♦ No official confirmation yet, but media insiders say David Gregory has been tapped to take over as host of Meet the Press. [Politico]
♦ It's rumored Carine Roitfeld is replacing Anna Wintour at Vogue. [Gawker]
♦ A former employee of Charles Kushner is accusing him of funneling cash from his real estate empire to prop up Jared Kushner's Observer. [Daily Intel]
♦ Harvey Weinstein owes Cindy Adams $10,000. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast has shuttered its social networking site Flip.com. [Gawker]
♦ CBS is producing a new hidden camera show with Ashton Kutcher. [NYT]
♦ Katie Couric has a new haircut, in case you haven't noticed. [HuffPo]
♦ Arianna Huffington's how-to book for aspiring bloggers. [Jossip]
♦ Ever fantasized about having lunch with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? You can—for $2,500. [NYO]

Ron Howard, TV's Opie, just directed the film version of Frost/Nixon, because the man knows Oscar-bait when he sees it. And also, sure, because it's politically relevant or something. Howard, the very definition of American Middlebrow, is not a political director, though this year he endorsed Obama because he is a Hollyweird liberal (like his godless pal Andy Griffith). At a recent screening of the film, Howard mentioned how the lessons of Nixon became newly relevant during the Bush administration. Shocking! Good thing Fox News anchor and noted objective journalist Chris Wallace was there to set him straight! Nixon was a crook, see, and Bush is a hero.

President-elect Obama—allegedly a 'man of the people'—is allegedly buying a fancy $30,000 ring for his fancy wife, allegedly! It was in the trusty Daily Mail, and now it's the top story on Drudge, meaning it is the single most important news story in all the world. Elitist Obama drops 30K on bling for his wife during a recession—and this bling will be made out of rhodium, the world's most expensive metal! This story is almost certainly bullshit, and we will tell you exactly why. [Updates below—we were right]:

We made fun of NYC's latest teen sybarite socialite (the Brooklyn version) Peaches Geldof, for barely having a "real job," what with her Nylon fashion mag columns and "modeling," etc. However, the U.K.'s Guardian reported she is launching... oh God... a magazine. It's called Disappear Here and co-edited with former GQ editor James Brown. It'll be handed out for free in New York (in secret places) this Thursday! How do they pay for it? Listen, cutting-edge hip freemag editors can't stoop to talking about money.

If we had to list the worst things a celebrity could do in a nightclub in order of ascending dumbness, they would go like this: 1. Bring a gun to a nightclub. 2. Get arrested for bringing a gun to a nightclub. 3. Get shot at a nightclub. 4. Get shot at a nightclub and also arrested. 5. Shoot yourself accidentally with a gun you brought to a nightclub illegally, and then get arrested for it. So New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress truly achieved the pinnacle of nightclub stupidity last weekend by accomplishing #5. And the felony complaint against him shows he damn sure can't claim self-defense:

NBC's on-the-record response to the New York Times' David Barstow regarding his front-page story on their war-profiteering hack retired general Barry McCaffrey is pretty choice, as it's both filled with obvious factual inaccuracies and obtuse point-missing diversions. This is a letter from one major news outlet to another, remember, though it doesn't read like one. The whole thing, obtained by Salon's Glenn Greenwald, is below.

With a recession in progress, but lots of robber barons left in a society that the media has just now noticed is more stratified than ever, the headline "Party Like It's 1929" has proved too irresistible for even the most austere of publications. This Sunday's New York Times "We're Going to Party Like It's 1929" header in the Styles section represents the apotheosis of the trend. Journalists and editors: it's been done. Retire the headline now. Proof after the jump.

The funny thing about the holiday season this year (besides the unreported death of Santa) is that Americans no longer have any money to buy expensive presents for each other—but magazines are plunging ahead with their year-end holiday gift guides as if everything was fine and dandy! Okay, that's not really "funny." Nor is it tragic, because hey, if these magazines want to walk themselves off a cliff, that's their business. It's ominous. What the hell does the future hold for luxury magazines in a world where those cutesy "Gifts Under $100" are a necessity, not a niche?

Media critic Michael Wolff's new book, The Man Who Owns the News, is excerpted in the London Guardian today. But it glosses over the details of a joke in particularly poor taste that the reptilian Newscorp billionaire told his Sun tabloid editor Rebekah Wade—who was was arrested a few years back for assaulting her supposed "hard man" British actor husband—after "a few drinks in a posh London restaurant," about gay sex. "Seeing [Wall Street Journal publisher Robert] Thomson arrive, Murdoch whispered: "For God's sake, don't tell Robert what I said. He's a gentrified man ... very clever," it reads. The actual joke, as it appears in the book, comes after the jump.

Tribune Co. crazy man Lee Abrams to staff: "Revolutions are about 'we'. The leaders need to engage EVERYone. And EVERYone needs to engage the cause. You are either WITH the revolution or AGAINST it. You will either be embraced by the company and win or the company will beat you." Yea, he's lost it. [Romenesko]

Is it possible that college students—rather than being our nation's elite—are just unsophisticated dolts, like the rest of America? According to a new survey, college kids' favorite magazine is Time. Last year it was Cosmopolitan. What, they don't teach book-learnin' in universities any more? But then you realize that the same survey says college kids' favorite restaurant is McDonald's and their favorite clothing brand is American Eagle and their favorite band is Coldplay, and it all starts to fit. [Ad Age, Previously]

Remember how we all got all mad at the Bush administration for fear-mongering after 9/11? They squandered international goodwill with a dumb war, and they tried to make us all afraid, all the time, so we'd keep voting for them, forever, to keep us safe? What bad, bad people, those Republicans. Anyways. On Good Morning America today, Dan Harris, reporting from Mumbai, announced to a sleepy Monday morning audience that the well-coordinated attack in India is basically guaranteed to be repeated here in America, like there is a 100% chance that terrorists will take over the next hotel you check into and kill your children, and al-Qaeda will do a thousand more 9/11s. Is it too late to vote for Rudy Giuliani? He'll protect us!!!

♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]

We were impressed last month when it was rumored that the Huffington Post may have raised $15 million in new investment, a big accomplishment for a media company at a time when the media economy is in the trash. Well, those rumors turned out to be false. Actually, HuffPo has raised $25 million from a venture capital firm. Amazing. So what will they do with all this cash?

As predicted, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone sold his stake in Midway Games for pennies on the dollar, just for the tax benefits. We still think he'll eventually have to sell some or all of CBS to pay his $1.6 billion debt. [WSJ]

It turns out the news media had a pretty shameful weekend. A British couple came forward to say that while they were hiding from terrorists at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, CNN broadcast details of their specific hiding place in the facility, resulting in a fresh search by the gunmen in control of the hotel at the time. The Indian government blacked out local TV after claiming the terrorists were gaining tactical information from the broadcasts. And now David Carr weighs in via the Times with a column about how U.S. newspapers were complicit in whipping shoppers into the frenzy that culminated in a deadly Wal-Mart stampede:

Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews are both famous cable news shouty persons, yes, but beyond that how much do they have in common? Both cling to a Northeastern Working-Class Catholicism that colors their broadcast personae even though they've both been rich and famous long enough to leave most of the lessons behind besides the strict moralism. But Matthews is an old Democrat working for liberal-leaning MSNBC, and O'Reilly is a culture war conservative with GOP in-house propaganda machine Fox. One more thing they share: they're not particularly liked by their peers! Matthews is seen as an overenthusiastic, affection-starved dog, at least if last April's devastating Times Magazine profile is to be believed. O'Reilly is just seen as a dick, if Michael Wolff is to be believed.

Are you ready to sit at home eating leftovers and viewing the internet? The Friday after Thanksgiving is Buy Nothing Day! It's the day when lefties around the world celebrate being broke by abstaining from capitalism for a day and feeling superior, while the rich run wild on pre-Christmas sales. It's a nice thought and many of you would probably theoretically support it, but, you know... sales. This year, however, the anarchist types have an extra incentive: nobody has any money to spend anyhow!

In 1992, suave Billy Clinton was sexin' the nation and wearin' boxers, and MTV had a big ole inaugural ball that was reportedly the hottest ticket in DC, even though Don Henley was the main act, which just goes to show once again that political people are really not cool when you get right down to it. But during the Bush years MTV had no inaugural balls, because Bush was so non-embodying of the Music Television vibe, you know? Well now Barack Obama is president and MTV is once again having a big cool inaugural ball! This is the single worst consequence of Barack Obama's election. [Ad Age; pic via]

Former MSNBC host-turned PR employer of media people Dan Abrams has sent us a response to our coverage of his project, in which we pointed out that being a journalist and a corporate consultant at the same time is a conflict of interest. You can judge it for yourself, but we should note that, 1: If media reporters gave free passes to all friends and/ or former colleagues, media reporting would be even worse than it is now, and 2: Like we said, we're not allowed to sell out until after we've been laid off. Permanently. Here's his full note: