT]
• Is reality TV even worse for its writers than it is for the contestants? [CSM]
• Jon Friedman can't wait for the Conde business mag. [MW]
• Actually, Judy Miller is not having the time of her life in person, her husband now says. [WWD]
• What happens to NBC execs if this season bombs like last season? Bad thing happen, we imagine. [B&C]

We can't believe we didn't know about this for a whole week, and we feel terrible about all the books — new paperbacks only, we'll remind you — you've been sending to the wrong address. But it turns out the Times initially gave the wrong address for donations to Judy Miller's prison reading list. This was corrected in a memo last Monday:

• Candace Bushnell and her Stanford Blatch-inspiring ex-manager are suing each other over money. Which seems far more like the real New York than Sex and the City ever did. [Radar]
• You know things are getting weird when far lefty Bob Scheer is echoing VF bobo Michael Wolff on the Plame case: Judy Miller is no hero, and the public should be more important than her sources. [LAT]
• E&P peacenik Greg Mitchell calls for newspapers to call for withdrawl from Iraq. Again. [E&P]
• The many personalities of Michiko Kakutani. [Media Mob/NYO]

• Judy Miller is "having the time of her life," says hubby Jason Epstein, and so is he, it would seem. [WWD]
• Also, Miller appreciates your letters but doesn't want your used books. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Coming in your Times Mag: soldier sex in Iraq. Hot. [E&P]
• From the home office in Melville, Long Island: Top ten reasons we'll always have network anchors. [Newsday]
• More bad news for newspapers: First Craig steals the classifieds, now Hollywood's giving up on splashy movie ads, according to Nikki Finke. [LA Weekly]

There's only one thing we love more than bitchy journalists, and it's bitchy journalists bitching at one another. Take, for example, this dialogue between investigative reporter Murray Waas and Vanity Fair thinktank Michael Wolff, regarding Valerie Plame, Karl Rove, Judith Miller and all other brouhahas worthy of a "-gate" suffix:

• Philadelphians don't believe the Times's sixth-borough crap any more than we do. [Inquirer]
• Because no else seems to have any idea, CBS asks its interns how to save the Evening News. [NYO]
• Officialy, all Timesmen love Judy Miller. Confidentially, not so much. Something for OTR sources to consider: The way you talk about Judy, how far do you think moonlighting E&P newshound Joe Strupp will go to protect your identities? [Salon]
• The Voice calls Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria the pundit world's Backstreet Boy, whatever that means. , egregiously ignoring George Stephanopoulos. [VV]
• A j-school prof wonders, should I tell my students the truth, that the business kind of sucks? Nah, of course not. Where would we be without irrationally earnest j-students? [E&P]

• MPA finally decides which editors will get the privilege of bantering with Jon Stewart: VF's Graydon Carter, Time's Jim Kelly, Cosmo's Kate White, and Men's Health's Dave Zinczenko. "Here's hoping he's a Men's Health fan," says Zinczenko. Oh yeah, we're sure he is. [WWD, second item]
• The special prosecutor might try to keep Judy Miller in jail for even longer. Which means only one thing: More Mediterranean cruises for husband Jason Epstein! [E&P]
• Now Roger Ailes is in charge of Fox's TV stations, too. They'll be even fairer and balanceder. [NYT]
• Effective yesterday, it's World News Tonight, not World News Tonight With Peter Jennings. [USAT]
• In the all-Target New Yorker, the discount chain comes off as like Kim Jong Il. Or something like that. [Design Observer]

We don't much like panel discussions. No one says anything new, no one changes anyone's mind, and the food is rarely any good. But Court TV promised breakfast at Michael's and a crew of media bigshots who don't much like each other, and so it seemed worth showering earlier than we have in months and getting on the E train to midtown.

• New York mag reports that Paris Hilton, feeling that her teacup chihuahua Tinkerbell had gotten too big to fit in a Fendi clutch, has reportedly traded in the dog for a smaller one named Bambi. You may think this is cruel, but honestly this move probably saved Tinkerbell's life. [NYM & Gatecrasher]
• The latest hotspot is jailed Times' reporter Judith Miller's cell in Alexandria, VA. With only 30 minutes of visitor time a day, Miller's A-List guests have included Tom Brokaw, Arthur O. Sulzberger, and Bill Keller. Michael Wolff is still waiting for confirmationt that he can have his usual table before agreeing to visit. [Page Six]
• Former Condé Nast wrangler Steve Florio's book was reportedly nixed by the court of Si Newhouse, he claims the days of "people taking the Concorde to see their kids' Little League games" are over. Pity. [R&M (3rd item)]
• American Idol Kelly Clarkson is getting the Ashlee Simpson treatment: She's accused of heavily relying on background vocals for her live performances. America feigns shock. [Scoop]
• Scarlett Johansson strikes back at the producers of The Island after they blamed her lack of star power for the film's failure at the box office. Sadly, none of this bitching makes us any more inclined to see the flick. [Page Six]

But seriously: Lucky her.

Editor & Publisher grand poobah Greg Mitchell previews Michael Wolff's column on Plamegate in the forthcomingnew Vanity Fair — that's the Jennifer Aniston issue, and, no, by the time it hits newsstands there won't be anything in it you haven't already read about —, and he discovers Wolff in full-on conspiracy-theorist mode. [Update: OK, it's been out for a while, and we should leave the house more often.]

• Time Warner sets aside $3 billion to settle lawsuits resulting from the Worst Merger in History. Sadly, it's not coming from Steve Case and Jerry Levin's personal bank accounts. [NYT]
• Newly arrived OK! doesn't look much different from the competition. [USAT]
• Judy Miller fits in fine in jail, warden says. And, if not, they have vays of making prisoners "fit in." [WP]
• Howard Stern to go uncensored on video-on-demand TV. [NYP]
• "All that press coverage of the blogs, and the audience is just minuscule," a Forrester Research veep says while releasing a new study. And how big's your audience, Forrester? [Boston Herald]

• Writers' group takes away Conscience in Media award from Judy Miller. "Independent writers are a prickly bunch," says group's prez. [E&P]
• ABC News gets kicked out of Russia. Now they know how our great-grandparents felt. [NYT]
• More management changes at Inc. and Fast Company. Thus even further undermining the idea that these are folks from whom to take advice on managing your business. [Folio:]
• For those who thought the Martha Stewart brand wasn't sufficiently a cult of personality, now comes word that she wants to fill the audience of her first syndicated TV show entirely with people named Martha Stewart. [AP via CST]
• Stuff magazine starts the slow death of the letters-page. "Let's face it," EIC Jimmy Jellinek tells Jolly Green Jeff Bercovici. "The only people who write letters to magazines are prisoners and Canadians." [WWD]
• Nightline doesn't hate its new exec producer. Yet. [NYO]