In your tricky Tuesday media column: UK newspaper readers are cheap (just like us), Hugh Hefner's perch atop Playboy is safe, insta-analysis of the fallout of Martin Dunn's departure from the NYDN, and staff moves at Forbes and the NYT.

Multiple sources tell us that New York Daily News editor Martin Dunn is stepping down. The newsroom was just notified. He's citing "family reasons" for his departure. Dunn's departure memo, after the jump. [Updated below].

Upsetting: A tipster tells us that the bedridden New York Daily News' longtime photo editor Mike Lipack got word that he was being fired from the NYDN "after stepping on [Editor-In-Chief] Martin Dunn's dick one too many times." Eegh. Updated!

Martin Dunn

We hear that Daily News editor in chief Martin Dunn has taken off for London and won't be back all month. Feeling super-secure in his job? Or looking for a new one? We don't know. We would like to! We know only enough to make innuendos.

After Metro editor Dean Chang and National editor Mark Mooney got canned from the Daily News, the Post's Keith Kelly said the following day that the firings were part of a panicked strategy by editor-in-chief Martin Dunn to please owner Mort Zuckerman. Kelly pointed out that Dunn's contract expires in the "fourth quarter of this year"—but it's sooner than it sounds, as sources tell us the contract actually expires in October, the beginning of the fourth quarter.

• Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal. For free! [WSJ]
  

The rumble between the Post and the News to see who can give away more sponsor copies to boost their circulation shows no sign of abating: In today's Observer, News EIC Martin Dunn calls shenanigans: "If you'd lost $300 million over the past five years, spent $200 million on new presses, carpet-bombed neighborhoods with free copies and lost fortunes to sell a few thousand papers in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, you'd be desperate to celebrate creeping a few copies ahead of us." Post EIC Col Allan counters that "the Post is half the price, and twice the value." There's some particularly nice bitchery in the Times, where Dunn's party line about the News still outselling the Post in "the New York metro area," elicits the following response:

Those compassionate soldiers at the Post feel for their rival army over at the News, today revealing that in addition to the "purge of employees hired by or associated with former Daily News President Les Goodstein," (including flack Donna Dees, canned yesterday), the organization has become a theater of terror where a pledge of fealty to EIC Martin Dunn is now a job requirement. "Adding to frayed nerves is word that management is monitoring all e-mail to see who's corresponding with News Corp. or The Post. Some News staffers also fear their phones are tapped."

To compensate for your short-term memory loss, a recap of some major shifts at the Daily News: Colleen Curtis recently left her position as Managing Editor Features for the warmth of Diane Sawyer's lap at Good Morning America. Even more recently, editor-in-chief Michael Cooke left — after a mere ten months at the helm — to return to Chicago, where he'll hopefully get his shoe fetish under control.