Newspaper readership, long resilient, is now clearly dropping. Paid circulation from September 2007 to March 2008 dropped 3.6 percent from the similar period a year ago; Sunday circulation dropped 4.6 percent. [Reuters]

As loud as the uproar over Miley Cyrus' too-racy photo shoot gets, she of course is not the first young star to be packaged as a sly sex symbol. The American print media, and its advertisers, have a history of getting into trouble for this sort of thing. The two common methods are to either portray an underage girl (or, less often, boy) in an overly sexualized light, or to use "barely legal" girls in a way that evokes underage taboos with a wink and a nod. It's really a standard form, at this point. After the jump, we've compiled some of the most famous ad campaigns and media spreads that play the slick jailbait game. Does this stuff work? Apparently so.

Online gossip-monger Perez Hilton is speaking out against puppy mills, because they're bad and mean to doggies. But as Deceiver points out, he got his own puppy, purchased last fall, from a place they think sounds suspicious: "We typed in "small" "cute" and "smart" into Google and they popped up!" Perez wrote at the time. (Hey, that's not all that pops up when you type those words into Google! HEY OH!) Anyway, they like, mail the dog to you. But guess what? That pup (a "goldendoodle") is the cutest one in the world. And maybe the place they bought him from isn't so bad after all: "Our home is our kennel, and we have turned our home into a home for the dogs! We live in Palmdale California (LA County), on three acres of all usable land and we have a huge swimming pool, for people and dogs! The dogs also have their own plastic baby pools in the summer." Click to see Perez's dog OMG.

Annie Leibovitz: come off it. Really now. As dirty as the media business is—and particularly the celebrity media business, which Vanity Fair revels in under a sheen of high class pretension—there are some bare, bottom-level standards to which we all must adhere. One of those is, "Do not sexually exploit minors." You want to economically exploit a minor? Fine. That's a grand American tradition. But trotting out 15 year-old Miley Cyrus with pouty lips, tousled hair, and only a bedsheet is just bad. Bad! Of course Vanity Fair bears the responsibility for publishing it. But the idea for the shoot can be traced to the tired celeb photographer Leibovitz (who is sorry it's been "misinterpreted"). And her narrow, robotically transgressive act has now played itself out. This incident, and Leibovitz's entire style, is less shocking than it is boring—but with a 15-year-old involved, it's boring and creepy.

• We chilled out watching The Kids in the Hall clips.

Well that was quick. It looks like you can no longer access Vanity Fair's behind-the-scenes slideshow of Miley Cyrus pictures. We have a selection of the vaguely creepy shots in our earlier post. Now the link on the magazine's website goes to a landing page for the feature story on the young star, but when you attempt to click through to the slideshow, an error message appears. A tacit admission of guilt, or just, ahem, a technical issue? We've emailed VF for comment, and we'll let you know what we hear. [UPDATE: The slideshow is back!]

Departing gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe's innuendo-laden items for the Gatecrasher column in the Daily News were always designed for two audiences: the tabloid's middlebrow readers, who weren't intended to get the joke; and the Australian gossip's counterparts, who could be expected to pick up on the camp subtext.

There's a technique called "grooming" that pedophiles use on their victims (yes, we just learned about it today, thank you). One definition says "Grooming behavior is intended to make the victim or potential victim or victim's guardians feel comfortable with the molester and even interested in interacting with him." And here's a characteristic of a regressed child molester: "They place pseudo-adult status on their victims and then view them as they would their peers." Now take a look at the following behind-the-scenes pictures from Vanity Fair's controversial new Miley Cyrus photo shoot by 58-year-old lesbian photographer Annie Leibovitz and ask yourself if any of that rings a bell. We're not accusing these stylists of being pedophiles, we're just saying... ugh:

A New York Times reporter who quite obviously was just poking around on YouTube in desperate search of a workable story came up with this: there are racist cartoons on there! Old, racist cartoons. Anyone who grew up in the good old days (the 80s) surely remembers when the racist Bugs Bunny episodes from the early part of the century used to sneak into the Looney Tunes broadcasts and you were too young to know the difference. So in that sense, this cobbled-together story is a good reminder that your favorite cartoon characters and their owners were all a public bunch of horrible, horrible racists not too long ago. Below, the clip of "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs," that should really have Warner Bros. donating millions to the Rainbow Coalition at this very moment:

Roger Clemens, the recently retired former Yankees ace pitcher and full time Class A jerk, has used his commitment to his wife (pictured) and family as a defense of his own character, which has been impugned by steroid allegations. And, you know, by his own general asshole demeanor that causes him to do things like throw a fastball at his own son. But today the Daily News says that Clemens carried on a ten year affair with train wreck country singer Mindy McCready—although they never trot out any real proof. And their lead, which seems to imply Clemens is a statutory rapist, is a little problematic:

Ashley Dupre is one step closer to her big dream of being a famous singer instead of the most famous prostitute to service former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. She totally got signed by diva Mariah Carey's manager! Well, her ex-manager, at least. Before a big falling out. But he stills reps this singer called Mika who maybe you've heard of. And according to one anonymous Daily News source, there's been "quite a bit of interest" from record labels in Dupre. Or, if you believe the other anonymous source, "every label passed." Ugh! Seriously, who do you have to blow in this town to get a straight answer about your record demo? [Daily News]

A collage of the best scenes from Midnight Run. Pretty much any 80's classic has a bunch of collages over at YouTube. Please post your favorite one-or even just your favorite scene-in the comments.

Book publicist/author Sloane Crosley is so magically delicious that she even brightened the painful Sunday Styles feature on N+1 editor and Emily Gould-dater Keith Gessen in today's Times. "At the football game, he admitted to monitoring his novel's Amazon.com sales obsessively. And he lamented the fact that more visitors to his novel's Amazon page chose to buy Sloane Crosley's essay collection, 'I Was Told There'd Be Cake,' than his book." But to get to that, I had to come face-to-face with one particularly offensive nugget.

From 1962 to 1972 adman George Lois created some of the most iconic magazine cover art of his era. Thirty-one of them are part of a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Times is offering a handy preview. My faves after the jump.

It wasn't the interview with now-former CIO Douglas Merrill, which served to convince me that the Canadian-nice Merrill will get eaten alive by the music industry. It wasn't the moment when Jim Killeen of Cobe, Ireland, a Catholic priest, argues the Pope's position on human sexuality with Jim Killeen of Denver, Colorado, the swinger and self-described "tranny chaser."

OMG! Radar magazine is still publishing in that funny old timey "print" medium! And they've got Maddox Jolie as Ashton Kutcher and Suri Cruise as an Olsen twin... Or something! Actually, I would like to know which nepotism-favored "Power Brats" they're really talking about. Maer, hook me up! [OhNoTheyDidn't]

The New York Times' Barry Bearak reports on his four-day stint in a Zimbabwe prison on charges of "committing journalism." It began when 21 policemen and detectives raided the lodge where he'd been staying. "The crowded room was hot. Already, I felt jailed. I needed a breath of air, but when I moved toward the door, Detective Jasper Musademba, a well-built man in a jacket and tie, stopped me. He had been the most threatening of the police. 'If you try to go outside...' he said sternly, stopping in midsentence. He made his hand into a gun and pulled the trigger. 'You'll kill me?' I asked. 'Good,' he remarked wryly. 'Then you've seen that movie.'"

It's like "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," except with the Internet and likable schlubs you've never heard of. Actually, it does look kind of good. Like cable-good. Like Supersize Me without wanting to punch the narrator in his smug stupid face. Come see the preview!

Here is this week's roundup of the Sci-Fi Channel's rocking space opera Battlestar Galactica, from notes I took last night from deep within a liter of Johnny Walker Red Lable. (And here are the other weeks.) Could be spoilers, could maybe not be-how would I know?

"Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner of The Daily News, believes he can snatch Newsday from Rupert Murdoch without offering a dime more than the $580 million already on the table. Mortimer B. Zuckerman will argue his bid has less potential for regulatory uncertainty."