Isn't this the sort of fare reserved for the Thursday Styles?

• "The journalist and the lawyer were fighting in my head," Time Inc. chief Norm Pearlstine tells the Times about the decision to hand over Matt Cooper's notes. Then, of course, while the ref's back was turned, the corporate exec rang into the ring and joined the lawyer to double-team the journalist, who was left unconscious and bloodied on the mat. [NYT]
• And the Journal realizes that actually, no, Time never published the name of the source. Duh. [Regret The Error]
• Two generals familiar with his thinking on the matter and four retired members of the intelligence community, one of whom worked on covert operations in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and another of whom has seen the actual contract, confirm that Sy Hersh has signed a $750,000-$1 million deal to write a book for Knopf. Also, Keith Kelly reports it. [NYP]
• Class, class, newspapers, class. Times class, Journal, class. Reporters, bankers, New York, series, class class class class. [Slate]

It's Friday, so it's time again for Sexy Jon Fine's Sexy BusinessWeek column. He whiffed the first one and fouled off the second; will he strike out on the third?

Click each to enlarge.

A fellow media obsessive points us today to the Studio 360 website, which features what is quite clearly the single coolest action figure ever: a custom-made Kurt Andersen doll. The images aren't great, so we can't really make out the copy on the packaging, but we do note that Kurt comes "with Kung Fu Action Grip!!" and also with a warning: "Not For The Overly Treacly."

We were briefly terrified that Thursday Styles had gone straight on us. The lead story, after all, is on perfumes; the teenagers who may or may not be having "rainbow parties" are having heterosexual oral sex at those parties, if they exist; and then there are features on such boringly hetero things as co-ed spinning classes, heavy-duty baby strollers (well, OK, maybe that could be ready as lesbionic), and ordering the new Harry Potter online.

• Meredith fires 75 staffers it inherited from Gruner & Jahr in its purchase of Family Circle, Parents, Child, and Fitness. Among those let go: Susan Ungaro, editor-in-chief of Family Circle for 11 years. [Mediaweek]
• The peacock folks are considering merging the operations of NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC and putting them all under one roof in — gulp — New Jersey. [NYP]
• Alessandra Stanley plants a clickety stiletto right between Tucker Carlson's eyes. [NYT]

We're sure there were dozens of images available of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing settlers from the Gaza strip. But of course the ever-irresponsible, corporatist, statist New York Times just had to pick this photo. Is there any clearer way to suggest that the protesters aren't noble pioneers fight to hold onto their homes but instead unreasonable radicals?!

"The same Constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments," Norm Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said in a statement announcing that the company will comply with a court order to deliver documents, eliminating the need for soon-to-be-jailed Matt Cooper to testify.

jessicagawker: Hey, big guy!
jessicagawker: Don't know about Florida, but it sure is hot around here. I bet you'd like the heat, though. All sweaty.
jessicagawker: Speaking of heat, those "streaming" Brazilians you mentioned...
jessicagawker: You seem kinda happy about it. More Brazilians are a good thing, for you. Admit it.
jessicagawker: An exclamation point? You're totally excited.

First WWD's Brobdingnagian Jeff Bercovici tipped us to Conde Nast honcho Steve Florio's forthcoming management book-cum-memoir -cum-revenge fantasy. Then David Carr suggested in the Times that Florio had given up on the project. "I would never sacrifice my integrity to write a book," Florio told Carr. "Because of what was said and how it was taken, there will be no book."

From left: Us cover from May 30; current July 11 cover.
What a difference six weeks can make. Thanks to Us Weekly's determined coverage, Lindsay Lohan went from dangerously thin to the portrait of perfect health; from near-death to vibrant and full of life. Editor Janice Min is no less than a lifesaver, deserving of her own holiday — we're even starting a letter campaign for her beatification. In the meantime, this should end the debate once and for all about the quality of celebrity weeklies: Clearly, they're just trying to help.

We confess to being confused and frankly a bit troubled when we saw this CNN.com headline this morning:

At last week's National Newspaper Publishers Association convention, it was announced that Whitey — or the New York Times company, as he prefers to be called — will be starting an African-American newspaper in Gainesville, Fla. Naturally, this has been met with some opposition:

We actually know that one. But we never expected to see a Times op-ed open with, "There once were some Pequot called Mashantucket...."

• MSNBC.com is "defying gravity." Its cable sister (and her bow-tied new boytoy), on the other hand, know gravity all too well. [OJR]
• Despite lack of any actual news — no changes in plans, sacrifice "worth it," course must be stayed, post-9/11 world, yada yada — all the TV networks ultimately decide to carry Bush speech. [WP]
• Not just circ cheats at Newsday, but alleged pedophiles, too. [Newsday]
• Is Judy feeling lonely? Time might turn over docs to keep Matt Cooper out of jail. [E&P]
• No, she's not! An appeals court upheld a contempt ruling against her fellow Timesperson James Risen, in this case for refusing to reveal Wen Ho Lee sources. [NYT]

This press release just in from "the worldwide leader in adult entertainment for women [sic]":

Despite the publicity it's been getting lately — outing Deep Throat, a cover-shoot catfight among the Desperate Housewives hausfraus — Vanity Fair's newsstand sales suck, says Keith Kelly.

New York lost a features editor last month and an articles editor in September. Now it's staffing back up, hiring two folks who will be, as editor Adam Moss put it in an informal and friendly staff email yesterday, "roughly replacing the recently departed chris lehmann and the less-recently departed joanna coles." (No caps, the sure sign of an informal and friendly email.)

Ah, if only The Onion were a real newspaper and not a stalwart of satire. Then their latest "news" of Us Weekly editor Janice Min's launch of Us Quarterly would be a wet dream come true. Fantasize with us for a moment: