ESPN is airing an hourlong teevee special tonight, for basketmaking machine Lebron James to announce which team he's going to sign with. To get this, ESPN ceded near-total control of the show's advertising (and reporters' question-asking!) to Lebron. The explanation?

As a tribute to Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago, Playboy Portugal reimagined Saramago's novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ as a soft-core porno. Now Playboy Enterprises is renouncing its blasphemous Portuguese branch—and shuttering Playboy Portugal.

CNN really goes to the mat for its reporters. Octavia Nasr, Middle East correspondent of 20 years, has been fired for mourning the loss of a Hezbollah spiritual mentor in a single tweet over the weekend. Truly pathetic.

The Huffington Post has purchased its very own polling site, Pollster.com.

In your sweltering (but not sizzling) Wednesday media column: four bidders left for Newsweek, rumors of a Hachette- Hearst joint venture, Time magazine flirts with a paywall, and city hall reporters now work in a trailer, where they belong.

Hot town, summer in the city! As the mercury rises so does tension and desperation. Hungry for a story, the New York Times dispatched a reporter to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Fun, right? No! Blogs are crying foul.

Julianne Rolle, a 39 year-old former Fox News producer, was found dead at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff last weekend in her hometown of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Authorities now say she jumped to her death.

In your sizzling Tuesday media column: Michael Hastings has a war book coming, talking about Howie Kurtz is more important than anything, The Upshot finally launches, Clay Shirky says print is dead, and Emily Brill's back in action.

Alvin Greene, the South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate who didn't campaign for his primary win, is feeling the fatigue of a general election. (Even though he still doesn't campaign.) The once media-friendly figure in now just shooing AP reporters away.

Sunday was the 4th of July. Everyone was either off work yesterday, or at work doing nothing. Today, therefore, is one of the slowest news days of the entire year. Luckily for our city's beleaguered journalists: it's hot!

Besides managing to come up with a new six-pack abs workout every month, Men's Health is now ever so slightly suggesting on this month's cover that you can be just like a Twilight star, if you wear Calvin Klein© jeans.

Washington Post person Howard Kurtz, on his CNN program "Reliable Sources" today got a little heated over Politico's Patrick Gavin calling his show "television's best representation of [the Washington press corps'] clubbiness." Don't cross Howie, he'll blast you on air!

When Richard Beckman took over the Hollywood Reporter, he promised to turn the trade rag around. One of his most dramatic moves to date: attempting to lure Page Six editor Richard Johnson to LA with a million dollar pay package.

Word is that Newsweek's top bidding prospects are billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, Mexican mogul/NYT overlord Carlos Slim, and 91-year-old Sidney Harman. Hey, whoever's out there trying to trick some 91-year-old into buying Newsweek? That's so mean. C'mon.

In your futuristic Thursday media column: Sam Zell has seen the old-fashioned future, Dan Abrams luvs sexxxy vids, Chinese propagandists invade Times Square, and the NYT spit-shines the shoes of each and every government bureaucrat, as a matter or policy.

America's most prestigious stenographers, the White House correspondents, are not likely to ask their usual sharp, insightful questions "this week." They're preoccupied with the real 2010 elections: those for the White House Correspondents' Association board. Blood will be shed.

The final deadline for bids on Newsweek is today. (There's still time—apply now!). And, in what must be an encouraging sign for Newsweek staffers, the most wacko bidders have been told their money is no good.

In your illiterate Wednesday media column: Joe Klein fails reading comprehension, Gerald Posner does the Gerald Posner thing again, Photoshop model disclosure in Australia, a Conde-Hearst talent war foreshadowed, and Playboy grows ever less sexy.

Tribune Broadcasting is appointing two new "regional vice presidents for innovation and imagination," and "restructuring...such creative services functions as branding and marketing at its TV outlets." They must really mean business! What does Tribune's memo-from-Mars issuer Lee Abrams say, hmmm?

VF's Juli Weiner exposes the harrowing backstory of Politico's Journalism Thing of the Year.