• Hurrah: Mag ad revenues were nicely up in 2005. [Folio:]
• Boo: Mag ad pages barely rose in 2005. [Ad Age]
• Kurt Andersen is the godfather of snark, says Jon Friedman. And we fear for the day — and that day may never come — when Kurt calls upon us to do a service for him. [MW]
• Robin Williams made an ass of himself at Jann Wenner's big birthday bash. [WWD]
• TW COO Jeff Bewkes agrees with his boss, that the company shouldn't be split up, rather than with Carl Icahn, who thinks otherwise and is harassing his boss. Shocking news, that. [MW]

First, "A Washington Tidal Wave," in today's Newsweek:

• Media observers make predictions for 2006, and prove that everyone — not just us — loves a good Radar punchline. [MB]
• Magazine editors make resolutions for 2006, and remind us that no one — not even us — is amused by a Blackberry joke. [WWD]
• Monday Night Football is dead. Long live Monday Night Football. [NYT]
• Bossman Nick is, apparently, a sexy geek. [Wired News]

Most folks, we imagine, would just as soon forget the last year in magland. (Falling circs, plummeting ad sales, layoffs.) But the fine folks at Folio:, who subsist entirely on a diet of Vitamin Water and back issues, have chosen to remind us all of the year that was.

• Bush summoned Sulzberger and Keller to Washington earlier this month in a last-ditch attempt to get them not to run the domestic-spying story, reports Jon Alter. [Newsweek]
• And, says Greg Mitchell, as the Times's handling of the domestic-spying story increasingly seems to be another major management fuckup at the paper, George W. Bush proves he is the true Teflon president. [E&P]
• Bigtime journalists aren't paid enough, argues Slate's Daniel Gross, who, charmingly, hasn't yet realized that of course we'll never make enough to live like real human beings anywhere in New York City. [Slate]
• Redesigned TV Guide, which now looks basically nothing like TV Guide, is doing great numbers. But they may not be great enough. [WWD]
• Carl Icahn, who hasn't been happy with Time Warner management in a while, ain't at all happy with the proposed TW-Google deal. [NYP]
• Radar published what might have been the best sentence of magazine writing this year: "In 2004, a man playing Pluto was run over and killed by a 'princess float' in the Share a Dream Come True parade at Disney World's Magic Kingdom." Plus Peter Carlson's other "wild and wacky" magazine moments from 2005. [WP]

Sometimes, we really love German GQ.

• Time's Viveca Novak testifies to Plame grand jury, and — eschewing Judy Miller's wait-a-few-weeks model — she'll write about it in next week's Time. [NYT]
• MPA figures out what'll save magazines: This crazy new thing called the Internet! [Mediaweek]
• Actress won't get naked for VF, and fires publicist who set up the shoot. We're a little bit in love now, to be honest. [Radar]
• Salon.com "wants to be known for more than polemics." Who knew. [MW]
• In Touch runs "Exclusive: Jessica's Breakup Diary." Which is great — except, of course, that Jessica had nothing to do with it. [WWD]

Because mornings are for tears and existential loathing, we present you with MediaPost's 2005 Mag Rack, published last January, which mentions the publications they were looking forward to in the coming year. As 2005 draws to a close, we found the following old list of anticipated publications to be most appropriate for your seasonal depressive nostalgia. What they once were hoping for:

• Martha Stewart's next mag, Blueprint, will cater to 20-somethings buying their first homes. God, might we actually have to read it? [AdAge]
• Talking Points Memo'er Josh Marshall hires two bloggers to report for him. Bloggers who have to report?! Huh? Wha? [NY Sun]
• Craig of Craiglist to launch journalism project. Which is good, because he's slowly killing newspapers by taking their classifieds, anyway. [Guardian]
• Total mag ad pages up ever so slightly in 2005. Woo-hoo! Not dead yet! [MIN]
• Disaggregated media content confuses Simon Dumenco, who generously offers to disaggregate his column. [AdAge]
• Greg Mitchell says John Tierney is full of shit. [E&P]
• NBC Universal to close Trio, leaving one fewer cable network you don't watch. [Hollywood Reporter via MSNCB]

Magazines, as we all know, are never afraid to confront the big questions. And The Washington Post's Magazine Reader, Peter Carlson, proves that today by rounding up all the questions asked on this month's crop of glossies.

TV Guide, as we all know, is dying. No on needs a weekly magazine of TV listings any longer. Solution? As of April, it was: Launch Inside TV, a woman-oriented celebrity-ish mag.

So here's a question a reader just posed. Take a look at the "Pretty Makeup Ideas" feature in the December Seventeen, out last week, and tell us: Is it editorial or advertising? It sure doesn't say "advertisement" on it anywhere, and it's got a byline, which makes you think it's edit. But, then, it also has spreads like this one, which make you think it's got to be ad:

• Never mind Judy Miller; everything about working at the Times sucks right now. [WP]
• Of course, the entire newspaper business sucks right now, at least judging from the new circ numbers. [E&P]
• In a bid to create the most conservative editorial page in the history of the planet, Rupert Murdoch wants to buy the Journal, although he knows it's not for sale. [WSJ]
• Microsoft leads the crowded pack of companies interested in buying AOL. [NYT]
• The problem, however, is that AOL sucks ass. [AdAge]
• Anderson Cooper is termed a "boyish metrosexual," in which five of the seven syllables are accurate. [Boston Globe]
• New MSNBC show will be like dinner at the Chung-Povitch's. Just what we've always wanted. [NYT]
• Libby trial might be toughest on reporters — Miller, Cooper, and Russert. [WSJ]
• Glamour editor discovers gender imbalance in top mags' bylines. Glamour, on the other hand, we're sure has a masthead that, to use Clinton's term, "looks like America." [NYT]

After five years, the national press has finally discovered it can stand up to the Bush White House. So when the journalists are getting all uppity, and when Scott McClellan's stonewalling just won't keep them in place anymore, what's a desperate administration to do? Biological warfare, of course. Or at least so a conspiracy theorist could be, from the evidence presented by a high-ranking editor at one of the nation's major news organizations in an IM conversation with a Gawker Operative last night:

• Now Diane Sawyer wants the World News Tonight job. [B&C]
• But Geraldo says Elizabeth Vargas should get it. [B&C]
• New Time Inc. chief John Huey isn't as bad as he's rumored to be, says Huey. [NYP]
• Selma Blair went to an old psychiatric hospital and put a live rat in her mouth. For a photo shoot. For the Times, of course. [WWD]
• Announcing the cast for Miss Run Amok: The Movie. [Media Mob/NYO]
• After two days of conferring in Puerto Rico, magazine bigshots have breakout insight: Things must change. Wow. [Mediaweek]
• David Carr's kids believe only suckers pay for content. Content companies sort of believe it, too. [NYT]
• City of Newark, N.J., pays $100K for good news coverage. Which has clearly been very successful. [NJ.com]

• At Puerto Rican confab, ASME updated its church-and-state guidelines on advertising. We're sure the one man in America who can't tell New Yorker content from a Target ad — and who happens to have a column in the Chicago Sun-Times — is still unhappy. [Folio:]
• And what's a media yakfest without a panel appearance by our slutty sister? She's in Puerto Rico, natch, this time commenting on Millerpalooza: "As I've said before, it's OK to be in bed with your source, but then you have to fuck him." [WWD]
• Now that his News Corporation is a U.S. company, Rupert Murdoch will stand for election to its board of directors for the first time ever. We bet he wins — but, then again, we also said that about Al Gore. [Bloomberg]
• What do editor's-letter photos really mean? An exegesis on why Janice Min shows leg, David Granger crops his head, and Graydon Carter is smirking. [Radar]
• Paul McLeary doesn't like cliches. [CJR Daily]

The American Society of Magazine Editors, confabbing for a few days in Puerto Rico — because it's really difficult, of course, to talk about magazines in New York, what with being so far from the beach and all — yesterday announced the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years, as voted on by 52 top editors.

The Journal wrote it a week and a half ago, and today it is sealed: Notes-releasing Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norm Pearlstine will end his 11-year tenure in the job at the close of this year, and his deputy for the last several years, editorial director John Huey, will become top dog.

• The Times's silence on Judy Miller has become absurd. [CJR]
• Even public editor Barney Calame doesn't understand why the silence continues. Which might just put an end to it — after all, this is the man who ultimately got Geraldo his correction. [NYTimes.com]
• But the Times's op-ed columnists, at least, all have excellent reasons why they haven't written about Miller Time. [E&P]
• Beyonce is too black for the cover of Vanity Fair. Of course, so are we. [Radar]
• Men's Health spinoff Best Life ups frequency, rate base. Which is what you get from worshipping at the altar of your readers. [Mediaweek]
• Former Time Warner chief Gerald Levin helps open super-high-end spa in Santa Monica. Next month, he'll merge it with eSpas.com and ruin the company. [LAT]
• Mag bigshots should — of all things — take Jon Stewart seriously. [MarketWatch]

Pantene's PR people recently sent a survey to top beauty editors around town, enquiring as to how they like to receive communications about new products. It examines important questions, like how much lead time the editors need, what experts are most helpful to talk to, and what sort of follow-ups they prefer: