Hip hop, as a business, is on the slow downward slope of its peak of several years ago. The traditional music industry as a whole is crumbling under assault from online distribution. And print magazines, of course, are one of the most perilous business ventures in all media. So the launch this month of the print-based Hip Hop Business Journal is truly an idea that takes after one of its cultural heroes; it combines Tupac Shakur's heedless, go-for-it bravery, his headstrong pride, and his inevitable tendency to die young.

Doree Shafrir has a bone to pick with Newsweek. The former Gawker editor recently scored a book deal from her blog of mom emails, and now Newsweek is asking whether she or any other blogger can even write books, much less sell them. "Many bloggers just repackage what they've already done," the magazine said, citing Gawker's book as an example. But the Gawker book did not contain any content from the site at all, so it can hardly be called "repackaged." And there are all kinds of other problems with Newsweek's blogger book slam:

"Sources inside Wenner Media, which publishes Us Weekly, said owner Jann Wenner 'is going nuts on the budgets' - prompting some longtime staffers to look for jobs elsewhere." [Post]

Oh no, is Radar in trouble again? Maybe. Chris Tennant left back in March, and senior editor Tyler Gray left last week for Blender. Now, John Clarke Jr at Portfolio reports that managing ed Leigh Ann Boutwell is "moving to Los Angeles to freelance." Poor Radar. They are apparently relying on more of this "celebrity coverage" stuff just to pay the bills. (Maer says things are just great, though! Ad sales up 6 percent from last year! Radar will live forever! Hooray for Ron Burkle!) [Portfolio]

That Barack Obama picture-on the cover of this month's issue of the men's magazine-looked familiar. Slightly less of Obama's hands are visible; the Democratic candidate's shoulders are weirdly hunched; and the picture's rendered in black and white. But it's obviously from the same Platon shoot as the one that illustrated Time's December cover story. Embarrassing, though it's hard to condemn Esquire: determined insurgent politicians have a limited range of body language; the photo editors can safely assume readers have short memories; and the likely Democratic nominee needs the support of Scots-Irish racists in Appalachia more than he does the goodwill of Esquire's photo department or metropolitan readers.

Smart Washington Post magazine beat reporter Peter Carlson, who's taking a buyout, comes clean in his final column: he thought Rosie magazine was a stupid idea. But hey, whatever; he's "heading off to pursue other interests, such as sloth and gin." [WP]

Ah, the good old days of 1947: a simpler time, when titans sat astride the corporate world, and those titans had desks appropriate to men with superhuman prestige—desks that were acknowledgments of the widespread on-the-job alcoholism that was the style at the time. Modern Mechanix digs up a Popular Science story from '47 about an executive dream desk with everything a man could possibly desire: a 'work' side with a six-tube radio, Teletalk Intercommunication Master Unit, and electronic dictaphone; and a 'play' side with a wet bar and fridge. Oddly, the personal safe is also on the 'play' side, but the cigarette lighter is on the work side. A different culture. The cost of this masterwork? "Well into the four figures." Larger image of the story, after the jump.

So remember how, four days ago, everyone got upset because the Times magazine cover story was about some blogger, and there were more important things happening in the world? Well, now New York magazine has decided to take things a step further and publish a cover story about some blog commenter, because it's damned if it's going to be outflanked by the Times on cultural marginalia. And the magazine didn't trot out one of these fancy, gone-pro Manhattan media commenters, either: We're talking an anonymous, insult-spewing, death-wishing commenter on a blog about Brooklyn. Naturally, I read it to the end and loved every drop. The commenter in question is called The What and likes to post anti-gentrification messages on a site called Brownstoner. An excerpt!

A new newspaper-insert magazine called RiseUp, which will feature "race-related content," is launching next month. It will have a circulation of 4 million, appearing in papers like the NY Daily News, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune. If RiseUp helps drive a true national conversation on race, it will be a good thing. But it will have to break the First Law of newspaper insert magazines: "We all suck." [FOLIO]

Veteran sportswriter Pat Jordan, who worked for Sports Illustrated back in the good old days when every athlete would grovel and tap dance for a chance to appear in that magazine, has a long piece in Slate today detailing exactly why his job was way better back then than it is now. To sum it up: athletes today know they can control the media, whereas back then they were basically underpaid rubes grateful for any press coverage that might land them some endorsements to enhance their meager salaries. Jordan also notes that Jose Canseco is a jerk, old-timey players weren't afraid to ogle girls in front of a reporter, and Deadspin.com is the future of sports journalism. Suck on that, Buzz Bissinger!:

The Times metro section ran a story this morning about Joe Armstrong, and how he's "the Mayor" of Michael's, the media power-lunch sport, and a ubiquitous presence there and friends with all the regulars and, according to Carly Simon, "probably the most loved person in New York." It was the same sort of atmospheric, getting-to-know-your-city type column the same writer did on Nikola Tamindzic, our own nightlife photographer. Fair enough! Armstrong was publisher at New York, Rolling Stone, Saveur and was involved to a lesser extent with a bevy of other publications, like Harper's Bazaar and USA Today. He's on sabbatical from ABC News and has been doing charity work for the past two years. He's still well-connected, the Times insisted. As if to underscore this point, the Post, this same morning, ran a friendly item on Page Six about a pin Armstrong wore, tongue-in-cheek, to a book party: "the image of John McCain hugging President Bush under the words, 'Four More Years!'" I hate to say this about someone so beloved but, Joe, if you can get this much coverage just, you know, hanging out, maybe consider a career in PR. Or as an editor-at-large for Star! They pay six figures for doing basically nothing, and we could probably make an introduction. (Photo via Trinity University)

A University of Wisconsin professor believes the New Yorker ripped off famed comic book illustrator Jack Kirby with the cartoon on the right, which was used for the magazine's popular back-page caption contest. So the professor dug out the Kirby comic on the left and started complaining. The New Yorker said its cartoon was intended as "an overt reference... not an attempt to plagiarize... a tribute," and added an online credit to Kirby, but that wasn't good enough for the prof. So he rang up the Post and complained that Kirby "never got proper credit then, and isn't getting proper credit now." Well, then. The similarity is so great it's hard to imagine the New Yorker cartoonist, Harry Bliss, actually thought he was going to pull a fast one. And the cover is kind of perfect for a caption contest. But if this particular comic book is super obscure, that makes the "it's an homage" explanation much less plausible. Comic book geeks, your services are at last required! How obscure is this Tales To Astonish? (If you can't find our comments section or email addresses, then you're almost certainly not a comic book nerd.) [Post]

Last month, Page Six ran an item about a sex tape featuring Bam Margera Bam-ing the fiancee of radio shock jock Opie. Opie said the whole thing was false, and offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce the tape. A couple of weeks later the Post ran a retraction of the item—but laid the blame at the feet of Steppin' Out editor Chaunce Hayden, who they said gave them the bad info in the first place. Well Chaunce Hayden, unrepentant media whore, wouldn't let such a thing pass without turning it into a feud! And he helpfully forwarded on the snippy emails between himself and Page Six boss Richard Johnson. Watch out for flying spittle!

The "A-frame" shot—between the legs, with something framed in the middle—is called the "most frequently copied trope ever used" in the design world. PRINT Magazine pulls together a great collection of novels, movie and theater posters, ads, comic books, magazines, and album covers that all use the device, in a cacophony of legs that quickly goes from edgy to uniform. The best from five different mediums, after the jump:

The US media takes a lot of crap from people like us for being amoral, craven bottom feeders. We take a lot of crap ourselves for being sensationalist controversy-chasers. But all of us here in the American mass media can pat ourselves on the collective back and say: at least we never took sexy pictures of scantily-clad models posing in the rubble of an earthquake that just killed 100,000 of our countrymen:

The outline on the model at left is not a bathing suit; that would be a tan line. The woman is completely naked. The ad for Cabana Cachaça was accepted not only at Playboy but also at Details, Men's Vogue, Esquire and GQ. Yes, this says something about eroding publication standards and the financial desperation of magazines amid the current advertising downturn. But more critically, it says that Cabana Cachaça is probably some really, really crappy liquor. Larger shot of the ad, marginally NSFW, after the jump.

The trailer is out for the movie version of Toby Young's Vanity Fair memoir, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, apparently a longer version of the one that surfaced in December. In an item titled "Devil Graydon," Page Six claims Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter "comes off worse than Anna Wintour did in The Devil Wears Prada." Carter should pray for such a glamorous portrayal. Instead, with actor Jeff Bridges in his shoes at the fictional Sharps magazine, Carter comes off looking a lot more like Jeff Lebowski. Clip after the jump.

Not that one needs more reason for pessimism about the future of print news magazines, but here's one. Fortune's Stephanie Mehta has the inside look on the $51bn buyout of Bell Canada, which the magazine's current cover touts as 'The Biggest Deal Ever.' Great reporting! Too bad that the transaction-and Fortune's cover-may be torpedoed by the credit crunch.

One more thing that the good people who run TV Guide have to worry about: Henry Yuen, the company's former CEO, is now officially a fugitive. He was charged with obstruction of justice last week for destroying documents that the SEC requested (in relation to an earlier conviction for securities fraud, natch), but he failed to turn himself in. New owner Macrovision is already preoccupied with trying to sell the print magazine to rescue the entire enterprise from death, so they certainly could do without the headache of answering new questions about Yuen, who was fired in 2002. Luckily for them, this story is far too esoteric for TV outlets to cover. [Mediapost via Jossip]

Wired ran the meth tutorial above under the headline, "Give Your Intellect A Boost — Just Say Yes To Doing The Right Drugs!" That was, like, a month ago, but the Times is now wondering if the article might, you know, give people the wrong idea about drugs. In addition to some positive words about meth, the article also praised drug Aderall and said it is "often prescribed to A.D.H.D. patients (wink, wink)," implying people should lie to their doctors to get the drug and "enhanc[e] concentration, turning mundane tasks into wondrous ones." This incident bodes well for Wired in two ways: