Very rarely, a Craigslist posting deserves to be recorded here in its entirety — because should it ever disappear, we would all be deeply impoverished.

There's a "new" edition of today's busted New York Post online — only, whoever Photoshopped it together put the Sunday 50-cent price on it. It's the most expensive newspaper that doesn't actually exist!

The folks at Gothamist have thrown open the doors on the public beta of their Los Angeles offering, LAist. Editor Tom Berman splits his time between our fair city and New York, but really, how much time do you need to spend here to write about LA? We do the majority of our writing from our parents' basement in Omaha. Sure, the coke's not as good, but you don't have to share it with struggling actors who wander into your stall "by accident."

Metro New York, that free daily they hit you with at the entrance to the Bedford Ave L station, has an easily alterable advertising campaign, as seen at 14th Street and 8th Avenue.

· The big Miramax shakeup may be finally coming soon — undoubtedly to a courtroom near you. [NYP]
· Suspiciously vague and number-free report on how NY mag has "bombed" at the newsstand and how their numbers are "slipping." We don't think it's any bed of roses over there, but we ain't buying this without seeing the math. [NYP]
· We're not living in an age of greater plagiarism — we're living in an age of greater plagiarism detection. [Slate]
· Our suspicions about coming changes for NYT media-addict David Carr grow: Carr to focus less on business, more on "cultcha." [WWD (last item)]

Dear NY Post'ers: please drop me a (anonymity-assured!) email. Sure, I can hear the screaming all the way down here in the East Village, but I can't quite make out any words but "FUCK!" and "FIRED!"
Veep Flakes: Race to Second Edition [Wonkette]
John Kerry Chooses John Edwards As His Running Mate [MTV News]

Andrew Krucoff, resident statistician, looks at a Pace University study on newspaper readership, a week of Gothamist, and where we get our news — and how we lie about where we get our news.

Since man first put ink to paper, we have wondered, "why the hell do people read newspapers?" Blogger Heath Row breaks down what he loves about the Post and the Daily News:

· Trace amounts of garlic discovered in Conde Nast cafeteria, violating S.I. Newhouse ban. Meanwhile, Newhouse lunches with Remnick in happy garlic-free oblivion. [WWD (2nd item)]
· LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke goes fabulously batshit, declaring "nuclear holocaust" in the LA Times v. NY Times competition. Former LATer Michael Cieply to be NYT movie editor. [LA Weekly]
· Guardian's right-wing Freddie Forsyth off to the NYT? [Memefirst]
· NBC airs Katie Couric playing badminton instead of Saddam Hussein charging. [NYT]

About three of you will remember/care, but last September, some sort of bloody mass of human or animal tissue was discovered at Conde Nast HQ in 4 Times Square. We assumed at the time that it was a chunk of some Vogue editor. (Hey, flayings happen.)

The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke updates her story on the NYT's recent raiding of the LAT's newsroom, which included the hiring away of star film critic Manohla Dargis. LA Observed points out this quote from the column, indicating that the LAT's entertainment writers are unhappy that their work is kept under a for-pay lock on the Calendar Live site:

BREAKING! CRAP ATTACK AT WENNER MEDIA! A report from the offices of Us Weekly, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, et al:

You'd think Will Ferrell might remember spending hours getting coated with red makeup to imitate a tan-gone-wrong for photo shoots for two different magazines. Eh, it's probably like that every day for him. Inside: scans of the '97 Details man-tan shots and the '04 GQ speedo-burn shots. (An aside: if I was gonna go back and get shot nearly naked for another men's mag seven years later, I'd, you know, stop eating for a month or two. [UPDATE: Oh, lighten up! All famous people must be emaciated. I don't care if they're bulimic, anorexic, whatever, just as long as they are unhealthily thin!])

We're still trying to suck out the details on yesterday's NYT memo regarding "expanding and reorganizing our media coverage." Still, it's worth mentiong that Lorne Manly — and yes, we're sure that's not his porn star name — will serve as NYT chief media writer. Former media dude for Inside.com, former editorial director for Folio, Manly stepped into the welcoming folds of the Gray Lady at the beginning of 2002, near-simultaneously with media writer David Carr. (Carr of course still rides the magazine/biz media beat hard.)

· Will the Olsen Family Circus sue the Star over their Mary-Kate rehab story? [NYP]
· Lizzie Grubman is back behind the wheel — and only has 1246 days of non-drinking probation left! We bet she's really, really thirsty. [NYDN]
· Fellow Kabbalists scalped free front-row Madonna tickets. Ah, we could stoop to some great money-changing jokes here. [NYP]
· Lindsay Lohan's dad arrested again. [Newsday]
· Page Six's anti-publicist vendetta continues: today's lying publicist is Damon Dash's rep, PMK's Amanda Silverman. [NYP]
· B Bar and APT deny entry to fag hags on gay pride weekend. [NYP and NYP]
· Best publicist pitch yet: didja know Jessica Simpson supports an entire Argentine village by popularizing their crocheted wrap-wear? Oh, honestly. I don't hear Mary-Kate Olsen getting credit for supporting half of Bogota. [NYDN]

We don't usually delve into the NY Press too deeply, because the shock value gets unshocking real fast, but in all fairness Matt Taibbi's takedown of Christopher Hitchens and the state of journalism today is hilarious. Pissed off by Hitchie's recent Michael Moore slam, Taibbi's not buying the idea that journalists are much more than corporate mouthpieces, Hitchens included:

Crazed First Amendment hero Howard Stern held a press conference this morning to announce that Viacom is putting him back on the air, including in markets that Clear Channel yanked him from.

We were hoping they'd call their new mag "Backgammon" or "Mahjong" but Domino is fine... I guess.

According to reporter Matt Thompson, since May 23rd the New York Times has expended 17,000 words on Paris Hilton stories and only 10,000 on stories about Darfur, Sudan. We're not that up on the news, so we're not sure who this Darfur person is, but evidently she needs a better sex tape.
Sudan, the Untold Story [via Editors Weblog]

We promised you last week this was coming: tomorrow's Star outs Mary-Kate as a rehabbing cokehead. Yow, that's the biggest hit the twin industry has taken since Dolly Parton went back to bluegrass.