The digital barbarians are at the gate. Harbinger Capital Partners, a private-equity fund which owns 4.9 percent of the New York Times, has written a letter to the newspaper's management suggesting that it buy more "digital assets." Scott Galloway of Firebrand Partners, an affiliated investment firm, is proposing an alternate slate of directors for the next board election. The newcomers include Galloway himself, a founder of RedEnvelope and aprofessor at NYU who graduated with an MBA from UC-Berkeley; Gregory Shove, a former AOL executive; and Allen Morgan, a venture capitalist at the Mayfield Fund. Since the Sulzberger family controls the Times through a two-class stock structure, it's unlikely that Harbinger's efforts will succeed. But even the notion of the Times having its Internet strategy dictated to it by technocractic outsiders has to be galling.

Rupert Murdoch can't hire media maven Tina Brown to the Wall Street Journal, because, well, she hates him and the feeling's probably mutual. But a clone has been found! Her name is Tina, she's a Brit, and she worked at Tatler too! Tina Gaudoin will be the editor of the Journal's new "lifestyle magazine" when it launches in the fall. Rupert, dear, perhaps we ought to devote some time to this during our next session? Murdoch's murky id aside (or not!) what's with News Corp's anti-American hiring proclivities, hmm? Besides Gaudoin (far left) Murdoch's top people include Robert Thomson, the Journal's new Australian publisher and his countryman Col Allan, prickly editor of the New York Post. A few weeks ago, Allan's replacement was rumored to be Rebekah Wade, the firey-maned editor of the Sun. The Post has since dismissed that rumor. Wade wouldn't have been the first UK lady to run the tab—Xana Antunes was editor there till she was canned in 2001. Not that we, um, have anything against editors from overseas. We're just saying.

As you might have noticed (it's practically impossible not to), New York City is always getting reduced to rubble in the movies. Cloverfield, I Am Legend and what's that one about all the freezing rain that had Jake Gyllenhaal in it? Oh yeah, The Day After Tomorrow. You might think that in a post-9/11 world, Americans might not find the idea of NYC being blown to bits very enjoyable to watch. Oh, well! "That is what will sell it overseas," a Paramount senior executive tells the NYT.

LX.TV—formerly Code.tv and occasional target of Gawker mockery—is all growed up. The proudly idiotic web video lifestyle porn purveyors have been acquired by the good people at NBC. Specifically NBC's "Local Media Division" which seems like sort of a sad ghetto for such an ambitious group but LX.TV has been enriching viewers of New York's WNBC for some time now with their terrifying original content. Meet a new worst person in the world every week! It's seriously hypnotic. Anyway, New York is dead and now you can watch drunk i-bankers party on its corpse live on channel 4. [NBC Universal]

"I have been putting off doing this Rate-A-Date because I genuinely liked Paul Janka. I felt bad for him in a way," writes Kelly Kreth, the ousted New York Press sex columnist, PR bunny, and seeker of any and all forms of attention. Paul Janka, Manhattan's slimiest bachelor and minor internet-celebrity, "seemed lost and confused and completely harmless... He is just a man with a compulsion that needs to be addressed... He graduated from Harvard and is pretty smart and intense, but it would seem that a few years ago he became aimless. He worries, too, that he isn't contributing to society." Not with a tract called How To Get Laid in NYC, he isn't. Her five-hour date with him is full of frankly disturbing scatological descriptions that cross the line into the clinically weird. It also reminds us where all the smart girls are on a Sunday night: not going on dates as a "media joke."

There goes the neighborhood. Rupert Murdoch is planning to move his Wall Street Journal newsroom from the financial district where it's lived for over 100 years to News Corp's headquarters on Sixth Avenue. The Midtown Journal just doesn't have quite the same ring, though. We predict singing rumble sequences in the cafeteria between WSJ staffers and their new Fox and New York Post siblings. Manhattan's newspapers have either died or migrated uptown over the century, choking the neighborhood around Rockefeller Center, but the Journal was a holdout of a bygone era. After the jump, a stroll around New York's former press nucleus.

Now that they've conquered the market for snarky/bemused strike commentary, hungry screenwriters are finding new ways to pass the time and earn small amounts of money: novel-writing, as the LAT reports! What do we learn? Well, writing a book is different from writing a screenplay, for one. Also, we have projects like this to look forward to: the Rune Warriors, a "Viking saga that's a mix of Harry Potter and 'The Princess Bride' with a little Python thrown in."

New York Times rich people beat reporter, billionaire-marrier, possible orgy enthusiast, and over-sharing plastic surgery addict Alex Kuczynski is expecting! Expecting a surrogate mother to carry and deliver her baby, that is, according to Liz Smith. Alex and her ridiculously wealthy (and ripped) husband Charles Stevenson have reportedly tried "several times" at this child-having thing, to no avail. Stevenson has five children from other women, a set-up the Kucz has commented on with approval on other occasions. (All you have to do is cheer them on at graduation—no weight gain or unseemly marks or scars!) So, we ask you, the Gawker readership: who on Earth is currently feeding and growing the spawn of the Amazing Plastic Woman?

So we were a tad scatterbrained on Friday and forgot entirely to post the second weekly installment of Old School Odes, in which we (and you!) remember The Press The Way It Was. We apologize heartily for neglecting our elders. Last week our inbox was flooded with the smells, sights and sounds of journalism's Golden Age. We've never seen the word 'fedora' quite so many times. We also got a good serving of cranky Si Newhouse stories and heard some whacked-out altweekly shit from the 1970s for which we have zero proof, but it involved crack cocaine and who can resist a good crack-cocaine-in-the-newsroom story. After the jump, our favorites from your nostalgia. Thanks to all who wrote in-keep them coming!

It's a sad state of affairs when the entire book industry, plus major retailers like Barnes & Noble, can see only one ray of hope for the future: the next novel from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Apparently, they don't have anything else going on (no one else writes books, obviously), because they are slavering like dogs in heat for the next sure-to-(possibly)-be bestseller. Just one big title can jolt the entire industry, the WSJ reports, "as customers pour into the stores and walk out with a bagful of titles." Since the fate of the world is clearly resting on Mr. Brown, he's receded into New Hampshire and refused to comment. His agent isn't speaking, either. Good for them!

Whatever you do, don't try to boost BusinessWeek's web traffic! Turns out they don't want your stinking clickthroughs. As a recent story subject discovered, should you be inclined to push traffic their way via a direct "deep link" to a story, the McGraw-Hill magazine will even go so far as to ask you not to link to their site, and point you to their snooty user agreement. This is pretty much the dumbest thing we've heard in the last, oh, two hours or so, and after the jump, we'll tell you why.

Congratulations to the Hamptons Independent for publishing the single most offensive newspaper column ever. In "satirizing" the Obama/Clinton feud, the offending column manage to insult and degrade women, blacks, and every literate person on Earth in equal measure. Oh, it was written by the editor. Under the pseudonym "YoMama Bin Barack." That doesn't even make sense. Anyway—black people speak pidgin english, and many of them are in jail. "White women" enjoy being "bitch slapped." Too bad Bloomberg's not in the race, the only thing the column's really missing is blood libel. [Plum]

Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley doesn't like that new Fox show with the lie detector. She dislikes is so much, in fact, that she reserved her trademark glaring inaccuracy for a statement about a game show on a rival network: "Before picking the correct suitcase to win $1 million on 'Deal or No Deal' Wednesday night, a contestant named Britney told the audience that her father was so nervous he placed Maxi Pads in his armpits." Oh, Alessandra. Britney took the deal and went home with $471,000. We can't verify the accuracy of the Maxi Pads story. [NYT]

Attached, Gawker videographer Alexander Goldberg and Defamer videographer Molly McAleer explore the murky limits of bad taste while discussing the coverage (of the coverage of the coverage) of Heath Ledger's death. You will be edified. There will be tears. [Previously]

Don Imus can't catch a break, besides the many inexplicable ones he's been handed on platters made of various precious metals over the course of his infuriating career! The cruel and stupid old prick is now, gratifyingly, getting sued for $4 million. Sadly it's for something actually kind of amusing: "Flatsigned Press Inc., a book publisher based in Nashville, Tenn., says Imus insulted the company last year in ads it paid for to promote a book by Ford on the Warren Commission's investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy." Imus called the ads "cheesy," considered an actionable insult only when spoken by a character in Happy Days, and mocked the ad copy as he read it. This all happened last January, by the way. CBS and WFAN offered to settle last February, but Flatsigned rejected the offer. Let this be a lesson to Imus—you can crack racist all you like, but lay off the sponsors. [AP]

New York Post editor Col Allan does not appreciate your skepticism, goddammit. Via his flack, Allan has issued a statement in response to all the crap he's been getting today for his Mary-Kate-As-Prime-Suspect cover.

Who should win the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley contest, in which the people re-interpret everybody's favorite foppish dandy? We decide! The contestants' work is shown here, but we've sorted through the boring ones. Click to see our favorite entries—they include stoners, a monkey, and hipsters!

New York Press editor David Blum has some of the worst instincts we've seen when it comes to sex columnists. While at the Village Voice, he fired popular sex columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel. Then he hired two married women to replace her and they were sucktastic and they all got fired. When he got to the Press, Blum sent the sex columnist packing, replaced her with Kelly Kreth, who he fired two months later and replaced with the experienced Claudia Lonow, whose resignation he accepted yesterday, a day after her first column and one hour after Jezebel pointed out she'd lifted material for her column. Interesting tidbit! Lonow was a consulting producer on the ABC drama 'Cashmere Mafia'-guess who else on the show has the exact same job description? Blum's wife, television writer Terri Minsky. Yeah, we need a nap too. But today Blum may have himself a halfway decent idea.

Is Mary-Kate Olsen a murderess or is she just really good about picking up her cell phone when it rings four times in a row? Contrary to the New York Post's front page today, cops say they have "absolutely no interest" in talking to Olsen about her role in the events the day of actor Heath Ledger's death. The Post's funny print format that can't be fixed on the fly will look silly all day, but the least they could do is update their website, which is still running with a big Olsen-interrogation splash. Of course, they're not the only ones.

Oops. The mics on Al Roker and his trusty 'Today' team failed to cut away during this morning's weather segment! What were formerly fat Al & Co. dishing about when they thought they were off the air? Nastily enough, it involved Ann Curry, a massage, the phrase "oil all over me," and much giggling. Deep apologies to those of you who just ate. Unfortunately for NBC's morning trio, their little off-camera gaffe introduced a segment on Heath Ledger's maybe-masseuse-related death. Isn't that just hilarious?