• Iraqi reporter working for NYT murdered in Iraq. Apparently not everyone got the things-are-getting-better memo. [NYT]
• Emmy gets its biggest audience in years. Oscar is jealous, not that he'd ever admit it. [USAT]
• Paul Carlucci named NYP publisher, replacing Rupert Murdoch, who seems to think he has other, more important responsibilities. [NYT]
• What makes a news office a bureau? This is clearly a question for CBS's Public Eye — mostly because we can't imagine anyone else would care. [Phil. Enquirer]
• Oprah finally talks about the Hermes incident — and you thought there was nothing left to say about it, silly — and recommends that we all wear Birkin bags. Perhaps if she buys us one. [WWD]

• First the Democratic Party, now NBC: All our old friends are going after those dastardly God-fearing Red Staters. [NYT]
• Did you know CMJ is actually a magazine? Yeah, we were afraid of that. [Folio:]
• If we've got the chronology right: Jennifer Bleyer tripped through Dead show in Ohio, came to New York and found a shul on the Upper West Side, created Heeb, showed Howard Stern her ass, and quit the magazine. Then she wrote about it. [Nextbook]
• ASME wants to pick the best 40 magazine covers from the last 40 years, and we're betting none will feature Britney. [MW]
• NBC, CNN to open New Orleans news bureaus. Wow — U.S. TV neworks expanding their coverage. We never thought we'd see the day. [AP via USAT]
• Turns out that, yes, "I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport," can, in fact, get you fired from your school paper, even in North Carolina. [N&O]

• Martha Stewart to launch fashion mag. Oh, the endless opportunities for orange-jumpsuit jokes. [NYP]
• New Orleanian Doug Brinkley, who made his pundit name on his pal JFK Jr.'s death, unsurprisingly signs first Katrina book deal. [MSNBC]
• Hearst and Hachette — gasp! — work together on an ad deal. [NYT]
• What's new about the new Paris Review? Um, what isn't? [NYO]
• Michael Kinsley leaves LAT editorial page after a little more than a year; no one was considerate enough to leave news of his firing in a Xerox machine so he could learn about it in advance. [NYT]
• Wenner Media redecorates, and Jann isn't happy with the paint colors. [NYO, second item]
• NYT, WP give each other sneak peaks of their front pages. Sputters E&P's scoopy Joe Strupp: "Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? They'll see everything, they'll — they'll see the Big Board!" [E&P]
• ASME barely slaps The New Yorker on the wrist for Target single-advertiser issue, and crazy columnist in Chicago bursts a blood vessel. [CS-T]
• The lowest blow: In wake of Katrina, public dislikes Bush more than it dislikes press. [E&P]

• Penthouse raises new cash to take on Playboy. In mud-wrestling, of course, with throngs of fratboys watching. [Folio:]
• Honcho Rick Kaplan might not be much longer for MSNBC, according to rumors. And we're sure his underlings will be sad to see him go. [NYP]
• All of Time Inc.'s business websites — Fortune.com, Business2.com, FSB.com — will be merged into Time Warner's CNNMoney.com. [Folio:]
• Reporting on VF's reporting of WP's reporting. [E&P]
• CNN's Aaron Brown thinks about ABC's Peter Jennings. Then he thinks about that damnded Anderson Cooper, who's hogging all the attention. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• The Post's scratch-off poker game — play to win! Except when winning is impossible. [Media Mob/NYO]

• Steve Fishman reconstructs and deconstructs the entire relationship between Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert, determining that Lach left because dad wouldn't let him be his own man. [NY Mag]
• Anderson Cooper, meanwhile, remains inscrutable — about his job, about his sex life, about where to have lunch — while everyone just keeps loving him more. [NY Mag]
• Everyone, that is, except Franklin Foer, who finds him "a Yale-educated Geraldo Rivera." [TNR]
• Celebrity Living, which apparently wasn't really a gossip mag before, now is. [WWD]
• Enjoying the VMAs with celebs' favorite celeb photographer. [Slate]
• The new business mag for Conde could be what InStyle was for Time Inc., says David Carr. [NYT]
• OK America!'s editor eats at the Olive Garden. Gasp. [The Observer (London)]

• Principled, uncompromising Judy Miller now in negotiations to compromise and get out of jail — which Reuters doesn't mention till graf six. [Reuters via HuffPost]
• Media continue to develop backbone, as newsweeklies say no to FEMA request for no corpse pictures. [NYP]
• CBS News's non-opinionated, non-ombudsman, non-media crit blog launches Monday. We don't know how we'll last till then. [Mediaweek]
• Craiglist could kill the newspaper classifieds biz entirely. Plus casual encounters! [SmartMoney]
• TWX honchos go to fashion shows, and chief Dick Parsons is sad there's not Tyra. [WWD]
• Henry Luce III, son of Time founder and longtime Time Inc. reporter and exec, dies at 80. [NYT]

• Dick Cheney learns the perils of live TV. [Jossip]
• You know how we finally started liking TV reporters last week? Well, now that their bosses are back from vacation, says Nikki Finke, it's not gonna last. [LA Weekly]
• Bob Guccione Jr., founder of Spin and Gear, to buy Discover from Disney. Savor that: It's not every day you see "Guccione" and "Disney" in the same sentence. [NYT]
• Next week ASME will consider reprimanding The New Yorker for its Target single-advertiser issue. Because obviously The New Yorker is the big problem in the magazine business these days. [CS-T]
• Camilla Al Fayed, daughter of Harrod's owner Mohammed Al Fayed, crosses the pond next week. But not, as reported, to be Anna Wintour's assistant. Alas. [WWD]

• Are things as bad, business-wise, at Dow Jones and the Journal as you've heard they are? Yes. Yes they are. [NY Mag]
• Inc. mag looks at how it got sold. [Inc.]
• What will the Times of the future look like? Tabloidical, quite likely. [Ad Age]
• Once again, soft news beats hard news: Celeb mags see good newsstand numbers, and the newsweeklies don't. [Mediaweek]
• Jack Shafer hates TV news. [Slate]
• Simon Dumenco calls AMI chief David Pecker stupid. [Ad Age]
• Poppy Bush criticizes the media for picking on his son. [E&P]
• Coming to a Sirius receiver near you: Cosmo on the radio. [WWD]

• "I used to be Dan Rather," says the CBSer. "I used to cover hurricanes." He then burst into tears and burned an effigy of Anderson Cooper. [LAT]
• The rumors were all true: Newsday continues to whither away, as 45 newsroom jobs are cut and the city edition is decimated. [Newsday]
• Bryan Curtis hits F1 on his Slate keyboard to produce today's expectedly unexpected lead — verbatim, "TK has been dusted with so much glory lately that it's high time [his/her/its] reputation got a good sullying" — and decides to insert "Ray Bradbury." [Slate]
• Paper mag launches new website, featuring — you'll never guess! — blogs. [Papermag.com]
• Coming soon: MadKids. For those who find old-school Mad magazine too old-skewing and highbrow. [Baltimore Sun]

• Martha Stewart ankles bracelet, finally. [Newsday]
• Newsday to cut jobs, benefit, and maybe the NYC edition. Again. [NYDN]
• Howell Raines lives! Though it's still not like he's getting published on this coast. [LAT]
• As if a reality show about life at the Daily News didn't sound exciting enough, know this: Word is long-fingered vulgarian Hud Morgan's the breakout star. This is particularly great news, because Hud's ego really needs a boost. [WWD]
• FX becomes the first TV network to show Iraqi insurgents beheading a journalist — on fictional show, Over There. [E&P]
• Now Google sells print ads, too. Somehow, this must be bad for newspapers and magazines. [NYT]

• Victoria Gotti is going to start a celeb mag, she says. Then again, she also said she had breast cancer. [NYP]
• The beauty job that Nadine Haobsh didn't get at Seventeen has finally been filled — by a boy. [WWD]
• Hey, so it turns out Martha Stewart is going to have some new TV shows. [WP]
• Goodbye, Dali: Penthouse's new owners are suing the Gooch for $4 million over unreturned company property, including two paintings by Salvador Dali. [NYP]
• Mediabistro's Elizabeth Spiers — who doesn't like party reporting — checks in from vacation to let us know that TV networks lust for ratings. [MB]

• Imagine if a Woody Allen antihero was on a warfront. We'd call that Bananas. Michiko calls it War Reporting for Cowards. [NYT]
• More bad news for American Media: First they lose Arnold, now Standard & Poor's drops their debt rating. And on top of that all, the CEO is still named Pecker. Heh. [NYP]
• Martha Stewart Living and two other women's mags now caught in "apocalyptic" wave of circ scandals. Fraud at Martha Stewart? No way. [Ad Age]
• Mr. Big is renovating his house. In the last week of August, that counts as news. [WWD, second item]

• New York mag launches major new ad campaign that involves replacing subway billboards every day. Because that's the big problem with waiting for the train: Not enough new reading material. [NYT]
• Is reality TV even worse for its writers than it is for the contestants? [CSM]
• Jon Friedman can't wait for the Conde business mag. [MW]
• Actually, Judy Miller is not having the time of her life in person, her husband now says. [WWD]
• What happens to NBC execs if this season bombs like last season? Bad thing happen, we imagine. [B&C]

• All those stories today on Si considering a TV deal with Comcast? They're about SI — i.e., Sports Illustrated — not about Conde Nast. It took us a while to figure that out. [NYP]
• Oh, except that there is a TV deal at Conde, in which MTV is shooting a reality show in Teen Vogue's West Coast office. [WWD]
• The Times loves it some red staters, says Eric Alterman. [Nation]
• Myrna Blyth comes to bury celebrity editors. Again. Virtually word for word. [FishbowlNY]
• Remembering magazines' sexy, sultry summer of Scientology. [Folio:]
• There's a new national editor at the Times, which, come to think of it, doesn't change anything for nearly any of us. [NYT]

• It's Jim Romenesko's media world now. We all just live and work in it. [Boston Phoenix]
• Things were bad enough for biz books already — now they'll have to compete with free-spending Conde, where Si says he'll put up to $100 million of his money into launch his new business mag. [NYP]
• Playboy to go digital. You know, so you can read the articles at home, in privacy, late at night. Like you do at all those other websites. [Folio:]
• The power of the press in action: News story leads to anti-bestiality law. And not a moment too soon. [E&P]

· A frail-looking Judith Miller gives an interview from prison, and it's to Cindy Adams? [NYP]
· New York Post and Gov. Pataki continue illicit dance of forbidden sex. Wait, we mean "court battle." Sorry. [NYDN]
· Get this: Some company claims that an NYT columnist has an "accusatory agenda." Clearly, you're new here. [Reuters]
· Michael Kinsley "unlikely" to be named editor of The Atlantic. Perhaps he should go back to Slate and edit some circumcision stories. [NYO]

• Candace Bushnell and her Stanford Blatch-inspiring ex-manager are suing each other over money. Which seems far more like the real New York than Sex and the City ever did. [Radar]
• You know things are getting weird when far lefty Bob Scheer is echoing VF bobo Michael Wolff on the Plame case: Judy Miller is no hero, and the public should be more important than her sources. [LAT]
• E&P peacenik Greg Mitchell calls for newspapers to call for withdrawl from Iraq. Again. [E&P]
• The many personalities of Michiko Kakutani. [Media Mob/NYO]

• The HuffPost is like a town car, says Simon Dumenco. And he likes Town Cars. [Ad Age]
• Who'd have thunk it: Al Gore TV ain't so bad. [NYT]
• The newsweeklies are dying, apparently. Of course, the newsweeklies are always dying. [USAT]
• Lizzie Grubman, muse. [NY Mag]
• One vote for Charlie Gibson as the new Peter Jennings. [B&C]
• TK soon in Septmeber GQ: "Supreme Court Justices: They're Just Like Us!" [WWD, third item]
• Remember how the Post said the Bancrofts want to sell Dow Jones? Well, the Post also said Dick Gephardt would be running for vice president. [NYT]

• Judy Miller is "having the time of her life," says hubby Jason Epstein, and so is he, it would seem. [WWD]
• Also, Miller appreciates your letters but doesn't want your used books. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Coming in your Times Mag: soldier sex in Iraq. Hot. [E&P]
• From the home office in Melville, Long Island: Top ten reasons we'll always have network anchors. [Newsday]
• More bad news for newspapers: First Craig steals the classifieds, now Hollywood's giving up on splashy movie ads, according to Nikki Finke. [LA Weekly]

• CBS News's search to save the Evening News hits a milestone: The network has started doing prototype episodes. [NYT]
• Should Jane become Brandon? If the advertisers have their way, yup. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer stands up for the LES druggies. Because, damn it, someone's got to. [Slate]
• The Washington Post gets new gossip columnists, and we get to hold onto our beloved, slutty big sister. [Washingtonian]