· All the juicy parts of the Joe Eszterhas book picked out for you so you needn't get the clap by touching it yourself. [Bryan Curtis]
· NY Daily News staffers get 1% yearly pay increase over the last 3 years. [Keith Kelly]
· Newspaper publisher Conrad Black: not just a sleazebag, more like a common crook. [NYO]
· An article about Slate so incredibly endlessly long that I refuse to summarize it for you. (Okay, editor Jacob Weisberg semi-hilariously says "Slate is not a place to go to find out what s happening. It s a place to go when you already know what s happening" and Michael Wolff says it's "media for media," which is a bizarre criticism coming from the navel-gazer himself. Shit, I promised I wouldn't mention Wolff's name all week. Devil!) [Nina Shapiro]

After a brief investigation, the NYT has called Peter Landesman's Sex! Slave! Trafficking! article "sound." Blogger and Chief Inquisitor Daniel Radosh reacts by Googling up the ramblings of some crazy dude regarding Landesman's past sins. (Is Googling and linking random results more or less journalistically sound than using Friendster as a source for quotes? Columbia J-School kids: please put together a panel on this.)

The anonymous and admittedly alcoholic blogger TMFTML ventures into the nest of the world's bitterest gossip columnist:

· The New York Times is a "greedy company" with "pathetic pay rates," says freelancer Debra Cash. [Rory O'Connor]
· Bonnie Fuller sums up her editorial philosophy: "Celebrities are fun." [Seth Sutel]
· Rap mag The Source is losing advertisers over its anti-Eminem crusade. [Greg Lindsay]
· VF editor Graydon Carter has become a "disgruntled scold." [Russ Smith]
· VF writer Maureen Orth — author of the recent Michael Jackson trashy hit piece — is now banned from Don Imus's show, after blowing him off for CNN on her press juggernaut. [Lloyd Grove]

Word on the "street," which is what I like to call my often-spurious gossip-filled email box, is that media columnist Sridhar Pappu is leaving the New York Observer for a... sports publication? That's not a crossover one sees every day — from catty pink paper to swimsuit-laden glossy mag? [Update: YES, I'm being sarcastic.] Say it ain't so, Sridhar.

Almost worth getting up early for: Legal expert (cough) and New York mag columnist Michael Wolff will give quote on the Martha Stewart trial tomorrow at 8:40 a.m. outside of the Federal Courthouse, 40 Centre Street. What hellish PR fiend set that up?

No fewer than 30 parenthetical phrases appear in Michael Wolff's Martha Stewart column today in New York magazine. It's like he has grammatical variant of Tourette's. Could someone in the office please take a hammer to his keyboard?
Which Martha? [NYM]

· Satanic tabloid queen Bonnie Fuller gets the petty revenge treatment from staff — yes, her dinner got stuffed in someone's pants. [Page Six]
· The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell sells out to the marketing world. [NYT]
· Idiot's guide to the op-ed page: the NYT gets 1200 unsolicited op-ed pieces every week, and pays all of $450 bucks on publication. [NYT]
· Harvey Weinstein to direct; directors to produce; everyone to complain. [NYP]

NY mag columnist (and NY mag would-be purchaser) Michael Wolff is reportedly packing up his bags for Vanity Fair. Goodness, how fancy. And here we thought he might end up at NY Press.

· Eight staffers have fled Harper's Bazaar in the last year. [Jacob Bernstein]
· Does Vanity Fair article on Michael Jackson make claims without attribution? [USA Today]
· Hundreds of staffers walk-out on BBC in protest over second forced resignation in Blair/WMD flap. [WaPo]
· Second hire at NY mag this week (after yesterday's report that Jacob Bernstein is shuffling over): Tattler's Harriet Mays Powell to be fashion director. [Keith Kelly]

Slate's Jack Shafer and blogger Daniel Radosh have been harshing on the story about sex slaves from last Sunday's NYT magazine all week. This — go figure — made the story's author, Peter Landesman, really unhappy.

Some PR people don't really understand that the 90s are over. (Well, it IS Lizzie Grubman's birthday party tonight, so who can tell what the cultural mood is?) But witness this demand just received:

This awful thought has been torturing me all week, and I must confess. Here goes: The Spalding Gray cover story on New York magazine this week was... kind of good. It was all, like, timely and well-written and exclusive and shit.

An anonymous report from last night's conversation between columnist/talk show host Tina Brown and New Yorker writer Ken Auletta at the 92nd Street Y:

· Jacob Bernstein to quit WWD for NY mag? [Page Six]
· Hot air in Michael's — mouth-runner Al Franken makes a pass at news-nightmare Roger Ailes. [Lloyd Grove (2nd item)]
· GQ Roman-a-clef has too many thinly-disguised characters to keep track of — although it's easy enough to remember that "Hi Oldcastle" is actually "Si Newhouse." Page Six]
· TSG goes NBC. [Court TV]

· Bright Lights Big city author Jay McInerney still in running for NYT restaurant critic job; Bill Buford and Julian Barnes reportedly out. [Sridhar Pappu (3rd item)]
· VF's Lou Cona and Lucky's Sandy Golinki get publisher of the year award at Conde Nast's in-house best in show awards. [Keith Kelly]
· With three women among the top four candidates for the NYT book review job, their gender representation approaches inverse proportion to NYTBR reviews written by and about women. [Rachel Donadio]
· Reality TV is evidently a gateway drug to loss of privacy. [Susan Murray]

· Star publisher AMI to launch totally trashy tabloid TV channel. Reportedly, it'll make E! look like C-SPAN. [Kelly/Tharp]
· Don't pity tonight's American Idol contestants: "Haven't they ever seen Showgirls?" [Robert Bianco]
· Beyonce to be fragrance spokeswhore for Tommy Hilfiger. [WWD]

Former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford is rumored to have the vacant New York Times restaurant critic gig in the doggie bag.

· Report: Porn stars go mainstream on TV. [Ad Age]
· Excerpts from Business 2.0's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. [NYP]
· Anti-surveillance camera crusader — and NYT story source — had recently been busted by a surveillance camera while making obscene phone calls. [Newsday]

· At Rolling Stone, publisher Robert Gregory mocked ad sales numbers at Maxim. Then he went to work for Maxim. For some reason people think this is a scandal. Uh, isn't that what you do at mags — trash the competition, then hop to it when you get a better offer? [Keith Kelly]
· Howard Fendrich, AP sportswriter, confesses to being the leaker of the (hideously outdated) AP sports rolodex. [Romenesko]
· ESPN launches espn360. No, sadly, not a mag devoted to Anderson Cooper in baseball uniforms: it's all athlete lifestyle porn all the time. [Greg Lindsay (2nd item)]