When will the far East stop its racist stereotyping of the white man? Athletes from across the world define the Chinese by the slanty-ness of their eyes. But China is just as bad. They harbor the ludicrous notion that whites look alike! Listen carefully, China: BBC pundit Steve Parry is a tall, white, goofy former swimmer. But Michael Phelps is a tall, white, goofy current swimmer. Being mistaken for someone else is just one more thing white men in China are forced to endure, like weird foreign food and a lack of readily available American flag bumper stickers. Watch the clip of Parry being mobbed by enthusiastic Michael Phelps fans below:

One sad milestone in a business' decline is when they come to find that the real estate they hold-once incidental-has become more valuable than the actual business conducted on the real estate. Wall Street firms collapse and sell their towering headquarters for liquidity. Nobody wants to eat at Ruby Tuesdays any more, but they sure have lots of parcels of land! And...cue segue to the newspaper industry. Gnomish tightwad and Tribune Co. chief Sam Zell wants to sell the Chicago Tribune's headquarters for condos. They're more lucrative than newspapers these days: First people thought Zell would just sell the Tribune's tower, then lease it back and keep the paper there. But no!:

There's no disputing the fact that NBC has made a fucking mint broadcasting these Olympics. They even used their clout to ensure Michael Phelps could be shown live in US prime time, and reaped millions while speeding up the Phelps backlash. But they have pissed off some serious sports fans by often relying on replays over live events, and announcing marginal Beijing events from Midtown NYC. So now ESPN is considering sneaking in and jacking the future Olympic broadcast rights, to bring you archery and steeplechase freaks every second, live! ESPN is considering a bid with ABC for the 2014 and 2016 games, and promises to "carry more of them live, regardless of the time zone, than NBC traditionally has done." They liken it to their World Cup coverage, where morning broadcasts of games results in bleary-eyed drunk fans stumbling out of Irish bars at 7:30 a.m. Um, yay. So why didn't ESPN and ABC get the games this time around?

It appears that the website Cute Overload is becoming a plushie-fueled media empire, judging by the story in the Times this morning. The Cute Overload calendar sold out on Amazon within 24 hours, advertising to its overwhelmingly female audience can cost $2,000 per week and the site claims 88,000 unique visitors daily, "about the same as the political gossip blog Wonkette." The Times says the site is a respite from the "vicious gossip" elsewhere (ahem) but really it's pretty much a respite from anything, up to and including all the bad news in the morning newspaper. It won't be long before a bitter laid-off reporter points the finger at Overload and all the other LOL-ish animal internet media for taking away his livelihood. And then perhaps he'll make it his mission to uncover the hidden truth about why Winston is such an angry widdle kitteh! [Times]

"The Mort Zuckerman-owned paper is looking for 25 volunteers in the newsroom to take buyouts as the paper copes with a decline in ad revenue." [Post]

If Barack Obama is swarmed like this in the red state of North Carolina where he's four points behind, how is he going to make it out of Denver alive?? No one even cares that he's gone "quietly negative" with a secret terrorist propaganda campaign against poor John McCain, who complains he was sucker-punched by someone stooping to his level. God, Obama really is just like Paris Hilton. (Photo via Getty Images)

The supposedly liberal news media hired talking heads like George Stephanopoulos and James Carville from Bill Clinton's presidential administration, but they were even more eager to Hoover up "talent" from the conservative Bush White House two elections later. In the image at left, our Photoshop wizard Steve Dressler shows which top Bush staffers have landed job as commentators, and with whom. Hint: It's not just Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page hiring these Republican operatives. Click through to see the full-sized image.

Right in sync with the meltdown of America's subsidized mortgage giants comes still more evidence the nation's vaunted free market is broken: Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes just took home a $4.5 million performance bonus, bringing his total annual compensation to $20 million. It's true, as Silicon Alley Insider points out, that Fox News retains a wide overall lead over CNN, with 1.5 million viewers per day. But annual bonuses are supposed to reflect performance over the past year, and by that measure this one is a bizarre waste of money.

After frequent guest and guest-host appearances on Keith Olbermann's left-leaning Countdown, political commentator Rachel Maddow will get her own MSNBC show as everyone predicted, replacing Dan Abrams' Verdict 9 pm weeknights. The Times' Brian Stelter writes that "Ms. Maddow will almost certainly be a closer ideological fit with Mr. Olbermann's," reinforcing our earlier point that, despite its protestations, MSNBC will inevitably become basically the Fox News of the left as it moves to hold on to the young viewers Olbermann has attracted. Judging by the comments attached to Stelter's blog post, this should be a popular decision. Maddow, at least, is un-Fox-like in one way: She hasn't been afraid to smack down her MSNBC colleagues. After the jump, no fewer than three videos of Maddow doing so, with Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan.

Weightlifting is a relatively obscure sport. But all the intellectual media types love Olympic weightlifting! Slate! The Times! And more of the Times! Today we applaud German Matthias Steiner, who became the World's Strongest Man with a clean and jerk of 569 pounds and a snatch of 447 pounds. By comparison, I once permanently injured my shoulder snatching a 50 pound dumbbell. Which is to say, the media is scared of being beaten up.

Attached to this post, the party calender for the forthcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions in Denver and St. Paul. As everyone has acknowledged, there is no news at these conventions, at all. They are just excuses for partying. So this, really, is all your average conventioneer journalist needs to know. We'll tell you which ones to attend and which to skip in favor of unorganized drinking, below. Click to view Attend, in Denver: Any and all "VIP" or "Cocktail Receptions." At night: Creative Coalition, GLBT Unity Dance, Distilled Spirits "Spirits of Denver" Party (alt: Maker's Mark party), Kanye. Attend, St. Paul: Distilled Spirits, the Maker's Mark thing. Honestly, unless an hour or two of shitty cocktails at an open bar means that much to you you are then advised to go drink with the locals. Skip: Everything else.

This Schweppes ad became a YouTube hit. Why? Because its photography is beautiful. It shows something stunning and naturally draws people in. What it decidedly isn't is a crass attempt to "go viral" with some sort of shocking riff on a pop culture moment aimed a specific demographic group. Which is why we picked this clip to illustrate our foolproof theory of "Viral Reality" (not pertaining to disease): The internet is the most meritocratic communications medium invented yet. The bar to entry is low—basic internet skills and the cost of an internet hookup. Distribution is immediate and global. And, as many large corporations have learned, putting absurd amounts of money behind a web project is no guarantee of success. What is guaranteed is that, in the long run, quality things on the internet will become popular. Take our own stories, for example. Sure, we can promote them to a certain extent on Digg, and put them on the top deck. But if they're not engaging enough they're never going to take off. On the other hand, lots of things we toss up and then forget about catch on all by themselves. Quality is the common denominator for things that become popular. The hard part is determining what "quality" means online. If I knew, I would be a rich man, like Richard Blakeley. Sometimes, the big hits are very random. But they rarely are the product of a deliberate attempt to game the system; they usually happen organically. Which is a long way of saying to advertisers: stop making "viral" ads and just make good ads.

BusinessWeek has tried it all — comments, blogs, podcasts. But with its latest online strategy, it's really giving up on the idea of serving up quality content. Instead, its new site, Business Exchange, will specialize in gaming Google. Sort through the gobbledygook about "aggregation" and "verticals" and "user-generated content," and you arrive at this vision for the site:

Last week we floated an absolutely delicious rumor-the sort of inside media gossip that we hope to be known for when future generations are considering our legacy. Specifically, it was the story of the crazy pooping intern. A summer intern at one of the networks, we heard, went on an on-the-job pooping spree, but somehow stayed on and continued her internship through the rest of the summer. Tips have poured in, and it's become clear this is the story of your worst at-work nightmare come to life. Here's how one locked toilet at NBC caused a disaster: The intern was at NBC in New York, at the famous 30 Rock (NBC has not responded to our request for comment). Our tipsters diverge a tiny bit in their details, but all agree that this intern did exist, and she did have quite an accident. They say it all happened on the intern's first day on the job, in June. Apparently, she tried to make a run to the bathroom, but didn't quite get there. One account:

Who's on TV more than anybody else? Oprah? Jay Leno? Ha, you fools. The Washington Post estimates that Billy Mays, the bearded, dangerously hyper Oxi Clean pitchman, "could already be the single most ubiquitous figure on television today, measured purely in face time." Despite that, he's getting a reality show this fall, about making ads. Disturbing? Yes. Is there any stopping him? There is not. [WP]

Almost half of U.S. households turn to TV for news, reports the Pew Center.Their median age: 52. But while television still comforts the masses, households which rely on the Internet more as a news source have a median age of 35. A third of those surveyed under the age of 25 says they don't care for the news at all, especially when Hannah Montana is on. [DigitalMediaWire]

Are you sick of hearing by now how Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day to fuel his superhuman championship swimming for the gold? Too bad dude! Because what has not been adequately discussed by the media is how awesomely all-American Michael Phelps' calories are. He eats McDonalds! And you can follow his championship diet, too! Allow one of our nation's most prominent journalists to tell you all about it: NBC anchor Brian Williams gave Phelps some special McD's dining advice before their recent interview:

Running a free monthly magazine about outdoor sports in the New York area is probably not the most lucrative niche in the media, so it's perfectly understandable that a publisher would want to look for some creative ways to sell ad space. But selling the entire front cover for a product placement? That may be the point at which you cease to be an actual magazine. Although that didn't stop Metrosports NY from doing it:

It's bad enough that 500 bloggers are wasting time and energy "covering" the pointless media spectacle of the upcoming political conventions. Can't tightly-orchestrated pageantry and vacant messaging be left for the television networks and political trades while top bloggers find important actual news that would otherwise go ignored? Apparently not. But the bloggers are making themselves look even more silly and co-opted by accepting a package of goodies, and an embarrassingly nerdy one at that. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

According to NBC research, the Olympics are one of the few televised sporting events watched by as many women as men. Oddly enough, the Times reports this morning, the women are really into Michael Phelps and other swimmers and also into gymnasts like the medal winners pictured on the far left there. Sensing a theme, Chevrolet is targeting women with an ad "featuring a shirtless hunk who irons, scrubs a toilet and makes reservations for an anniversary dinner." Well, that's fairly puke-y. Women aren't tuning into the summer games just for beefcake and male athletes, after all. Some advertisers are running more enlightened commercials: