Us Weekly editor Janice Min is reportedly considering quitting her job when her contract's up in two weeks. And why not? She's made her millions, and millions. But! The post-magazine life of a celebrity editor is fraught with danger.

• News of Walter Cronkite's death on Friday evening didn't generate a Michael Jackson-like reaction, but the hour-long CBS News special honoring him on Sunday proved a ratings winner. In related news, the network will continue airing Cronkite's voice-over introducing the CBS Evening News. [NYT, NYT]
• Is Janice Min leaving Us Weekly? That's the rumor, at least. [P6]
• Fashion magazines are looking a little thin this fall, not surprisingly. [MW]
• Padma Lakshmi is in talks with NBC to star in a sitcom. [Variety]
• More changes are afoot at Interview: Evan Schindler is the troubled mag's new president. And Stephen Mooallem has been named editor-in-chief. [NYT]
• As expected, the new Harry Potter movie mopped up at the box office this weekend with $79.5 million in ticket sales. The big loser? Brüno, which fell to fourth place as sales plummeted 73 percent. [EW, Variety]

Ah, the September Issues—when fashion magazines sell more ads than any other month, and staffers gorge themselves on parsley, in celebration. How are the September ad sales looking this year? Not too fab. Especially for Vogue.

Fresh after this week's sobering slideshow of our troops in the Middle East, Matchbox toys comes out with an oddball ad campaign to spark kids' war fantasies of returning home draped in the American flag.

Setting an example for children of royalty, everywhere, Megan McCain wants people to know that the help should stick to being the help after explaining what depths Joe The Plumber should intellectually excavate next. Hint: It's near his plumber's crack.

There's a war on. You probably knew that, in the sense that you read somewhere about a major offensive in Afghanistan. But if you're like us, you haven't seen many photos. It looks like Vietnam over there.

• Bad news for NBC Universal: second-quarter profits dropped by 41%. [MW]
• Good news for NBC News: Susan Boyle's first in-depth TV interview will take place with Meredith Vieira on the Today show next Wednesday. [NYT]
• Alpha Media, the company that owns Maxim (and used to own Blender and Stuff)—and which was sold to Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in 2007—has changed hands again: Steve Feinberg's Cerberus now runs the show. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Pamela Fiori may be leaving Town & Country. [P6]
• Bonnie Fuller is taking over Hollywood Life, the website controlled by Jay Penske, who owns Movieline and recently bought out Nikki Finke. [NYT]
• More Finke: Days after the LA Times ran an article on Hollywood's most powerful blogger comes pretty much the same piece in the NY Times. [NYT]
• All that bad press for CNBC a few months ago must have refocused the network on the things that matter, right? Nope. [Gawker, Zero Hedge]

Today's New York Times contains a lengthy Editor's Note explaining that Charles Siebert "unwittingly incorporated" language from an e-mail into his Times Magazine story last Sunday. Sounds familiar, right? Except when Maureen Dowd does it, it's no big deal.

In your early Friday media column: Laurel Touby is officially chillin like a villain, the Boston Globe gets another contract vote, Nikki Finke is mysterious, and CNN's creative accounting of what it means to be "number one."

Maniac publisher Felix Dennis sold Maxim for $250 million to Steven Rattner's Quadrangle Group in 2007; now, Rattner's firm is about to lose control of the magazine. Related: Dennis "once exclaimed at a meeting, 'I need to stop smoking crack.'"

Last night we told you about the resignation of Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller. Rumors speculating about his motivations for leaving have been swirling on media blogs, so Spanfeller spoke up rather emphatically to try and set the record straight.

Ah, the good old days—when crazy oddball media titans stood astride the magazine world, being odd. We have more fun stories about former Maxim publisher and admitted killer Felix Dennis! He's a neat freak who takes care of friends.

Remember Erich "Mancow" Muller, Keith Olbermann's radio-clown pal who kept getting MSNBC airtime because Olbermann found his waterboarding conversion politically useful to flog even though it was a hoax? He just called Barack Obama a "Kenyan-Muslim turd" on the radio.

Vanity Fair overlord Graydon Carter just turned 60, and his staff rewarded him with a positively Vanity Fair-ish birthday party! The highlight was sung to the tune of 'A Few of My Favorite Things'...

• McGraw-Hill, which announced recently that it's looking to get rid of BusinessWeek, has now announced plans to get rid of 550 employees. [WSJ]
• Jim Spanfeller, the president and CEO of Forbes.com, either decided to leave the company or was forced out, depending on who you talk to. [DF, NYT]
• As expected, the new Harry Potter movie raked it in yesterday. [THR]
• Donald Trump's long-running libel lawsuit against author (and New York Times business editor) Timothy O'Brien has been dismissed by a judge. [NYP]

In your salvation-drenched Thursday media column: Media career ascension! An available media job! People buying newspapers! People saving newspapers! People saving Paste magazine! Huzzah!

McGraw-Hill is currently trying to sell off BusinessWeek, but they'll be lucky to make a buck on the deal. Worse: today the company announced it has laid off 550 people.

Jim Spanfeller, the CEO of Forbes.com and the man largely credited with turning the magazine's website into dominant source for financial news on the web, is stepping down at the end of the summer.

The way Newsweek employees get fired now: Shamelessly and publicly, via mass emails from their boss singing the praises of their incoming replacements while encouraging their co-workers to wish their shit-canned asses "bon chance" on the way out the door.

Current TV journalist Euna Lee—currently imprisoned in North Korea—summoned the Swedish ambassador to pass on a message to her husband: He must make sure he sent in their daughter's summer school registration form. *Tear.* [via BayNewser]