Wonkette founding editor Ana Marie Cox is a permalancer! She broke the news on Facebook and Twitter, natch. She's not leaving Time, where she's currently the Washington Editor for Time.com, but she's now a contractor instead of a staffer. She'll still blog it up for them at Swampland, as most Gawker Media alums are generally forced to do, but she now has "more freedom to write in other print outlets," according to Time. AMC says the change was her suggestion. Oh, and Gawker founding editor Elizabeth Spiers is now a contributor to Fortune. This news was broken properly, in a newspaper column, and not on an Internet thingy. (Spiers has a column in this week's Fortune about inflation and the price of steak. It's probably good and smart but we didn't understand any of it except the steak bit.)

The New York Sun, the little neocon paper we glance at so you don't have to, has a provocative question: what if Absolut, instead of making ads about Mexico taking over America, made an ad about TIBET? It's as if Matt Sanchez has surreptitiously landed a job on the Sun's editorial board, a scenario which is quite possible. The paper's reasoning, as it were, goes something like this: Tibet is tiny. But the IDEA of Tibet, under the "ice of Communism," is "a vast land extending deep into what is claimed by the Chinese communist party." Also, Tibet has been in the news lately with the Olympic torch protests, and so has Absolut. Makes perfect sense!

All the news about Katie Couric maybe leaving her anchor job at the CBS Evening News grew out of "idle talk and musings" about her departure, one CBS source told the Times. Where did this supposed "idle talk" take place? In CBS Chairman Les Moonves' office, with Moonves, Couric, her agent and the president of CBS News all present. Funny, if I had a $15 million-per-year job I wanted to keep, I don't think I'd openly talk about leaving three years early in front of my boss and my boss' boss. Regardless, it now looks like Couric will, in fact, exit her contract before its 2011 expiration.

The mean radio lady who ruined American political discourse by calling Hillary Clinton a "fucking whore" is losing her job on a radio network no one listens to and will be forced to work for the largest station owner in the entire country. Hope you've learned your lesson, Randi Rhodes! With Rhodes off to Clear Channel's Oakland AM station KKGN, her former network Air America went looking for someone less grating, and logically came up with comedian Richard Belzer. Here's how the liberal network justified the switch, according to the Daily News:

Re. the "sale" of Out and The Advocate: PlanetOut.com sold the mags, along with some other properties, to Regent Releasing for $6 million cash, payable in $1 million increments over the next year. But according to Regent and PlanetOut: "The funds shall be treated as prepaid advertising, to be applied as the marketing occurs." So. Regent bought a year's worth of advertising on PlanetOut's gay.com and got an entire book and magazine publishing business for free, then? Jesus. That's colossal mismanagement of your brands! Or a fantastic sponsor giveaway.

Bill Cosby is back in the news! And as cranky as ever. The Atlantic has a loooooong think piece about Cosby by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who incidentally is one of the only tolerable writers about hip hop ever to work outside of the music press. Coates runs down Cosby's whole history, and his transformation from the friendly black face popular with black and white Americans alike to a latter-day Booker T. Washington whose gruff dismissal of things like, you know, racism, rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But the key lesson of the story: whatever you do, don't ask Bill Cosby about Obama!

Oprah is scary. There's no denying it. She essentially runs the foremost happy cult in America, surpassing even Martha Stewart at her pre-prison height of popularity. So it's not odd, we guess, that her devotees want to buy all types of tchotchkes with her menacing "O" logo stamped on them like a gang sign for suburban women. But is it really necessary to orgasmically revel in the sweat-stained experience of wearing her old clothes?

A tipster writes in to say that Diane Silberstein, president and publisher of Penthouse Media Group, just got "FIRED!!!!!!!!." She was formerly the publisher of Playboy. The explanation: "She was fired because there were disputes over how 'hard' they wanted the girls to look/pose." Well then, this raises several questions. Did Diane Silberstein really get fired? Can someone confirm for us? And more importantly, how "hard" do you think the girls of Penthouse should look/ pose? We'd say somewhere between steel bar hard and diamond-tipped drill hard, but we like it hardcore. Your thoughts on these vital issues in the comments, please. [pic via MB]

PlanetOut Inc. used to have a monopoly on Serious Gay Media—they published Out and The Advocate. But they went into tremendous debt and sold their entire magazine and book publishing business to Regent Releasing (owner of Here!) for $6 million. Our favorite theory (because we know nothing of the workings of the gay media): "PlanetOut's financial problem are due to its expansion into the gay cruise business - where it has lost millions." Why on Earth can't that happen to The National Review? [Towleroad]

When we got this clip in an email titled "Roseanne Barr Vaginal Rejuvenation," we gagged and choked back a sudden upsurge of bile in our throat. And just retyping that now, for you, we've had to suppress the urge to upchuck once again. But it didn't seem right to keep this 30-second clip all to ourselves. It features portly loudmouth Roseanne on Craig Ferguson's talk show, discussing, you know, what we just said. She even makes what would be a decent joke coming from someone else, but with her saying it, it just seems totally unnecessary and uncalled for. If you do choose to watch the clip below, you'll have to go wash your brain off. Just try not to form a mental picture.

Don't you wish there was a magic pill you could take when you go to bed that would make you wake up on time, feeling refreshed, without an alarm clock? Well according to medical science, there is no such thing. Sorry. But according to 37 year-old mom of three Cathy Beggan from New Jersey, her special time-release blend of herbs and vitamins can do just that. And a Daily News reporter says they really work, science be damned!

Nielsen Business Media—which publishes Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, Editor & Publisher and the Hollywood Reporter—is laying off "between 40-50 staffers," including people from the editorial departments of all of those publications. :( We've known Adweek's in trouble. They've cut back to 36 issues a year, lost staffers they haven't bothered to replace, and suffered under the regime of cruel editress Alison Fahey. Any more info on who's been hit? Let us know. [Folio, Agency Spy]

According to her bio, Jessica Wakeman is "an associate blog editor at Huffington Post." We are not really sure what that means except that she writes totally adorable blog posts about media and all the people in media who she loves, like a little Rachel Sklar. Last time we checked in, she was distraught to learn that to "make it" in New York, "you need a strategy." Her mentor Vanessa Grigoriadis told her! Gosh! Wakeman decided she better stick with the web, a safe space for earnest and sincere young women, where Wakeman can work on writing about important cultural things, like her idol Vanessa or "Ariel Levy or Emily Nussbaum." Today, Wakeman is a little bit upset at her favoritest magazine ever!

This is a news report from an Arizona TV station with actual footage of Village Voice media CEO and asshole-in-charge Mike Lacey at an awards dinner last week, where he called a white journalist friend "my nigger" during an acceptance speech (the word is bleeped, but YOU know what he says). This report nicely juxtaposes Lacey's comment with the other item of business at the awards dinner: the 82-year-old mother of recently deceased black journalist Bob Moran accepting an award on his behalf. Classy. At least Lacey prefaces his comment with "if you don't mind the expression...," which is always a bad sign. Click to watch the clip.

Katie Couric is in talks to leave the CBS Evening News, the Washington Post reported, lending credence to an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal that the anchor is likely to leave before her contract expires in 2011. Couric would be offered "either a syndicated talk show or a full-time role on 60 Minutes" if she is eased out as anchor, the Post's anonymous sources said. Howard Kurtz, who wrote the Post's Couric story, is playing a bit of catchup: he published an interview with Couric Monday that missed the exit talks, allowing the Journal to scoop him two days later. [Washington Post]

Designer Marc Jacobs has an eccentric ad designer, Juergen Teller, who likes to do things like stuff Victoria Beckham into a custom Marc Jacobs bag and insert himself, in a wig and striped sweater, into a ad with model and photographer Cindy Sherman. The Cathy Horyn story on this in the Times Style section is as long and loopy as you might expect, but if you make it almost to the end, it's hard to miss the part where Teller, wearing silver underpants and having put on an extra 15 pounds for the occasion, artistically propositions the English actress Charlotte Rampling:

Katie Couric is reportedly close to being pushed off the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News after less than two years. Resented by coworkers and aging viewers, regretted by the executives paying her exorbitant salary and ignored by the younger people she was hired to attract, Couric must sometimes miss the days when she was a perky, fearless anchor key to making Today the most profitable program in television history. Back then, the New Yorker called the anchor America's "imaginary friend" while others admired her interviews as surprisingly tough (she once asked Pat Buchanan, "Are you trying to drive the President crazy, or are you just on a big ego trip?") How did America come to hate "America's Sweetheart?"

After barely 18 months on the job, Katie Couric is reported to be on the verge of leaving CBS. The Evening News anchor is costing her network $15 million per year, and she is likely to exit CBS well before her contract expires in 2011, possibly early next year, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. A parting of ways will mark the embarrassing end to CBS' big bet that viewers wanted to move beyond staid news anchors to sunnier fare, like Couric's fireside interviews and lighthearted banter.

The Los Angeles Daily Journal—a legal paper, apparently—has just fired its entire copy desk. Like, all of them. Writers writing their own headlines! And, uh, copy-editing themselves! It sounds positively hellish. Don't the bosses know that reporters can't spell? Or come up with pithy photo captions? [LAObserved]

"Both real estate moguls, [Tribune Co. head Sam] Zell and [U Michigan atheletic director Bill] Martin got to know each other as competitors. Each year, Zell sends out small statues - each about a foot tall - that play songs the Chicago businessman wrote himself. Martin insisted on showing them off. For example, one is a replica of the torch from the Statue of Liberty with a rolling ticker that displays the entire Declaration of Independence and a recording of Zell's new lyrics to 'This Land is Your Land.'" [Michigan Daily]