At about 7:30 AM, Katie Couric came clean:

• Though they announced their separation on Friday, Russell Simmons claims that things are rather cozy between him and Kimora, and there's still a chance for reconciliation. But don't tell that to Denise Vasi, the 23-year-old who's been dating Russell. [Lowdown]
• Howard Stern warns Katie that should she go to CBS, ratings will drop and CBS will find a way not to pay her. Then what? We can't see her legs on satellite radio. [Page Six]
• Nicole Kidman is rumored to have had her 11-year marriage to bouncy psycopath Tom Cruise annulled so that she can marry Keith Urban in a Catholic ceremony. Cue flack denials. [Scoop]
• For the public opening of his company, Diddy misses the bell at the NYSE. Can't expect a playa to get up before 12, yo. [Page Six]
• Now that he's off of cocaine, actor Kiefer Sutherland has redirected his focus towards cooking. Since he loved the ritual of preparing his stash for consumption, he now gets off on the crushing and cutting garlic cloves. [R&M (2nd item)]

[ABC]

• Two Katie Couric photos today for the price of one: Study America's sweetheart as she's seduced by Antonio Banderas. Look at her maintain eye contact — we haven't seen her so focused since her last colonoscopy. [AP]
• The Times declared that beards are back, and ZZ Top celebrated. Not two weeks later, beards jump the shark with their own hot-or-not spin-off. [Bearded Dudes]
• Slate's Emily Yoffe becomes a paparazzo. Is it just us, or does that seem like a horrible invasion of celebrities' privacy, just for a few people's prurient amusement? [Slate]
• We all have those random words that, no matter what, we just can't seem to spell. For those in the media and their inept copy editors, that word would be "villain." [FishbowlNY]
• Losers, unite: Not content to merely read at the Rejection Show, disgruntled writers who have been denied love from the New Yorker come together to form the Silence of the City. Never let go of the sadness, kids. [Silence of the City]
• The Don'ts of Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes. [Blagg Blogg]
• Chimps acting in commercials are getting raises that some actors would dream of. Then again, it's a safe bet that most of the chimps are more intelligent and hard-working than their human counterparts. [AdAge]

• "Katie Couric's deal to move to CBS News is completed in principle, and an announcement that she is leaving NBC might come as early as this week." Which would be a relief, so we could finally stop hearing speculation about it. [TV Week]
• Budget Living's failure shows that indie mags just don't work anymore. But shhhhh... Ron Burkle might hear. [NYT]
• Jim Cramer says the Times should ditch paper and move entirely online. He's crazy, of course, but in that case also probably right. [NYM]
• The NYT's new web redesign — and the Journal's of a few weeks ago — are about creating more ad inventory and adding news aggregators. [Ad Age]
• Is Hearst looking to replace Glenda Bailey at Bazaar when her contract is up later this year? Well, no, says the company, and her numbers look good, too. [WWD]
• ESPN to start broadcasting dominoes games (matches?). Remarkably, this does not seem to be an April Fools joke. [NYT]
• NYO TV columnist Rebecca Dana has a signed picture of Richard Dawson on her mantelpiece. We're a little jealous, to be honest. [Jossip]

Some amusing but probably baseless emails we've received lately:

And my, doesn't she seem rested? All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Yes, definitely bright-eyed. So bright, it looks as if she scored a brand-new set of them during her time off. Yes, her eyes are just all shiny and new and uplifted. Such a multi-tasker, that Couric — putting her vacation to good use.

• "Wenner is driving everyone crazy," a staffer tells Keith Kelly. "He keeps changing his mind." This time that refers to plans for the Rolling Stone 1,000th issue party. [NYP]
• Charlie Rose to undergo heart surgery in Paris. It'll be under general anesthetic, which will give the surgeons a chance to get a few words in. [Reuters via Yahoo]
• The biggest Katie question: What exactly is gravitas? [NYO]
• Business books are back. And — have you heard? — Elizabeth Spiers has a new Wall Street blog. [WWD]
• The Newspaper Guild's bid for a dozen erstwhile Knight Ridder papers is backed by Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. (Hmm, where have we heard of them before?) Bill Clinton in on the board of Yucapia. So Bill Clinton could end up as a newspaper owner, sort of. [NYSun]
• Lou Dobbs has discovered that "what works in cable television news is not an objective analysis of the day's events but hard-nosed, unstinting advocacy of a specific point of view." Who knew? [NYT]
• Time Inc. wants to be a web player now. If only the company could find a path. [WSJ]

Unless Satan goes ice skating on the frozen ponds of Hell, Katie Couric's time at NBC is drawing to a close. You know what that means — time to start assembling the sappy highlight reel. Lloyd Grove reports:

• Will Katie go to CBS? We continue to not really have any idea. [USAT]
• What did Bonnie Fuller learn from getting fired from Conde Nast? "Blatant disloyalty is never the smart course of action." Who knew? [NYT]
• Kurt Andersen thinks — hopes! — that the celebrity moment might finally be over. [NYM]
• Elizabeth Spiers is starting a blog about Wall Street. Also, she used to work here. [IWantMedia]
• Esquire has a funny spoof in its new issue written by — who else? — a Foer brother, in this case champion memorizer Joshua. [WP]
• Simon Dumenco isn't sure newspapers will survive, and he can't believe it took the Times until now to get rid of the printed stock tables. [Ad Age]
• Jim Surowiecki thinks newspapers will survive, and he can't believe it took them until now to get rid of printed stock tables. [NYer]
• WWD media reporter Jeff Bercovici breakfasts on spelt toast with almond butter and a home-brewed cappuccino. [Jossip]
• Syd Schanberg quit his job as the Village Voice's Press Clips columnist just after the New Times deal closed, feeling that the company was no longer interested in media criticism. Friday he won an award for his Voice media criticism. [VV]

• Not content with going after Bob Schieffer's sloppy seconds, Katie Couric is now taking Laura Ingraham's as well. [Lowdown]
• Fidel Castro likes Serrano ham. This was Page Six's lead item. [Page Six]
• Crackhead Pete pleads guilty on seven counts of possession, kicks reporter. Ever feel like Crackhead Pete gets more done by 9 A.M. than you do all day? [NME]
• Britney Spears seen pounding shots. At this point her condition has been downgraded from "pregnant" to "gut." [R&M]
• Michael Jackson wants to meet, molest, extraterrestrials. Yeah, that's the joke we're going with for this one. [Lowdown (2nd item)]

• Celebrity "news" shows Entertainment Tonight and The Insider bend to Tom Cruise's will and ignore the story of the A-lister's urging of Viacom to pull the Scientology-bashing South Park episode "Tom's in the Closet" off of Comedy Central's rerun schedule. Cruise certainly has an impressive grip on so many balls, even for a gay man. [Lowdown (last item)]
• Page Six looks into its crystal ball and sees that Katie Couric will flee Rock Center on May 26th, the last day of her NBC contract. [Page Six]
• Governor Pataki's sons are the latest victims of their own internet vanity, thanks to incriminating evidence on Facebook and Webshots. [R&M]
• Paris Hilton reportedly splits with Stavros Niarchos because she can't understand him when he speaks Greek. Or English. [Scoop]
• Natalie Portman lost the cover of this month's Vanity Fair after Teri Hatcher confessed that she had been molested. Nevertheless, Portman's lengthy profile still appears in the issue, despite her cover snub. [Page Six]
• Meanwhile, Hatcher's cover story has sparked yet more discontent amongst her fellow Desperate Housewives. Women always get so jealous over sexy molestation stories. [Gatecrasher]

• Big media companies like buying popular websites. Who knew? [Mediaweek]
• 2005 was a bad year for newspapers. You don't say. [WSJ]
• David Carr can't quite figure out why CBS wants Katie Couric so badly. [NYT]
• Lewis Lapham's welcome present for Roger Hodge: Lots of readers pissed off about an article on researchers who dispute the idea that HIV causes AIDS. [NYT]
• Diane Sawyer will be the next World News Tonight anchor. [Newsday]
• No, wait. Charlie Gibson will. [NYP]

We missed a bit of this morning's Today show, but a correspondent tells us that while plugging an upcoming segment on "The Ex Factor," Katie Couric said something like, "Should you date your ex? Maybe Matt could tell us more about that." Subtle! No doubt Lauer appreciated the excellent promotional tie-in for today's Rush & Molloy:

• NBC is reportedly ready to offer Katie Couric $20 million a year to keep her away from CBS. Who knew well-oiled gams were worth so much? [Fox411]
• Director Ang Lee is set to cast Kate Moss in his latest film, a biopic about singer Dusty Springfield, in which she'll play one of Springfield's lesbian lovers. Lee sure does have a knack for high-profile gay casting choices. [IANS]
• Kate Moss link #2: If you're in rehab and you meet the cokey model, be sure to tell her about your band. She'll inspire you to keep on focusing on your music — when you put down the needle, that is. [MySpace]
• Today on Williamsburg's favorite message board: iPods. Of course. [Williamsboard]
• Cast your vote for Time Out's 2006 Eat Out awards. Bonus points if you actually ate at any of the joints. [TONY]
• The trailer for the upcoming internet show A Good Word with the T-Bird (it hurt us just to type that, admittedly) features winning moments with your favorite hipster nightlife photographer, as well as a gem from the dude who found the first daughter's wallet at Happy Endings. [You Tube]

A uncharacteristically spastic Jon Stewart was just on the Today; he eschewed any real questions about his gig hosting the Oscars and instead chose to mock most of America by acting like a crack-happy tourist outside of the empty Rockefeller Center studios. As he climbed around the fencing normally used to corral inanely giddy Today fans, a slightly irritated Katie Couric (interviewing from Torino) asked if Stewart was nervous about the Oscar ceremony. When he explained that Xanax would get him through it, she warned against mixing the pills with cough syrup. She would know, of course.

Seriously, the ONE freaking morning we spare ourselves the horror of the Today show, and it's the morning that a bunch of birds crap on Katie Couric.

• Things we never thought we'd say: Iranians have a delightfully level-headed reaction to the Mohammed-cartoons brouhaha; the country's biggest paper will run a contest for best Holocaust cartoon, which is an entirely reasonable response. [Reuters via WP]
• We're not quite sure how we forget this yesterday, but sullen Simon Dumenco is even madder than usual, this time at Bonnie Fuller. Which seems sort of a waste of energy. [Ad Age]
• AOL gossips say Meredith Viera is now the top choice to replace Katie Couric on Today, should Katie take her clickety stilettos to CBS. They also say Today might go to four hours, with Campbell Brown anchoring parts, and that there's a 70 percent chance of a Katie-to-CBS switch. Which seems an really oddly specific. [TMZ]
• Out magazine is so desperate for a new EIC five months after allegedly pro-baseball-player-dating Brandon Lemon left that now it's even considering straight candidates. You should know better, Out: Sure the straight guys will have the drink, and be a little flirty, but it's just too much work to get them to finally put out. [WWD]
• 90.7 million watched the Super Bowl, making it the most watched TV show in ten years. [THR]
• The increasingly touchy-feely WSJ is like "your boss at work — smart, well-connected, highly respected, passing judgment from afar — who suddenly asks you to hang out on the weekend," says Hamilton Nolan. [PR Week]
• AMI adopted new ABC circ rules early, and realized it would miss rate base on half its titles. The other publishers ain't taking the risk. [Ad Age]

As the Today show's Katie Couric trudges her way about Italy, en route to Torino for the Superbowl, she stops today in Florence, home to a gazillion drunken college students spending a semester abroad. This is good for Katie; she's not used to appearing without a crowd of grinning fools behind her, so she must feel at home with the sign-waving sorostitutes.

• Because there just aren't enough glossy mags about celebrity gossip: Page Six magazine, coming in February to a newsstand near you. [WWD]
• For the first time, Mr. Sulzberger goes to Switzerland. And various other Timesiana. [NYO]
• Also, Mr. Sulzberger has taken valuable lessons from all his fuckups. Really. [MW]
• Hell with Couric. CBS News should give Diane Sawyer the Evening News chair. [NYO]
• Steve Brill gives money to Yale to make more journalists. Because what the media business needs in more Ivy kids. [NYT]
• How a rant becomes a letter to the editor. [CJR]