Ugh. What a terrible cover. "JACKIE: HER LONELIEST BATTLE," really? Was she furious that Audrina sided with Heidi? Did Brad stop calling her? Oh, but wait! Levi Johnston wrote a piece for the issue? Double really?

Cindy Adams' New York Post columns appear to be produced by a random word-generator machine. Her visage appears to be produced by Botox and shellac. So it is unsurprising to find that she is a Helsmley-level ratdog nut.

Rebecca Mead infiltrated Cindy's aboveground lair in a Park Ave. penthouse and recorded these ramblings about the gossipeuse's Yorkies before being chased out by Cindy's bloodthirsty wolf-celeb hybrid bodyguards:

It's certainly nice to see Cindy Adams finally embrace her Hispanic heritage, isn't it? Let's hope she shares a few more of these previously unreported tidbits when she opens up her Park Avenue apartment for "four nights only" at the end of September and gets attendees to pay $250 a ticket to hear her tell stories in her living room. [New Yorker]

The Scientologists had their henchmen remove that scary jargon video. But we captured it.

Success has become quite relative in the newspaper industry. Everyone's losing money, yes, but now it's all about degrees. So, when your company's not hemorrhaging like your competitors, there's a reason to gloat. Just like Gavin O'Reilly...

Super-special "strike teams" have been put in place to protect broadcast towers from LA's fire.

There have been many rumors floating around that Sam Zell, the gnomish CEO of the bankrupt Chicago Tribune Co., would soon be sent out to pasture. Unfortunately for everyone involved, especially the employees, that may not be the case.

DJ AM - né Adam Goldstein - was the Kevin Bacon of LA's music-celebrity scene, except he was connected to everyone by two degrees. His death gets more tragic as it unfolds. The outpouring for him out there's large.

The NYT Magazine's cover story about a euthanizing, beleaguered hospital during and after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans dropped today. It's estimated to have cost around $400,000. What kind of reporting does that buy? The expensive, endangered type.

It must pain Jann Wenner to see his other properties start succeeding where flagship Rolling Stone squandered possibilities and descended into irrelevancy: online. Now that US Weekly's site has heat, Wenner's finally starting to line up RS's strategy of "whatever."

Remember George Gombossy? He's the longtime Hartford Courant reporter who was fired after filing a column exposing the shady practices of the Manny Noriega-esque mattress retailer, Sleepy's. Well, the Courant's looking for his replacement. Future of consumer journalism, your qualifications:

So, Mediaite's Rachel Sklar did a piece about cars. What? Yes: cars. Ray Wert at Gawker Media car blog Jalopnik posted on it. Sklar dove in the comments. Car people are insane. What do you think happened? Results pictured. Enjoy.

Ted Kennedy's funeral is underway, and so is the full court press barrage of media. Obama's delivering his remarks now. What do attendees, Twitter, Free Republic, and others have to say?

• The average person consumed 32.2 hours of TV each week this summer. It's a new record. And it's all thanks to the quality programming that cable channels have been putting on the air the last few months, obviously. [NYP]
• The bad news for newspapers is getting worse: Ad sales dropped by 29% during the second quarter, which means newspapers have $2.8 billion less in their (already empty) pockets than they had at this time last year. [AP]
• Related: Please take the time this weekend to read the massive story about Hurricane Katrina in the New York Times Sunday magazine. It cost the paper and ProPublica a record-setting $400,000 to produce. [CJR]
• Because Nightline feels left out of the war between Conan and Letterman, the show is launching a campaign to remind you that it still exists. [AdAge]

In your finally Friday media column: Army profiles of journalists are a huge waste of money, a special journalists asks for a special job, the New Yorker hires someone expressly to make you jealous, and newspapers lose billions again.

Way to just stand around chuckling and taking digital photos, pedestrians below. Even before you knew it was a stunt! Jeez Suge Knight could probably take over the entire nation of New Zealand in like four days. [via Adfreak]

We were disappointed yesterday when the cowardly Wall Street Journal failed to fire faux-trendspotting flack Mark Penn for using his newspaper column to troll for PR clients. But—hearteningly—both Penn and the paper appear increasingly pathetic!

Megan Fox says she's more comfortable kissing ladies on screen, Rihanna brings Taylor Swift flowers and Hilary Duff's not playing nice. It's your Friday morning Gossip Roundup!

Lest they offend their many laid off friends, anyone who's kept their job in print media will tell you they're one of "the lucky ones." But privately, survivors talk of the malaise sweeping medialand. This is one of them.

City Living, Toronto's finest magazine, did not make this cover ironically! Rather, for elegance.