Rick Kaplan's exit from The Early Show-less than three months after the veteran TV producer was brought in to turn around the troubled CBS morning programme-has never been adequately explained. CBS's valiant flacks said he needed a rest after working two jobs, and would be focus on the network's election coverage. Blog Jossip speculated that Kaplan wanted a pay rise that CBS News chief Sean McManus wasn't prepared to give; but it would be surprising for an executive to attempt renegotiation so soon after taking a new job. Here's a more plausible narrative. According to a CBS insider, Kaplan's big mistake was falling out with his boss' wife, Early Show presenter Julie Chen.

Here's an idea that was only clever the first 20 or 30 times someone did it: "The Worst Album Covers Of All Time." Ha, look at the ugly people! The first person who dug through crates and crates of old records to find the funniest 1973 dulcimer trio was a genius; pretty much everyone since is just a copycat. Blogger 33 1/3 points out that every freaking list like this just draws from the same pool of Google-able bad album covers already out there. Like AM NY and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel did this week. And the most popular bad album cover is a fake! A Photoshop joke! A years-old joke, which media outlets can't stop falling for. Like Very Short List, which marvels today, "Someone at VSL Headquarters was convinced that these were all elaborately executed jokes, fake records concocted the day before yesterday. But they are definitely real." No; here's the real version of "Can I Borrow A Feeling?":

A media company identifying itself as "Cond Nast Publications" is in need of a copy editor. Specifically, the ad says, "TheAssociate Copy Editorreviews copyedited text." Urgent, please apply now! Click through for a screengrab of thisjobopportunity.

Angelo Mozilo is the CEO of disastrous mortgage lender Countrywide, and one of the most overpaid, reviled, and villainous business executives in America today. He's drawn huge salaries even as his company led to the way for the subprime mortgage collapse. So you might expect the guy to be surrounded at all times by a team of highly-paid image consultants, ensuring that every word out of his mouth in some way helped to resurrect his shattered reputation. Wrong, bitches! With a classic "Hitting reply instead of forward" move, Mozilo inadvertently let a desperate homeowner (and the world) know what he thought of his plea for help: "Disgusting.":

Boa-sporting Mediabistro.com proprietress Laurel Touby continues unabated in her menacing campaign to misuse email—an invention originally designed to simplify communications. Her latest infraction: in order to promote an upcoming "Mediabistro Circus," she decided to save a little time by sending a mass email to her entire contact list—all 2,000 people. The message starts off with an apology to those who "hate my guts," which is a good sign that perhaps it would be better to pursue a different outreach strategy. The entire ill-conceived email, after the jump.

The Photoshop Monster never sleeps. In March we brought you possibly the five worst Photoshop distortions ever. But it's clear that lessons have not been learned among those who wield the program's horrific power. Must all consumers be forced to live in a world in which perspective and continuity do not exist? It doesn't seem fair. After the jump, five more abominations of our modern media world, culled from the multitudes at the Photoshop Disasters blog.

Rich Jernstedt, the chief marketing officer of the massive PR firm Fleishman-Hillard, emails us to explain why, exactly, someone at his firm had the bright idea of mocking Fox News as a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease, and offering Fox guests a free de-lousing in order to get publicity for a pest control client. Rich, Rich, you don't understand: we're with you on this one. Fox News is a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease. And we like to see a PR firm uncharacteristically attack a powerful media outlet. We're hoping for a full-on war here! But, reading between the lines of Rich's email, it sounds like Fleishman has done some serious groveling since its CEO got mocked by Fox on-air in retaliation last week. His full email about "our friends at FOX," below:

You know the Colbert Report, and how it's really successful? And how other forms of news are less popular and some are dying? CNN noticed that too! So their Headline News channel will soon be airing Not Just Another Cable News Show, a weekly program with a light take on hard news using memorable gaffes from the past week. Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox, of Wonkette fame, and noted Canadian/Huffington Post contributor Rachel Sklar will be commenters. The show, whose concept is stolen from the first segment of the Daily Show and whose title is stolen from the Wayans brothers, begins April 5. [AP]

Both major New York tabloids today went, on their front pages, with a story that everyone knew was bullshit by the time they picked up the papers. If you caught a second of the morning news today, you know that the letters to congressmen saying "WE DID IT" had jack shit to do with that little I.E.D. that went off in Times Square the other morning. The Post didn't know that when they decided to play the story HUGE today. The Daily News went a bit more tasteful, with one line below a story about how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are having a Graveyard Smash, or something. Click to see both covers embarrassingly huge.

One lesson that you, not being an advertising professional, might think would have sunk in by now: Don't use 9/11 as an advertising tool. Not even for a good cause, like this anti-tobacco ad. It's just skeevy. But the imagery is so powerful! Still no. [Daily Dish]

Ridiculously error-prone New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has been making reliably glaring mistakes in every single piece she has published in the newspaper of record for years now. Here's today's, in her story about how MSNBC is trying very hard not to upset the Clintons anymore: "MSNBC calls its stars 'the best political team' on television, but at the moment some players are in disgrace." A free cookie to Slate's Jack Shafer, who wrote an entire column about how annoying it is that CNN uses that "best political team" slogan incessantly. Does Ms. Stanley own a TV? Or have an editor? [NYT]

In yet another example of Portfolio's tossing around their coin, the flagging Conde Nast title has now snagged Dana Thomas, the Paris-based Newsweek fashion correspondent. Thomas is the author of Deluxe, an inside look at the decline of the luxury brand, the bestseller of which we were big fans. We're guessing Thomas herself wasn't a huge fan of the errors in the WWD MemoPad item about her big move today. Her upcoming book tour is headed to Australia, not Argentina, and if luxury execs have complained about the book's inaccuracies, they're only talking to WWD.

Flackers, a word? You will almost certainly be fired should you use the slug "LOONY-BIN-RALLY" on a press release about a march for mental illness. Yesterday, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Dan Gross reported that a PR Newswire employee had done just that, prompting her dismissal and a pleading correction from the company, which distributes press releases to over 4,000 news aggregators. How did the company stumble across the faux pas? Why, News man Gross called in the tip himself! Filling a regular column is hard. "PR Newswire deeply regrets an error that occurred yesterday in a news release, re-sent below," the correction reads. "PR Newswire understands that such terminology feeds the prejudice and discrimination associated with mental illnesses and will take steps to ensure that nothing like this occurs in the future." Thing is? The original wasn't wrong, per se. After all, it was a rally for a loony-bin. Full-blown insensitivity, on the other hand, typically warrants something a tad weightier. Like a press release. Release after the jump.

We heard (but did not quite believe) that a recent issue of Forbes magazine contained a pretty significant cover typo, but a publicist confirms today. Those crazy capitalists misspelled "America" on "some of the covers of the November 26 issue." Says a source, "Every one of the top Forbes brass saw it, and they all missed the fact that the "i" was missing." Whoops!

"I'll give that kid a fucking disability he can write home about if he keeps sending these code amendments to everyone" was the name of the Facebook group that University of Michigan Student Assembly prez Zack Yost created out of frustration with the frequent amendments proposed by Rep. Tim Hull. Tim has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism that is often not really worth writing home about. "Yost's accomplishments as president include helping organize a rally in Lansing for increased higher education funding, developing an intern program to get more freshmen involved in student government and co-founding the Michigan Action Party ... But his legacy—fairly or unfairly—will likely be defined by the Facebook group," the Michigan Daily somberly intones.

In August of 2004, Page Six was making a habit of listing the deceased in their sightings. Now they're back to seeing dead people. Nice to have things come full circle, y'know?

After a certain point, one learns to ignore all the photo errors on Page Six. Really, who hasn't at one time confused Will Smith for Sidney Poitier or Jackie Chan for Lucy Liu? Simple mistake, happens all the time. But today's caption cannot go without note: socialite Tinsley Mortimer is identified as Tinsley Martinez. After all that work her father went to, calling Lloyd Grove to insist that Tinsley's family was high class — only to have those pure blood lines destroyed by Page Six. They fuck up this sort of thing all the time...but to fuck up a fancy white girl by slapping some brown on her? Oh hell no.

We're not going to get on our high horse to condemn plagiarism. (That'd be just so predictable.) But may we get on our high horse for a moment to condemn stupid plagiarism? The News gleefully notes today that the Post suspended reporter Andy Geller for a month "after the newspaper discovered he copied massive sections of an article." And where did he find the article from which he plagiarized? In the Times. On the same fucking day.

But isn't the bigger problem that the city's middle class was already so small one guy's dismissal makes a difference? (And since when an eight-figure NBA coach considered middle class, anyway?)

This email arrived in our inbox moments ago from Perri Dorset, the longtime New Yorker publicity powerhouse who now works for the TK-eventually Conde Nast business mag: