Because David Gergen, Jon Meacham, Howard Fineman, Mike Allen, Josh Marshall, David Brooks, and Gail Collins did! Also: Mara Liasson, who works for NPR and the Fox News Channel that Obama wants to destroy.

• Condé Nast is now swinging into damage control mode: It's retained Michael Sheehan, a "crisis manager and media coach" who's faced some steep PR challenges in the past having worked with President Clinton and AIG. [NYP]
• So is Oprah moving to cable? The discussions continue, reportedly. [AdAge]
• Kyle Pope doesn't seem to have been Jared Kushner's first choice to serve as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer. Times star business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin turned Kushner down twice over the past year. [NYM]
• More than 100 people were laid off at Lifetime and A&E today. [Variety]
• Philip Gourevitch is stepping down as editor of The Paris Review. [NYO]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes discusses the future of the media biz. [TDB]
• MTV did not rebuild the Berlin Wall for U2, in case you were worried. [UPI]

PR Week, a trade journal for and about flacks, has come to the defense of the New York Times after we published a batch of emails showing how deferential some Times reporters were to flacks. Imagine that!

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart performed a bravura 8-and-a-half minute monologue in the style of Glenn Beck on the subject of Glenn Beck's appendicitis.

Si Newhouse (pictured, above) canceled Conde Nast's famous Christmas lunch for the second year in a row, and then—uh oh—then he hired a crisis management flack. Did Details dump toxic waste in Peru?

You're a newspaper editor. There's been a massacre in Texas. But there are no front-page sized images of the shooter! What do you do? To the front pages!

The New York Observer has a new editor: Kyle Pope, who was formerly the number two editor at now-defunct Portfolio. He replaces Tom McGeveran, who quit last week. Jared Kushner press release quote below!

Earlier today, author Greg Beato posted a fascinating story on his site Soundbitten disclosing the links-for-pay arrangement that the Drudge Report's sometime deputy Andrew Breitbart struck with Reuters. We wrote about it earlier, but Beato's allowed us to reprint it.

• Is Oprah preparing to leave her syndicated show behind and take her act to OWN, her long-delayed cable network? That's the rumor anyway. [DH]
• The new editor of the Observer is Kyle Pope, formerly of Portfolio. [NYO]
• Cable meets kindergarten: Fox News will stop being mean to MSNBC only if MSNBC first stops being mean to Fox News, reports Rupert Murdoch. [NYT]
• Fortune and Time are expected to be hardest hit by layoffs at Time Inc. [NYP]
• Scripps has beat out News Corp. for control of the Travel Channel. [BN]
• Susan Plagemann has been named the new publisher of Vogue. Meanwhile, Tom Florio will now oversee Vogue, Bon Appétit and Traveler. [WWD]
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek (or BBW for short) has its new team in place. [NYT]

The New York Times (of journalism) is openly encouraging readers to submit questions for Big Bird, a fictional character. Here are some of the most incisive. They come from children, we hope.

In your thumping Thursday media column: Glenn Beck does not die on the operating table, more rumor-details on the Essence layoffs, Fortune and SI get hacked, and a dying newspaper goes glossy, for unknown reasons.

Time Warner started cutting costs across its Time Inc. publishing division this week and is hoping to save as much as $100 million by paring back expenses and slashing several hundred jobs. One way the company could have made up the difference without sacrificing any of its employees? By selling off the three Gulfstream jets it owns!

Near-retiree Washington Post editor Henry Allen punched writer Manuel Roig-Franzia in the face after Roig-Franzia called him a "cocksucker." Hank Steuver, a WaPo colleague whose editor is Allen, thinks the man may have some issues:

There were protests in Iran, Toyota lied about dangerous defects, digital readers may dominate the holidays, Italians hate the CIA (and probably America) Mexican druglords take over the US and Europeans politicians rock. Unless you're autistic or a castrato.

You have probably slept with this man. He's French! He founded Purple magazine! He hangs out with famous people! He accidentally mentioned that Beatrice Inn is reopening! He wears the same clothes every day! He takes pictures of naked ladies!

Oprah's shipping Lisa Erspamer, one of her most trusted producers, to L.A. to be chief creative officer of OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, and already some are speculating she's laying the groundwork to move her TV show to OWN, too.

• The cuts continue at Time Inc. Fortune Small Business was shuttered today. And as many as 500 employees may lose their jobs when all is said and done. Meanwhile, parent company Time Warner reported a drop in revenues and earnings in the third quarter, as expected. [NYT, WWD, AdAge, NYP]
• Profits were up at News Corp. thanks to its film, cable, and book units. [BN]
• The publisher of Marie Claire has jumped over to Vogue. [NYO]
• Fox News came out on top in the ratings with its election night coverage. CNN performed miserably, dropping down to fourth place. [NYT, Politico]
• WNET is giving employees off between Christmas and New Year's. It's not to be nice; it's designed to cut costs since the days off are unpaid. [Crain's]
• A theory as to why Tom McGeveran quit the Observer. [Daily Intel]
• Highlights from last weekend's Tribeca Film Festival, Doha edition. [Vulture]

Time Inc. carnage: Eleven layoffs at Entertainment Weekly, Business Insider reports. Know more? Email us.

In your completely laid-off Wednesday media column: details on more Time Inc. layoffs and buyouts at People and Essence, Fortune Small Business folds, and various ways that magazine publishers are terrorists.

Kevin Demaria's posted a whole mess of sad, beautiful photographs of the final days in the office of Gourmet magazine. Junk food abounded. Go see them all. [Last Days of Gourmet]