• The late night battle rages on: After losing ground to Letterman, Conan bounced back last night, and had a pretty solid first week overall. [THR, NYT]
• Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. confirms that it has been talks with the New York Times Co. to purchase the Boston Globe. [BH]
• Stephen Colbert's decision to broadcast from Iraq worked out nicely: Ratings for the Comedy Central show have been up 25 percent this week. [NYT]
• Joy Behar is launching a new talk show on HLN. The best part about it: She'll be bumping blowhard Lou Dobbs from his 9pm slot on the network. [NYT]
• TV, print and online ad spending fell 14 percent in the first quarter. [WSJ]
• Hope you're a Marley & Me fan. HarperCollins is cemented a deal to publish 13 children's books about the world's most famous Labrador. Yes, 13. [PW]

• It's only been a week since Conan took over the top-rated Tonight Show, but David Letterman has already passed over him in the ratings. [NYT]
• Also: Dave Letterman's new contract will keep him at CBS through '12. [LAT]
• Yesterday the Boston Globe's largest union rejected the New York Times Co.'s proposed package of cuts. The NYT responded by implementing a 23 percent pay cut anyway and now the union is taking the matter to court. [NYT]
• Ratings are down for CNN's Lou Dobbs. And thank God for that. [NYO]
• It's official: Ari Emanuel is the new Mike Ovitz! Both the New York Times and The Daily Beast invoke Ovitz's name in lengthy pieces on "the pre-eminent power player in Hollywood" and "Hollywood's new don." [NYT, TDB]
• Sound the alarms! Swine flu has returned to Condé Nast! [Daily Intel]

• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington headquarters is contaminated with asbestos! [NYO]
• Tricky Dylan Ratigan isn't joining ABC after all. He's going to MSNBC. [Gawker]
• Michael Wolff may hate the New York Times, but if it weren't for the Times, he'd probably have nothing to rant about on his unknown website. [HP]
• Amazon unveiled its fancy, new Kindle reader today. [NYT, E&P]

Maxim is covering the financial crisis the only way they know how: The new issue of the mag features a piece on the hottest business reporters on CNBC and Fox Business. ("Foxy financial reporters are fixing the recession in our laps," the story starts.) It's no surprise that they're taking that approach, of course, but to assign Maria Bartiromo a hotness level on par with Lou Dobbs? Ouch! Clearly the makeup department at CNBC has been pretty busy today touching up Maria's tear-stained cheeks. The charticle is below.

• NBC chief Jeff Zucker says that despite the fact Jim Cramer got his ass handed to him last week by Jon Stewart, it's had absolutely no impact on CNBC. Believe that and you may also be willing to buy that everything's perfect at MSNBC and NBC, and Zucker has a perfect head of hair, too. [Portfolio, B&C]
• Crain Communications has cut 150 staffers and sliced salaries by 10%. [PC]
• Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes, is in the hospital with cancer. [Wow]
• Media advertising fell 2.6% in 2008, according to Nielsen. [B&C]
• Interview seems to be having financial difficulties. [Gawker]
• Discovery has filed a patent suit against Amazon over the Kindle. [WSJ]
• The Hills's Audrina Patridge has a reality show of her own in the works. [THR]
• CNN's Lou Dobbs is a racist. But you probably knew that already. [Gawker]

Lou Dobbs is usually a belligerent xenophobe in honor of something Mexican, like a migrant worker, leprosy, asphalt or maybe just a cheese enchilada. Not today: The Irish made the CNN anchor insult everyone.

Lou Dobbs was once a reasonably well respected financial journalist before he traded in his green visor for a pitchfork and a white sheet. And now he's missing-in-action during the biggest financial story of his lifetime.

Ron Insana left CNBC three years ago to run a hedge fund. Like Lou Dobbs and Steven Rattner before him, he learned that actually succeeding in business is not as easy as covering success in business. So now he's begged a part-time reporting job from his old bosses. At least he'll be able to share his Wall-Street-insider wisdom with viewers. Just like Jim Cramer!

♦ Michelle Obama may end up on the cover of Vogue in the next few months: "It's been a long-standing tradition to photograph the new first lady. So needless to say, we are very interested in working with Mrs. Obama." But Ebony may get there first. [WWD]
♦ Shares of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. plunged today following the company's announcement it's revising its 2009 forecast. [Bloomberg]
♦ New York television critic John Leonard has died. [Vulture]
♦ A round of layoffs have hit Hearst, although the exact numbers haven't been released. [Folio]

CNN election coverage through the years [via HuffPo]

• Michael Phelps is dating Barbara Walters' assistant "Marina," with whom he went to college. Wait, that's a fake name right?? Is someone playing a trick on poor old Cindy Adams? [Cindy Adams]

It's Lou Dobbs' birthday today! CNN's resident immigrant-basher is 63. (If you're interested in hiring a mariachi band to show up at CNN's offices and sing for him, go here.) Dobbs isn't the only cable news personality who will be blowing out candles today. Hannity & Colmes' Alan Colmes is 58. Others celebrating: Brooklyn Academy of Music President Karen Brooks Hopkins is turning 57. My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardalos turns 46. Actor Kevin Sorbo is 50. And the WWE's Stephanie McMahon, better known as the daughter of Vince McMahon, turns 32.

Here's Lou Dobbs, CNN immigrant-hater, complaining about how the entirety of the press—besides him!—is totally, completely in bed with Barack Obama. He's right, of course. Except that the media attention is so self-defeating, twisted, and unhelpful that it's facile to paint it as a neat little example of liberal bias. Also what the hell is he still doing on CNN? Everyone else on the network seems embarrassed to be associated with him. Him and Jack Cafferty should have a show together. A Broadway show! Because then we would never see it.

Did you read Sunday's Times piece about how people are getting their news from Jon Stewart these days? Because I sure as heck didn't! I don't need the Times to tell me to stop reading the Times and turn on my cable box — mainly because I was pretty sure I had read that same exact story in the Times before. But this morning, as the story was still carrying the top of the "Most Emailed List," I decided to go find that old Times story I remembered. Well, it wasn't easy. There are 102 stories listed in "Past coverage" of Jon Stewart (the original Michael Phelps!), about nine of which employ the phrase "get their news from." And yet I could not for the life of me find the one I remembered actually reading. Turns out it is because, like the former "young people" who started this whole "getting news from the Daily Show" trend, I am now very very very old…Because they've been doing this story since September 2000.

It's a pattern if not a rule in politics: the more populist the politician, the more lavish the personal lifestyle. John Edwards-son of a millworker and champion of the other, forgotten America-has the most valuable home in the North Carolina county in which he lives. Since cable news has become an extension of politics, it should be no surprise that a news anchor can maintain a double life. CNN's puffy-faced Poujadist, Lou Dobbs, saved his TV career by channeling the anger of America's redundant middle-aged white men. And yet Idaho-bred Dobbs' lavish home outside New York qualifies him as a member of the overclass against which he rails. It's one thing to wade through the property documents; but here are satellite photographs which show the driveway leading up to Dobbs' country house on Wantage's Quarry Road, the swimming pool and tennis court, and the vast hatched lawn that surrounds the compound. The image isn't detailed enough to show the cars in the driveway, but it's safe to assume that one of them is Dobbs' un-American Aston Martin.

Lou Dobbs has made his name in recent years as CNN's so-called populist, the man who rattles on every night about the war on the middle class, "broken borders," American companies that export jobs abroad, and the perils of free trade. He's used his bully pulpit on CNN to scold American auto manufacturers for sending jobs abroad, attacked foreign suppliers for flooding U.S. markets with their products, and been a leading voice to "buy American" in support of the "homeland." Given Dobbs' blustery rhetoric, you might think he'd stand by his words and support American business by driving an American-made car, wouldn't you? You'd be totally wrong! It turns out Dobbs doesn't own a single car produced by an American company.

Last week brought the appalling news that pill-popping professional idiot Rush Limbaugh signed an eight-year, $400 million contract with Premiere Radio Networks. He'll now collect $38 million a year, which he'll probably direct to some of the passions detailed in a NYT Magazine profile of Limbaugh this past weekend, like La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel cigars, private jets (he just purchased a Gulfstream G550) and life-size oil paintings of himself. (The deal also provided him with a $100 million signing bonus.) But what about the rest of the news media heavyweights—how much coin are they taking home annually? The salaries of America's most beloved anchors and blowhards of various political persuasions after the jump.

Attention, natives of Puebla residing illegally in Bergen County: Lou Dobbs may be running for Governor of New Jersey! CNN's most unrepentent xenophobe is mulling a gubernatorial bid, the Newark Star-Ledger reports today. Dobbs, whom a few like-minded immigrant-haters unsucessfully tried to persuade to run for president this year, is said to be considering a run against Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine, who is now saddled with a 52% disapproval rating. The normally voluble commentator isn't commenting on the rumors, but many state Republicans want nothing to do with the idea. One local GOP operative, David Norcross, calls the prospect of Dobbs in the Governor's Mansion "dreadful." In the unlikely scenario Lou does run and win, Gov. Dobbs may not go so far as to personally escort New Jersey's illegals out of the state, but you can rest assured he won't be offering them driver's licenses anytime soon.

CNN shouter Lou Dobbs is apparently "mulling a run for New Jersey governor." Oh, please let that be true! Current governor Jon Corzine is quite unpopular and "Republican officials" claim the oddly orange-hued pseudo-populist pundit is "taking steps toward running" for that prestigious office himself. We cannot think of a better idea! For so many reasons!

You know all those media pundits who say it's no biggie that every time you call a helpline to complain about pretty much any product or service your call gets zapped to India where you get to talk in circles with a person who couldn't care less about your stupid American problems and thinks that calling you by your first name at the end of every sentence will cover up their condescending attitude? Well, they'll be changing their tune in a jiffy. "Local newspaper publisher Newsquest has told prepress staff at some of its titles that their jobs will be outsourced to India."