Perez Hilton got a fawning LA Times profile today. Instead of taking the opportunity to win fans back after recent publicity snafus, he used it as a platform to define his brand going forward: that of a professionally insufferable dick.

In your good old-fashioned Friday media column: A legal tiff over SEXTING (are your kids doing it?), the looming end of magazine subscription cards, Dana Milbank needs help, and thieving Oprah is sued, for $1 trillion. Yes.

Oh shit. Dylan Ratigan aired an embarrassing clip of Jonathan Capehart scarfing a bagel. So this morning Capehart's mom called in and chewed Ratigan out for mocking her son. She is cool, but somehow we think this isn't making Jon look cooler. [Jon Capehart is actually cool!]

• News Corp. posted a hefty loss for the most recent quarter, reporting that profits were down by 30 percent, although things would have been worse if weren't for Roger Ailes's cash machine, Fox News. In related news, Rupert Murdoch seems to think he can get people to pay for content on the Internet and plans to give it a shot over the next year. [NYT, BN, NYT, Guardian]
• Not to be outdone by Keith Olbermann's anti-Fox News rant on Monday night, Bill O'Reilly took aim at NBC's parent company, GE, on his show last night. This truce thing sure is working out beautifully, isn't it? [Gawker]
• Time Inc. is shutting down Southern Accents, a luxury lifestyle title. [NYP]
• Twitter was crippled by a big denial-of-service attack today, which you know full well if you happened to try and log into Twitter today. [CNET]
• If you don't watch Charlie Rose's self-indulgent talk show on PBS, now you can not watch it on Bloomberg TV, too. How convenient. [NYT]
• The Post's Page Six may be hiring Emily Smith, formerly Britain's Sun and Life & Style, to replace the recently-departed Paula Froelich. [Gawker]

Time Inc's Southern Accents is the latest victim of the Great Magazine Die-Off. The full memo:

In your leaky Wednesday media column: A DC editor accidentally forwards an email convo with a reporter about Blackwater, which we reproduce for you in full; layoffs come to Newhouse; the WSJ ends embargoes; and Jack Shafer abhors The Butt.

• NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote Jay Leno's new show. Don't believe it? Try this out for size: "In early September, NBC will even adopt a portion of Interstate 10 in California to reiterate Mr. Leno's time slot." [NYT]
• Notwithstanding the Leno blitz, NBC is still looking to cut its budget. [NYT]
• No one cares about CNBC these days, in case you haven't noticed. [Slate]
• More on troubles at Condé Nast (revenues may fall by as much as $350 million this year), and the recent round of receptionist-purging. [NYP, NYO]
• The lobbyist scandal goes on. A couple of days after it was revealed that MSNBC's Richard Wolffe is now working for a lobbying firm comes the news that CNN's Bill Schneider has signed up with a D.C. think tank. [HuffPo]
• Related: Wolffe has another Obama-related book in the works. [TNR]
• Experts say the prognosis for BusinessWeek is not good. [DailyFinance]
• As you might expect, the mood has been very upbeat at CurrentTV today now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee have returned from North Korea. [NYT]

Yesterday we told you that McKinsey-driven Conde Nast was firing all of its receptionists. A blow to the company's editorial glamor, yes. But the dragnet has also seized the New Yorker's whimsical, overqualified "jack of all trades!" [UPDATE: Maybe not!]

In your sizzling Tuesday media column: the future of the media is paid, Newsweek fights the power in Iran, another mag mogul kicks BusinessWeek's tires (made of paper), and Dan Rather's madder'n a lake trout with fiery testicles, at CBS.

• Keith Olbermann took Times reporter Brian Stelter to task last night for reporting that News Corp. and GE had worked out a deal to tone down the rhetoric between MSNBC and Fox News. But he didn't disagree with everything Stelter reported. Conveniently, only the bad stuff about him was wrong. [NYM]
• More bad news for Olbermann: MSNBC now admits it made a mistake by not disclosing that Countdown fixture Richard Wolffe is a paid lobbyist. Naturally, Olbermann had absolutely no idea about any of this. [Politico, Salon]
• Condé Nast is shedding more staff. This time around it appears the media giant's receptionists will be paying the ultimate price. [Gawker, NYM]
• Reps for Bruce Wasserstein met with BusinessWeek execs yesterday to discuss a bid for the magazine. Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar and owner of Fast Company, may be a potential bidder as well. [BW]

This could be the unkindest Conde Nast cut of all: A tipster tells us that "as of Monday, Glamour will no longer have a receptionist." And this may be only the beginning.

Jennifer Senior wrote a massive cover piece on the Obama communications machine for this week's issue of New York that is, to put it mildly, a nauseatingly fawning tribute to the communications genius of our president and his advisers.

In your sweltering Friday media column: the summer doldrums bring lazy story-theft to the New York Times, Conde Nast quits buying newspapers, a new documentary about reporters , to watch, and Pat Kiernan's Twitter is America's most powerful media outlet.

Harper's Magazine is a wordy, smart magazine for self-satisfied liberals. Harper's Bazaar is a glossy fashion magazine. But according to the publisher of Harper's, it's a constant battle to make sure people don't confuse the two.

OK! magazine wanted to drum up sales with this cover about Jessica Simpson's weight loss. When Us Weekly ran the same basic cover, it was their best-selling cover of 2007 — the same year, incidentally, OK! found Jessica's "new" body.

In your whopping Thursday media column: South Africa's president wins a libel case, Creative Loafing's tenuous existence, RBI's selling everything, and the latest problem with saving the New York Times.

In your darkening Wednesday media column: J-school mania explained, the Food Network thrives, media conglomerates put on a happy face, and Adam Rubin gets plenty of sympathy.

The high society better-than-yous who summer in The Hamptons are under the impression that there is some legitimate moral stratification of Hamptons summer society magazines. They fuss and fight as if they were doing something marginally useful, or coherent!

The promotional campaign for The September Issue, R.J. Cutler's documentary about Vogue, includes downloadable ringtones of Anna Wintour's terrified assistant answering her boss' phone: "Anna Wintour's office?" Be the first on your block!

McKinsey & Co.'s penny-pinching audit of Conde Nast is underway, and they're successfully striking fear into the hearts of employees at all levels. Apparently magazines are expected to "make money," now?