University of Iowa professor and pretentious troll-journalist Stephen Bloom recently wrote an article in The Atlantic mocking Iowa as a backward, hick-filled state full of people smoking meth out of corncobs (paraphrasing). Which it is, probably! (Never been there personally, thank god.) But now Stephen Bloom has literally fled the state in terror to "an undisclosed location" after Iowans got mad at him. You're doing this all wrong, Stephen Bloom.

The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago's runner-up paper, has been sold to a group of investors for "more than $20 million," reportedly. Former Newsday publisher and Tribune Co. exec Tim Knight will now lead the Sun-Times. Just in time for... a new year. God bless 'em.

Bloated starfucker Piers Morgan finally gave his long-awaited testimony before a British commission investigating phone hacking today. While there were no Perry Mason moments trapping Morgan in one of his numerous transparent lies about his tenures at the News of the World and Daily Mirror, he was at least exposed as having a conveniently spotty memory.

Peter Braunstein was a former writer for The Village Voice, WWD and other New York publications who became a tabloid sensation in 2005 after he went crazy, raped a woman [Correction: Braunstein was convicted of kidnapping, sexual abuse, robbery and burglary. He was never charged with rape], and went on the run. Aaron Gell (now an editor at the New York Observer), a former colleague of Braunstein's, has revisited the man and tried to make sense of his crimes in his new Kindle Single, Speak of the Devil: How Peter Braunstein went from Fashion Casualty to Tabloid Monster.

Well well well, it seems that The History Channel is a big cable success story. The fifth most popular channel on all of cable! Only trails ESPN among middle aged men! How has The History Channel done it? By having nothing to do with history, or "true" things at all!

Yesterday afternoon, New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson abruptly announced her resignation. She may have been pushed out, though she got a nice fat "consulting" paycheck to cushion her fall. The important question now: who takes over?

Earlier this week, Manattan ad executive Suzanne Hart was killed in a freak elevator accident. These things are referred to as "freak accidents" because they are very, very rare. No matter; everyone is taking the stairs now, forever.

Well, HMMM: the New York Times Co. just announced that CEO Janet Robinson is "retiring." It's fair to call this unexpected. Try reading between these lines, from the NYT's own story:

So, you'd like to advertise in an iPad magazine? Ha ha, sucker. Sure, you can buy an ad, right in an interactive version of a fancy Condé Nast lifestyle glossy. But you're going to pay through the nose with surcharges, because you're a mark.

Columbia Journalism School kids exploring "The Elements of Style" in hip hop form? Don't make that rap video.

Russ Stanton is stepping down as editor of the LA Times, a job he's held for the past four years, through some of the shittiest layoff-plagued times in the history of the newspaper industry, and under the ownership of the thoroughly incompetent Tribune Co. He'll be replaced by Managing Editor Davan Maharaj. Perhaps the biggest story here is how small of a story this is, in 2012.

Breaking meta-news: New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter has pulled a Weiner. No, not that kind. No, not that kind, either.

You would think that the AP would be satisfied with its status as "last remaining source of non-local 'news' for 95% of American newspapers." But no! Now they want to be kings of the internet, and whatnot, as well.

Great news from the official top paper of historical world record, import, & fame, &c., the New York Times: former executive editor Bill Keller won't use "illegals" to refer to illegal immigrants in his profound-ish columns! What's the big deal? Perhaps that he was using it left and right in his column the other day and everyone got mad at him for this? Indeed, it is so.

Whoops! Remember when Rupert Murdoch's News of the World was revealed to have illegally listened to the voicemails of teen murder victim Milly Dowler? And how the bastards actually erased the voicemails, leading Dowler's family to falsely believe that their little girl was still alive and checking her messages? And how Murdoch killed off NOTW in shame and a panicked attempt to avert scandal when it all came out? Well, there's a slight wrinkle.

Yeah, last night was the TV debut of Chelsea Clinton, NBC's newest """""journalist.""""" All you non-famous kids out there who saddled yourselves with a lifetime of debt in order to pay for journalism school, who are now either unemployed or underemployed or stuck at some boring dead end niche publication wondering how your journalism dream turned out so differently than you imagined: maybe Chelsea Clinton will put you in one of her charity news segments on teevee one day. That would be a dream come true for you.

In the past, we have used this space to mock new New York Times columnist Frank Bruni for starting out poorly, then getting progressively, unbelievably worse. He seems to lack any convictions at all, let alone interesting ones; though he's only been on the job for half a year, he's already been reduced to padding his column with excruciatingly boring stories from his own life, due to his apparent dearth of worthwhile ideas about important issues.

Kelly Evans is a financial columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Unlike most columnists, she arrives at work at 6:45 a.m. That's because Kelly Evans has a second job: she's the co-anchor for the Journal's 8:30 a.m. video newscast, the "News Hub," which plays on the WSJ's homepage just as thousands upon thousands of readers are reading their morning financial news. How many of those traders and brokers and analysts and corporate office drones have fallen in love?

Horrible person Andrew Breitbart is fighting (again) with horrible person Glenn Beck, and while we know we should be feeling that soft warm joy that comes when two horrible people are engaged in a dispute, secretly we are sort of sad: we agree with Glenn Beck!

Although virtually every big newspaper company has suffered major layoffs, declining stock prices, and general existential malaise for the past several years, the last one to actually declare bankruptcy was Tribune Co., which was actively destroyed by a gnomish billionaire's arrogance and incompetence. Well, good news, Tribune: you have company!