Lewis Lapham is back in Harper's Magazine with a new screed telling the media to break free from the celebrity-industrial complex and go after hard news. "The recycling of gossip is easier than the assembling of facts." Ouch. [Harper's]

In your traditional Tuesday media column: Lewis Lapham endures, Lou Dobbs is in demand, Charlie Rose gets a new column, and Sheriff Joe harassed by J-schoolers playing the race card.

Peggy Siegal invited a media-heavy crowd to the Oak Room last night to watch the Super Bowl. Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell was in attendance (apparently, budget cuts prevented him from flying to Tampa in person); and some folks, such as former HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman, left, even donned 3-D glasses to fully appreciate the commercials. Others on hand for the festivities: Richard Johnson, Ron Perelman, Dan Abrams, Dave Zinczenko, Joanne Lipman, Charlie Rose, George Rush, Richard Meier, Cece Cord, Kate Betts, Gay Talese, Rocco DiSpirito, Chuck Scarborough, Francine LeFrak, Andrew and Nancy Jarecki, Ron Delsener, Ken Auletta, Larry Gagosian, Lewis Lapham, Steve Kroft, Lloyd Grove, Morgan Entrekin, Ann Dexter-Jones, Harry Smith, Liz Smith, Cynthia McFadden, and Felicia Taylor. [PMc, NYO, GoaG, Fox 411]

Dear Us Weekly editor-in-chief Janice Min, I realize I told you it was a massive screw-up for you to go so hard on Sarah Palin. And I realize I might have even done my part to fan the flames. But seriously, was it really necessary to tell David Carr she "out Obama'ed Obama with her speech" and "came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone"? And whose idea was it to offer five whole free issues to all your enraged Republican hate-mailers, only so said hate -mailers could turn around and betray you to the likes of demonspawn Michelle Malkin?? That sounds like something Jesus would do, Janice Min!Which is why I can't get mad at your hasty political backtracking. Something about that would be so "typical Democrat self-immolating," so "Nation of Whiners" of me. Instead I will leave you with this story: yesterday I attended a panel on income inequality at Barnes & Noble featuring my own personal Jesus, Wall Street Journal columnist Tom Frank and former Harper's editor-in-chief Lewis Lapham. Tom's new book The Wrecking Crew is a hysterically funny survey of the hysterically vast destruction Republicans and their unabashed contempt for government have unleashed upon the government. If we were more like them, we would have figured out a way to convincingly get voters to substitute out "America" for "government" in that last sentence, but no. We are just so relentlessly self-critical! I heard one spectator whine about how he would vote for Ralph Nader or Ron Paul before Obama. Asked another, a late arriving senior citizen, afterward: "But did they let the Democrats off the hook? The Democrats always let the Republicans start wars!" And while it was true, it was the sort of rhetorical question that was its own explanation. Which is to say, Janice Min, I see some dirt on your shoulder, could I brush it off for you?

Lewis Lapham's forthcoming Harper's column on Tim Russert is not entirely unexpected, given the cranky literary liberal's public pronouncements on the late host of Meet The Press. But Lapham, sometimes slammed as insufferable bore, has spun a compelling essay out of his rough initial pronouncement that "1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government." Maybe Lapham's thorough disassembling is so tasty this time around because the reverence for Russert (not to mention his son Luke) was so completely over the top: two days and three nights of televised memorial, or some 96 hours of airtime, by Lapham's count. Lapham's column is called "Elegy For A Rubber Stamp," entertains the concession that Russert was probably a good father and friend and Catholic, and then swifty moves on to saying Russert had "the on-air persona of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter," that his "stock in trade was the deftly pulled punch" and that Russert was a "pet canary." Further excerpts after the jump.

"Tim Russert was a spokesman for power, wealth, and privilege. That's why 1,000 people came to his memorial service. Because essentially he was a shill for the government." [New York]

Septuagenarian Lewis Lapham's post-Harper's magazine Lapham's Quarterly finally launched last night after a prolonged gestation period. Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian, who made an appearance in Lapham's "dramatic documentary musical" called The American Ruling Class, did introductions. Lapham, as Lapham does, didn't wear socks. Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici says the "Lapham's Quarterly will change the way you think about thinking." Of course he, like almost everyone else, hadn't actually read the issue.

Lewis Lapham, the former Harper's editor whose name we are seemingly unable to type without attaching the descriptor "soporific," gets a profile in today's Sun pegged to the forthcoming release of Lapham's Quarterly, a publication which should have the billion-dollar sleep-aid industry soiling its collected trousers. Sun scribe Gary Shapiro starts the piece by noting that "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there are no second acts in American lives, but he never met Lewis Lapham." Lewis better get a move on if he's going to finish the first scene of his Act Two. Dude's a septuagenarian with a smoking habit. That curtain is coming down one way or another. Bonus fun fact: As it turns out, reading about Lewis Lapham is only slightly less boring than reading Lewis Lapham.

• Sulzberger to Morgan Stanley: "I'd like my money back, thanks." [Fortune]
  

Last night, the streets of New York were deprived of their corduroy and tortoise-shell glasses as the literary Three 6 mafia gathered at Pravda for Harper's Annual Christmas Party. Gridskipper editor (and former Harper's intern) Joshua David Stein ventured into the thick of it with photog Tina Tyrell to document the wan depravity of it all. Be sure not to miss the special secret song inside: It reveals some fascinating secrets about Lewis Lapham's urinary habits.

• Wanna work for Lewis Lapham's new publication, More Soporific Than Ambien Quarterly? Well, don't expect any remuneration or anything. On the plus side, he may let you bum a smoke every now and again. [EH]
• WWD moves the ball on Wenner's buyback of Us Weekly: It's either "a sign of genius or fear." We just thought it was a sign that Jann likes to throw money around. [WWD]
• Think your media organization has problems? (Okay, if you're at Wired News, you're right.) Over in London reporters are actually getting arrested. And not in the good Josh Wolf way. [WSJ]
• Sure, Iran's president is a complete loon who would probably like to see us burning in a lake of fire, but anyone who makes fun of Mike Wallace can't be all bad. [THR]

• Yesterday's American Media bloodletting will cut the mag publisher's workforce by 9 percent. [WWD]
• And will save the company about $10 million. [NYP]
• With Katie Couric heading to CBS, NBC is days away from a deal to bring Meredith Vieira to fill her clickety stiletto heels. [NYT]
• Gabe Sherman agrees: Times Discovery Channel might be on its way out. Plus Hearst in the new tower, Lapham at Michael's, and Raines at Harvard. [NYO]
• The New York Times has finally done something to make Jack Shafer happy. So now he'll cancel his subscription. [Slate]
• The Week names Nick Kristof Columnist of the Year. We imagine Andrea Peyser is devastated. [E&P]

• Times happily runs advertising section from Sudan, whose leaders — as Times columnist Nick Kristof likes to point out — are encouraging genocide. [NYDN]
• Lewis Lapham, as he steps down from Harper's editorship, will keep working. And keep smoking. [WP]
• One Park, a reality show about life at AMI, moves closer to happening. Except that the lawyers are against it, chief David Pecker is against it, and the company doesn't have the rights to the name "One Park." But, you know, otherwise things are good. [WWD]
• CJR disses Marketwatch media writer Jon Friedman. Hard. [CJR Daily]

Harper's has announced that 38-year-old Roger Hodge will be the heir to outgoing editor Lewis Lapham's throne. In 1996, Hodge joined the magazine as an intern (yes, a 29-year-old intern, but Harper's is "special" like that and wherever Hodge was during those first 29 years MATTERS NOT!); since then, has moved up the ranks to serve as deputy editor. Lapham is pleased with the decision, publisher John MacArthur is pleased, and we're sure Hodge's wife and two children are also pleased.

Without either William Shawn's New Yorker bang or William Whitworth's Atlantic whimper, Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's for nearly 30 years, announced today that he's stepping down. They have no successor yet, he'll still be writing for the magazine, and, certainly, he's had an amazing run that deserves to be commended.

We'd be remiss if we let the day go by without noting this: Harper's editor Lewis Lapham testified in fugitive director Roman Polanski's London libel trial against Vanity Fair yesterday, recounting under oath the anecdote at the center of the suit. The article in question was about Elaine's restaurant, on the Upper East Side, and it repeated Lapham's account of an August 1969 evening there that involved himself, Polanski, and a Scandinavian model Beatte Telle.

Number of "Readings" (short articles at the front of the magazine): 11
Number of Readings that are verbatim excerpts from publicly available documents, speeches, or instruction manuals: 7
Number of Readings that are verbatim excerpts from publicly available documents, speeches, or instruction manuals generated by the government: 6
Number of readings that are taken verbatim from Internet chats, email forwards, or websites: 1
Number of dead European white men mentioned in editor Lewis Lapham's "Notebook" editorial: 4
Number of references to European cities in editor Lewis Lapham's "Notebook" editorial: 7
Number of references to American cities in editor Lewis Lapham's "Notebook" editorial: 4
Number of references to non-American non-European cities in editor Lewis Lapham's "Notebook" editorial: 0
Number of times Voltaire is mentioned in editor Lewis Lapham's "Notebook" editorial: 2
Number of times editor Lewis Lapham uses "Christina Aguilera" and "orgasm" in the same sentence: 1

New Yorker Editor David Remnick and Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham are fighting over who thought of running Picasso's anti-war painting, Guernica, on their cover first. Actually that's not true. Guernica-gate paraphrased: Lapham is claims that "Remnick copiedno fair!" and thinks, in fact, that the New Yorker may have planted spies. Remnick responds with a very telling, "We have the same cover? I didn't notice." Guess Mr. Remnick doesn't read Harper's.
G+J planning gala debut [Keith Kelly - Post]

Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham, when asked to give up smoking by Ralph Nader in exchange for $21,000 worth of Harper's subscriptions, refused on the basis that "I wouldn't want to sell out my principles or my belief in individual freedom for money." Translation: "$21,000 is a small price to pay for my two-pack-a-day habit."
Portrait: Lewis Lapham, Harper's Editor [Guardian via Romenesko]