Today we find that Joyce Wadler, the NY Times gossip columnist who hates her job and everyone she's forced to cover in her column, is teetering on the verge of losing it.

· Page Six said: "WHICH porn hustler is so desperate for celebrity pals to attend Mardi Gras with him, he has offered every "star" a free ride on his jet, five-star accomodations and $4,000 in cash for play money? So far, no one will risk their reputation by being seen with him."
You said: "The third blind item... gotta be Joe Francis, right? I just saw him referenced on another headline as someone everyone's avoiding... And this has been months in the works. This sounds like something he'd do, and it sounds like something that should happen to him. It's about time, actually." [NYP]
· Also: Lil' Kim blasts Bill O'Reilly and goes onstage to show off her lady parts (the natural ones, not the doctor-installed parts). [NYP]

· Newsday radically redesigns, with a front page intended to be anything but a tabloid. [Paul Colford]
· Spin's acting publisher and its associate publisher resign; Jacob Hill, former Budget Travel publisher, brought in to bring the ad pages hard. [Greg Lindsay]
· Larry Flynt introduces his smutty ways to England. [Robert Chalmers]

If you're whining about how the job market is so bad, you're obviously not keeping up. Why, here's three super jobs! You could handle the fact-checking at Maxim (are those really D-cups, ma'am?). Or you could fill out Bonnie Fuller's team of celebrity speculators over at Star. At least at the Star jobs you get to have frequent contact with the NY Post. Every time Bonnie makes someone miss their own baby shower for rewrites, or someone pees in her latte, you get to call Paula Froelich at Page Six. Now that's a job perk you can't beat.
Research Chief, Maxim [Mediabistro]
Writer, Star Magazine [Mediabistro]
Editor, Star Magazine [Mediabistro]

Reportedly, the following email was just circulated by Bill Keller regarding Jayson Blair's book and its "smears" against the Times and its employees. (Hey, who hasn't sacrificed bunnies to the pagan gods of plagiarism at coked-up toga parties with the entire staff of the Circuits section?)

Everyone's all down on little Matt Drudge, because he spreads rumors about Presidential candidates having extramarital affairs — and then everyone reports on those rumors. Like it's his fault you read his website! (What were you doing in that neighborhood at that hour in that outfit, you whores? You were obviously asking for it.)

What's probably most shocking about Naomi Wolf's expose on sexual harassment at Yale is that tuition was only $13,000 twenty years ago. It's basically quadrupled since then, as far as I can tell. Christ, how much money do they need to pay the child molesters up there?
Sex and Silence at Yale [NYM]

· Miramax movie exec Rick Schwartz leaves to start own firm — allegedly on good terms. [Page 6]
· More on Christina Kelly's departure from YM. [WWD]
· A new English consortium decides that papers are too obsessed with celebrities and vow to launch a serious paper. That'll sell well. [NYT]

Christina Kelly, the editor-in-chief of YM who famously banned diet stories aimed at teen girls, resigned this morning. No word yet on where the former Sassy editor will end up.
Breaking News [Mediabistro]

· "Your sports section is a fucking disgrace to this town and a disgrace to hockey. Fuck you Mr. NY Post Sports Editor. Stop sucking Steinbrenner's cock so soon in the year." [Kill the Bird]
· Nick and Jessica: "Should the mentally retarded have babies?" [Low Culture]
· Saturday Night Live: "Why don't they just change the name from 'SNL' to 'TRL.'" [Whatevs]

Stephen Glover, a founder of the Independent and an old college chum of Tina Brown's, is said to be putting together a new upmarket tabloid in England. Here's a blind item: What under-employed talk show host and Washington Post columnist might enjoy once again helming her own — oh, fuck it. Just get Tina four first-class tickets on BA already.
Glover hopes to launch new tabloid [Guardian]
Independent conservative with radical dreams [Guardian]

There's more than a few problems with using Google as an instrument of popularity, but it's use as such in reporting has snowballed out of control, writes Lionel Beehner today. Besides, journalists should use Google as its intended: for finding hot pictures of post-teen pre-op trannies and soccer moms. (Or the new hot porn trope: Dirty Nascar Dads). The internet is for porn, not journalism, ya bastards.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Google [Mediabistro]

· The campaign against tabloid editor queen Bonnie Fuller is now in full swing: Bonnie is 200K over budget every week, staff are allegedly considering mass walkouts. [Page Six]
· Adam Moss will move NY mag away from encyclopedic service ("3,000,000 things you could do on the corner of 79th and Lexington with a banana and some gummy worms," says NYO) and towards "what New York is and what New Yorkers are," says Moss. (Wait a minute... it's already vapid and annoying, just like New Yorkers are!) [Sridhar Pappu]
· Bonnie-related: former Talk publisher Lee Rosenbaum says "Thanks but wayyyy no thanks" to publisher job at Star. [Greg Lindsay]

No one at New York magazine seems to think they're getting fired under the new regime of Times-man Adam Moss. And maybe that's so.

Andrew Sorkin gets the Ouchie I'm-On-Deadline Award today for his New York Times front-page story "Vodafone Is Seen As Favored Buyer Of AT&T Wireless."

· High definition television is allegedly sending waves of terror through the broadcasting community — Is Katie Couric growing bangs to hide an upcoming brow-lift? [Greg Lindsay]
· "If I'd known what I was doing, Talk would still be in business," claims Harvey Weinstein to Tina Brown's face on last Sunday's Topic A. [Liz Smith]
· Us Weekly did kickass newsstand sales in the second half of 2003, primarily because they squeezed every ounce of life from the Bennifer saga. [Paul Colford]

It's been two and a half months since Dan Okrent became ombudsman of the New York Times, and I was wondering how he's doing. So I thought I'd conduct this interview with the nearest available Dan Okrent: me.

Dow Jones has outlawed spell-checking; evidently too many interview subject and company names got mangled back into English. We wanna know what the hell happened — did "NASDAQ" get spell-checked to "nutsack" or something?

· University of Maryland laughs hysterically at Jayson Blair's proposed scheme to set up a scholarship at their journalism school. [Richard Leiby]
· Bruce Wasserstein is the last person in Manhattan who knows how to keep a secret. [Peg Tyre]
· Survivor goes up against The Apprentice, both of them Mark Burnett shows. Just give the schmuck his own network already. [Bill Carter]

At long last, word from inside New York mag on the hiring of Adam Moss as editor: