What's this, our friend Ashley Dupre, nee Spitzer, has taken up yoga and is hanging with Russell Simmons developing "inner strength?" Pish posh! You need to focus, Ashley. You'll ruin everything.

• Jon Stewart ripped Jim Cramer apart once again on his show last night. And now Cramer is planning to appear on The Daily Show on Thursday. [Gawker]
• William Morris and Endeavor are said to be in merger talks. [NYT]
• Time Inc. chief Ann Moore says the company is thinking about turning Time.com and People.com subscription-based sites. [Folio]
• For its part, Disney is launching a new "portal." It's 1999 all over again! [WSJ]
• Former NBC prez Katherine Pope is said to be in talks with News Corp. president Peter Chernin about joining his new production firm. [THR]
• Is liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz destined for a gig with MSNBC? [NYO]
• Needless to say, the Daily News is taking issue with the list suggesting the paper is likely to go out of business in the near future. [Crains]
• The plug has been pulled on David Alan Grier's Comedy Central series, Chocolate News. Let's all take a moment to mourn, okay? [NYT]

Last Thursday, D.L. Hughley's unnecessary CNN show was canceled. Yesterday, the David Alan Grier-anchored Chocolate News ended forever. Is it possible—even in this Obama era—America's not ready for bad TV?

War on art! A famous Japanese pop artist was doing just a little bit of vandalism down in the subways, and was arrested. Why doesn't Mayor Bloomberg just let people draw in the streets?

Why is Rupert Murdoch buying the Brooklyn Paper, as the New York Observer reports today? Does Rupert Murdoch even know that he's buying the Brooklyn Paper?

Ha, the University of Chicago's newspaper dug up a 1982 column by NYT bobo David Brooks. It's about his nightmares. He had an intense fear of gargoyles, zombies, and totally weird wallpaper:

In your meaty Tuesday media column: rumors of coming layoffs (and a die-off?) at OK! magazine, a golf magazine is killed, advertising plummets, media companies may default, and Americans don't know a damn thing:

We already know the recession sucks for journalists because—to generalize slightly—they have been laid off. But it sucks for working journalists, too. Guess who else got laid off: all their sources!

Item: We hear that New York Magazine recently called in its department heads and told them to prepare for more budget cuts. New York Magazine is the Gilded Age's demise, paper version.

• Jon Stewart made fun of Jim Cramer and Cramer responded in kind. Then Stewart took another shot at the Mad Money host. And Cramer responded once again on the Today show this morning. Your turn, Jonny. [HP, MM, BI]
• Okay, so CNBC didn't see the economic collapse coming. But if we're handing out blame, we better not forget about the nation's newspapers! [NPR]
• Ratings for Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice have tumbled. [AdAge]
• More cuts at New York are rumored to be in the works. [Gawker]
• American Express has shuttered Travel + Leisure Golf. [WWD]
• Apple is launching an American Idol iPhone application. Finally! [THR]
• Equally exciting: Universal movies are coming to your Playstation. [THR]

Porn porn porn. Cable companies are hoping to "quietly" sell enough pay-per-view porn to make, you know, a profit. Ad Age wrote a whole story about it just so it could use this quote:

The New Republic sort of dialed down its level of maddening hawkish crazy once Franklin Foer was installed as editor, but all that could basically change right now: Marty Peretz is buying it back!

• Marty Peretz, former owner of the New Republic, is buying back the mag with a group of investors led by former Lazard exec Laurence Grafstein. [Politico]
• The New York Times Co. has successfully raised $225 million by selling off 21 floors of its Eighth Avenue office building. [NYT]
• "Was last week the worst one in CNBC's 20-year history—or the best?" asks the Times today. Thanks in part to Jon Stewart, we're pretty sure it was its worst, but ratings are up so CNBC execs aren't complaining. [NYT]
• Carl Icahn is stepping up his effort to take control of Lionsgate. [Variety]
• McClatchy, which publishes 30 daily newspapers, says it plans to slash 1,600 jobs, or 15% of its work force, as well as cut salaries across the board. [WSJ]
• Mag covers with Barack Obama have performed well, by and large. [NYP]
• Watchmen was No. 1 at the weekend box office, grossing $55.7 million. [EW]
• The Tribeca Film Festival announced its May lineup today. [THR]

Last month, the Justice Department charged former NPR correspondent and editor David Malakoff with possessing child porn. Now Malakoff has admitted it. The details are shocking primarily for their stupidity:

Various dead-enders accuse us of writing too much negative news, simply because we inform you daily that American society at large is collapsing. Unrelated: let's review the contents of actual publication "The Happy Herald!"

Brash young blogger Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, son of NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger, got a real co-byline in the newspaper today! Apparently the Times has assigned the 28 year-old heirreporter some journo-chaperones.

In your philosophical Friday media column: arm-twisting at the San Francisco Chronicle, intellectual thuggery at the NAACP, body-slamming of college papers, and death and rebirth of reporters:

Look, the nimble television networks are seamlessly transitioning into recession-era programming! Instead of sitcoms about upwardly mobile whites, it's sitcoms about downwardly mobile whites. With product placement for the poors!

CNBC hires only the finest financial minds, such as Erin Burnett. You say the Great Depression was bad? She says: "The invention of the chocolate chip cookie." Game. And. Match. [Click to watch]

• Got an idea for how Arthur Sulzberger Jr. might be able to rescue the struggling New York Times? He now says he'll "consider anything." [NYO]
• Hachette plans to leave Midtown for cheaper space near Wall Street. [NYP]
• Josh Schwartz is finishing the pilot for an as-yet-untitled Gossip Girl spin-off that will be tied into GG's season finale on May 11. [NYO]
• Depressing: The story of the 55-year-old former TV Guide editor who is now an unpaid intern—yes, unpaid intern—at wowOwow.com. [LAT]
• Why did Jon Stewart go off on Rick Santelli? An unnamed "on-air host" claims Stewart is "bizarrely obsessed with" with the CNBC reporter. [Dealbreaker]
• Speaking of Stewart, Slate's The Big Money would like you remind you that Jon Stewart is not actually a journalist. Yea, thanks for that. [TBM]