Tabloid Wars, Bravo's six-episode docu-series on the news machine that is the Daily News, debuts next Monday, making for some enjoyable coverage today. New York magazine declares that, unsurprisingly, news reporters are more interesting than gossip monkeys; even better, John Leonard writes, "Lloyd Grove's brief appearance suggests a surprising magnitude of jerk. And Grove's legman last summer, Hudson Morgan, has already gone where he belongs (Men's Vogue)."

Not sure how we missed this, but Donna Hanover — the former Ms. Rudy Giuliani, thrown over for the ex-NYC mayor's secretary and current wife — has chugged her womanly reclamation train to AOL. Hanover now serves her dark net master as "love & sex coach," dispensing video tidbits of startling simplicity. Is it OK to have sex with the ex? "It's up to the two of you!" chirps Hanover helpfully. So much for realizing that nonconsensual grudge-fuck rape fantasy. The New York Daily News imagines what Hanover might have advised her replacement in the Giuliani household: "if you respect marriage, probably the best thing to do is back off and go a different direction." The NYDN then crows "Too late for that!" in response to its own quotation misappropriation. Burn.

The Daily News has issued a paper-only memo today outlining the paper's policy on blogging, seemingly apropos nothing (though maybe, some speculate, in reaction to reporter Derek Rose's blog). It begins grandiloquently:

While you spent your weekend in the city's apocalyptic heat, watching the polish melt right off your toenails, the pretty people of higher tax brackets were flitting about the Hamptons, mingling with cryogenically preserved old bags by day and skanking about Hamptons-outpost versions of Manhattan's best cheese factories-cum-nightclubs by night. Early Sunday morning, Jessica Simpson was thus found in her natural habitat, the Southampton extension of the Pink Elephant (no doubt giving her mane 100 strokes of the brush before even leaving her SUV). Daily News photographer John Roca dared to take pictures of the young skanklet, sparking the rage of security guards. A routine scuffle ensued, and security confiscated the camera's memory card, which also contained photos from two other News assignments.

Meta-gossip: over at the Daily News, George Rush & Joanna Molloy's two beloved stringers, Chris Rovzar and Jo Piazza, have legally emancipated themselves from their gossip family. After two years of alcoholic reporting, they're both moving up to the News' feature section, where they'll bend to the mercurial will of editor Orla Healy. If they can handle the mandatory late nights at Bungalow, surely they'll be able to endure the Irish terror.

From the Daily News:

You have just over one month to prepare for the most life-changing television experience ever: Bravo's Tabloid Wars premieres on July 24, and we suggest you start building up your tolerance now, because this show promises to be the most worthy drinking game opportunity since the State of the Union. Taped last summer and billed as a "docu-series," the show follows reporters from the Daily News as they go about the business of reporting news and breaking stories — plus, we know the cameras caught Lloyd Grove's then-assistant Hud Morgan on the phone, campaigning for Gawker Hottie nominations. Surely that sort of journalistic intensity wouldn't end up on the cutting room floor.

This just in from that place just over the Brooklyn Bridge:

There's interesting ad in this week's Advertising Age. (Click on it to enlarge.) It might even be unprecedented, as some have suggested to us. It's from the Daily News, and it touts the tab's dominance over the Post. More New Yorkers read the Daily News, the ad brags. More buy it. It has more ads. Its online audience is growing. A cynic might point out that the accompanying charts aren't nearly to scale, but, even so — and nothwithstanding the atrocious grammar in Point 3 — the claims seem to be entirely true. Which would make, at first glance, this ad seem like endorsement of the News's great success over its rival.

• Anna Wintour and Patrick McCarthy don't like each other. Also, Rick Stengel doesn't plan big changes at Time and "greenies" die at post-Siegal Times. [NYO]
• Star gets sex wrong on Brangelina and Gwen Stefani babies, plans no corrections, because, as we read it, at least they got other stuff right. [WWD (second item)]
• Storm Field has only the nation's second-best weatherman name, and Sam Champion merely comes in fifth. [TMN]
• Katie Couric will have to spend $30K on new clothes for her CBS gig, experts say. Proportionally, that's like someone making $100K spending $200 on work clothes. [NYSun]
• Not at all uncharacteristically, a top exec is axed from NYDN. [NYP]
• Chicks dig TV news. [NYO]
• Former Rolling Stone publisher goes to Maxim, replacing dude who took his job at RS. [Ad Age]

You know how every now and then the Post or the News or even the Journal or the Times is being given away for free somewhere in our fair city, usually in a sponsored-copies promotion? Well, today, apparently, nearly everything's free. Reports a correspondent:

In addition to reminding us that Mort Zuckerman isn't happy with his portrayal in the forthcoming memoir from the billionaire publisher's former Daily News editor, Ed Kosner, Post media man Keith Kelly relishes the opportunity to point out errors in Kosner's recollection of life at the Post's crosstown rival. For example, Kelly writes,

• Remember how Women's Wear reported last week that Mort Zuckerman's doesn't like how he's characterized in onetime News editor Ed Kosner's forthcoming memoir? Well, he still doesn't. And now he's demanding corrections. [NYP]
• OK! America is now apparently doing OK in America. [Guardian]
• Charlie Gibson knows he's old, and he hopes he doesn't get hit by a truck. [Newsweek]
• Ellen Levine got to pick her Good Housekeeping replacement: Prevention's Rosemary Ellis. [WWD]
• Obligatory Romenesko-isn't-working-today-but-we- still-are post. [Romenesko]

Next week, the paper can't believe what they charge to rent a car around here.

• Networks sue FCC to make it stand up to Parents Television Council right-wing nutjobs. One can dream. [WSJ]
• Joanne Lipman wants to steal James Stewart from The New Yorker for her new Conde biz mag — which nearly has a name. [NYP]
• More books were sold in 2005 than 2004. A sales uptick for a print medium? How unusual. [NYT]
• Former Conde editorial director James Truman has a prototype for his new Culture & Travel, which is not — not at all, he says — the art mag Si wouldn't let him do. [NYP]
• Mike Wallace once tried to kill himself. [NYDN]
• Hachette to launch Shock mag next week. It's "Life magazine for the new millennium," says founder Mike Hammer, formerly of Maxim and Stuff. We suppose this means its gross pictures — such as one of a rotting human head in the first issue — are shot by Margaret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. [WSJ]
• In his forthcoming bio, Ed Kosner is not very nice to Mort Zuckerman. We're just shocked. [WWD]
• Jack Shafer, de facto Times ombudsman, doesn't care for Howell Raines' new memoir. [Slate]
• NYTer Sharon LaFraniere wins $25K Michael Kelly Award. [Kelly Award]

From "Mort Bids for Philly Papers," by Janet Whitman, in today's Post:

The incredible shrinking Daily News features staff is, it seems, losing another one. This email just in:

And the hemorrhaging continues at the Daily News features department, where today we hear that movie critic Jami Bernard was informed her contract will not be renewed. At this rate, it's only a matter of time, we imagine, till Ben Widdicombe is writing the whole paper. Congrats, Ben.

• In latest stats, newspaper circ is — of course — down. One exception: The mighty NYT. Yay. Elsewhere in town, the Post-News gap narrows, as Rupe's tab loses fewer readers than Mort's. [E&P]
• Bauer to sell Life & Style and In Touch for only a quarter in two weeks. Hey, it worked for the Post. [Ad Age]
• The Forbes family seeks outside investors for European expansion. Being filthy rich apparently ain't what it used to be. [NYT]
• The Times new Weddings/Celebrations videos: Appalling, addictive slideshows. [Slate]
• Kaavya ain't the only plagiarizer out there. [NYM]
• Michael Jackson is mad at GQ, which made fun of him. [BBC]

Word came late Friday that yet another of Orly Healy's features writers quit her job. This time it was Breanne L. Heldman — who, according to Nexis, has clocked 128 bylines so far in 2006. It's something like the ninth or 10th departure from the features department since Healy's arrival. Which raises the question: Who the hell's left to write the damned thing anymore?