• Lou Dobbs is leaving CNN! Tonight's his last show! Happy Wednesday! [NYT]
• Condé Nast magazines have lost a collective 8,359 pages of advertising in 2009, which represents a 31 percent decline from a year earlier. [NYT]
• One thing that Hearst has going for it: lots of cash in the bank. [NYP]
• Banker-turned-media investor Jimmy Finklestein is reportedly buying the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Adweek, and a few other Nielsen titles. [Wrap]
• Current TV is keeping current with the times and laying off 80 staffers. [LAT]
• TV: Joss Whedon's Dollhouse has been canceled by Fox; meanwhile, ABC has decided that Kelsey Grammer comedy series Hank will exist no longer.
• Détente? President Obama has agreed to give Fox News an interview. [HP]
• The New Yorker sure has lots of writers and editors! [NYO]
• Reality TV is slowly killing us. So says Vanity Fair's James Wolcott. [VF]

In your woebegone Wednesday media column: Hearst gets money, layoffs at Current TV, Conde Nast gets internet religion, and Sesame Street characters are the swing votes in Fox News' war for righteousness.

For the second time this decade, the New York Observer's cobbled together the TOP SECRET masthead of The New Yorker. It sure has a lot of people working for it! A numerical summary, below.

Select from the following: the army a) did know the Fort Hood shooter was radicalized, b) didn't know he was radicalized or c) kind of knew, through a third agency. Alternatively, ignore the whole intelligence mess and read about fishing.

Freedom magazine, the church's official reporting arm, wants "experienced investigative reporters" in the Tampa Bay area - precisely where the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper which recently published a critical series on the church, is based.

• Comcast and GE have reportedly agreed that Jeff Zucker will remain the CEO of NBC Universal as part of their proposed $30 billion joint venture. Well done, gentlemen. Good to see things get started on the right foot. [Reuters]
• In related news, Zucker's totally brilliant plan to move Jay Leno to 10pm is paying off beautifully. Leno sank to a brand new ratings low last night. [NYT]
• Anita Dunn, the White House communications director who started the administration's war with Fox News last month, is stepping down. [WP]
• Hey, it's not all bad news for Condé Nast. Self is doing pretty well. [WWD]
• The creators of Will & Grace are working on a Twitter-inspired show. [THR]
• The nominations for the 2010 People's Choice Awards were announced today, just in case you happen to be care about that sort of thing. [LAT]
• Aerosmith is looking for new lead singer, in case you're job-hunting. [LAT]
• George Lopez and Wanda Sykes' debuts this week scored solid ratings. [NYT]
• Simon Cowell made $75 million last year, earning him the top spot on Forbes' list of primetime's top-earning men. Ryan Seacrest exploded in tears when he heard he came in No. 3 with $38 million. Or so we'd like to think. [Forbes]

The German consulate in Manhattan received a suspicious white powder in an envelope today, just like three other consulates did yesterday. We hear the media agency Initiative, in the same area, had to be evacuated too. Send terror stories here!

ABC News' Brian Ross has a breathtaking record of recklessly inaccurate, overhyped stories that don't live up to the headline. His scoop yesterday about Nidal Malik Hasan's "attempt to reach out to al Qaeda" was one of them.

In your typical Tuesday media column: Americans are zombie slaves to various screens, journalists will compromise for money like everyone else in the world, Indymedia tells the Justice Department to fuck off, and your comically mean reporter of the day.

Sandra Guzman, the New York Post editor who was dismissed shortly after she spoke out against that controversial cartoon depicting President Obama as a chimpanzee, is taking aim at her former employer. She just filed a federal lawsuit against the Post, parent company News Corp, and the Post's editor-in-chief, Col Allan. If you're looking for some extraordinarily salacious reading material to keep you occupied this afternoon, well, here you have it. [HuffPo]

Oops. All the papers report that the FBI failed to act when the Fort Hood shooter emailed a radical cleric 10 or 20 times. Also: swine flu blood shortages! Living on severance! Drug wars! Madoff memorabilia! J-Lo sex tape!

• Another magazine has gone under: Hachette announced today that it's closing Metropolitan Home to "focus its resources" on Elle Décor. [AdAge]
• New York's profile of star Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin reveals he's one of the paper's highest-paid staffers and is beloved by the titans of Wall Street, but is not quite as popular with some of his Times colleagues. [NYM]
• Circulation is down—and losses are up—at the New York Post. [NYT]
• GE and Comcast have agreed on a valuation for NBC, which brings the parties one step closer to handing over control of the network to Comcast. [Reuters]
• Condé Nast may be trimming expenses and cutting jobs here at home, but the mag giant is busy expanding its presence in China. [NYP]
• Curb Your Enthusiasm is coming to basic cable. TV Land and TV Guide have picked up reruns of the show and will begin airing them next year. [LAT]
• Google has acquired the mobile ad company AdMob for $750 million. [NYT]
• Last night's Mad Men scored AMC its highest-rated finale ever, although considering it's AMC we're talking about, that isn't saying much. [B&C]
• A Christmas Carol was No. 1 at the weekend box office, although its $31 million gross was weak given it cost $200 million to produce. Meanwhile, Precious' $1.8 million take on 18 screens set a limited-release record. [LAT]

In your meritocratic Monday media column: Reporters suffer injustices unseen since Pol Pot's darkest days, The Week guarantees goodness, Esquire has a gizmo thingamajig that will save magazines, and Conde Nast gives up on America, finally.

After an all-too-brief period as King of the Tabloids, the New York Post's circulation is cratering. Could the "Scurrilous Money-Losing Yellow Tabloid Propped Up By a Rich Foreign Patron" formula be on the wane? Everyone must pitch in to help!

Remember the storyline about a new Iranian revolution after the elections this summer? The one fuelled by the internet generation? The one that got the state department to intervene to help Iranians Twitter? Not so much.

When news of the Fort Hood shooting came in last week, papers covered the breaking story. Now they've had a chance to send reporters out, look what they found!

"I delivered an unfortunate blow to a profession that not only did I personally love doing, but that I value for society," said Blair in an interview on Fox News Sunday. But don't worry! He also has a master plan.

Things To Watch Instead of Mad Men: the day Jared Kushner announced hiring Kyle Pope as the New York Observer's new editor, departed longtime Observer editor Peter Kaplan went on Charlie Rose. He gave some great quotes. Here's good storytelling.

Funny Canadians. Our editors get into knockdown-dragout brawls where they kick the shit out of each other just for bad writing. The Northern version? Your union editing job: outsourced. Take a memo, mark it up, send it to the internet!