Great moments in photo editing.

Judith Miller, one of the two reporters imminently en route to jail for refusing to reveal her source in the Valerie Plame case, launched a blog yesterday to tell her story. Joe Strupp, E&P's answer to both Woodward and Bernstein, reports:

One thing we should have known: You don't fuck with the staff of The New Yorker. When Si Newhouse forced William Shawn to retire as editor in 1987, 153 staffers signed a letter to Robert Gottlieb, Newhouse's pick to succeed Mr. Shawn, urging him not to accept the position. And when we passed on some anti-Adam Gopnik potshots — at his alleged presumption, for insinuating his son onto the magazine's softball team, and also at his own skills on the diamond — we expected at least some response, too.

Ah, the company softball team. When the warm weather arrives, when the long, sunny evenings beckon you away from your office and into the verdant expanses of Central Park, what better way for a happy workplace family to bond together than over nine innings and, afterward, a few cold ones? The company softball team relaxes things, builds friendships, and provides a good time for all.

In a move that has every old-school indie kid thinking he too can be David to the Goliath of mass market consumerism, Nike has agreed to pull its "Major Threat" skateboard tour posters after causing an outrage(!) by using a well-known Minor Threat album cover without permission.

• Miss America, dumped by ABC, gets picked up Country Music Television — an obvious home for "the queen of femininity." [Hollywood Reporter/Reuters via NYT]
• Conde Nast to custom-pub a Harrod's mag, and we're sure Anna is disgusted to be even indirectly affiliated with such a middlebrow retailer. [Brand Republic]
• Here's a way for our beloved TiVo to solve its business problems: Hire the man who destroyed Primedia to run the place, naturally. [NYP]
• New poker column is a smart bet for the Times, says Jon Friedman. [MW]
• Tina and Harry to sail on the Queen Mary 2! (And for free, we presume.) [PRNewswire via Yahoo]

Also: Lifetime looks 'beyond gender'; ESPN looks 'beyond sports'; The Food Network looks 'beyond food'; and VH1 looks 'beyond quasi-ironic clip shows featuring moderately amusing talking heads.'

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger," Mel Brooks once said. "Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die." The two lightbulbs in our kitchen burnt out last night, and it was tragic. This, on the other hand, is comedy gold:

Because, frankly, we're tired of spending $19.95 a month to get access to amputation vids.

So many lean, topless boys... So young... So wet... Oh, how those beautiful brown muscles glisten in the heat, waiting for the loving touch of a new media bear... How long is a flight to Pakistan?






Drudge Report

For a few seconds, we thought this top headline had something to do with Al and a pit bull, and some kind of an attack on Bill O'Reilly.

Maybe it's a little early to go around voicing our Chrismukkah wishes, but we don't care: This year, we'd love for just one alternative newspaper to happily survive and thrive. The New York Press is slowly dwindling into a whisper-thin shadow of its former self, and now comes word that the fine staffers at the still-venerable Village Voice are readying for some babymamadrama.

Looking for an editorial-assistant position in magazine publishing? This company is in desperate need of a qualified candidate:

New Scientist breaks some imporant news for magazine circulation execs today:

The Times published a nice little story on the front of today's Business section extolling the virtues of corporate nepotism, at least at media companies like McGraw-Hill.

If you're not too distracted by the digitally enhanced cleavage of Washingtonienne, you might actually find some words in this week's Times Book Review. And those words, according to Intern Alexis, are good if only because they're biased. After the jump, Alexis' weekly round-up of books you'll never read but should pretend you have, in which Michael Cunningham gets gently bent over and Jessica Cutler gets treated as if she were a real writer.

• Remember sweet, earnest, hardworking, nebbishy Jim Romenesko, toiling away in his Evanston, Ill., studio apartment? Turns out he makes $150K. Who's the nebbish now? [Mediacrity]
• Steve Florio's management book-slash-memoir is no more. We're sure you're heartbroken.[NYT]
• What kind of pinko socialist bastards would expect to get more work without more pay? Oh, right: The Wall Street Journal. Hey, it's all for the good of the collective. [NY Mag]
• Fast Company and Inc. deal finally gets done. [NYT]
• People continue to not like the press. [Pew Center]

The Supreme Court announced this morning that it won't hear Matt Cooper and Judith Miller's appeals in the Valerie Plame case, which means the Time and New York Times reporters have basically exhausted their chances to not go to jail.

Man-about-Michael's Simon Dumenco kicks of his new Advertising Age column today with a list of all the ethical policies he'll be following as "Media Guy." The weird thing is, we're pretty sure he stole these rules from us.

Because on a day when 38 people were killed in Iraq, Rumsfeld acknowledged the insurgency there could go on for another 12 years, oil topped $60 a barrel for the first time ever, the administration wants to start making enriched plutonium again for the first time since the end of the Cold War, and the Supreme Court is likely to announce whether it will hear an appeal from two reporters who might have to go to prison for not revealing a confidential source, it's tough to figure out what to lead with.