That was the Post a couple of days ago. Here's the News today:

An article on Sunday about some of the more captivating events in the New York region in 2006 referred incorrectly to a federal investigation of Jared Paul Stern, a former contributor to the Page Six section of The New York Post whom Ronald W. Burkle, the supermarket magnate, has accused of an extortion attempt. The investigation came to light when it was reported by The Post; it was not announced by federal authorities. In addition, allegations that Mr. Stern had been caught on video demanding a $100,000 payment, as well as monthly stipends, for keeping negative accounts of Mr. Burkle from the press were made by Mr. Burkle, not by federal authorities.

Today's Daily News has an article reassuring the "straight" men who get a semi whenever they hear our newly sworn-in governor railing against corruption that they're not homos — they just have what's now called a "man-crush." A man-crush differs from a crush-crush in a few important ways, according to one rampantly heterosexual interviewee:

What a remarkable coincidence! That's the exact same resolution we made! Well, not really; ours, as you know, had to do with not making any more bullet-pointed lists. Courtney Love's resolutions, all 53 of which were posted on her website, MoonWashedRose.com (Stevie Nicks already had the CrushedVelvetPentagram domain, damn her) are in the form of just such a list. They're pretty reasonable, if a little Lohanny in the spelling department:

That image to the right isn't a brilliant bit of photoshopping — it's the $25,000 (paid out of "gubernatorial transition funds") portrait of scandal-plagued former NJ governor Jim McGreevey that he commissioned — and then, after leaving office, sat for. "It represents a final obligation," said the noted Gay American yesterday at the portrait's unveiling, adding that it helped close a chapter of his life. We can only hope that that chapter will be detailed in a sequel to The Confession. We'd hope Jim would be able to work something about being "well-hung" in there somewhere.

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  

In this morning's News, Ben Smith reveals

How was your New Years? If you're anything like Britney Spears, you got so wasted that you had to have your people carry you out of the club again. And if you're anything like the New York Post, you got so wasted that you're currently so hungover that you couldn't even be bothered to reconcile the two conflicting accounts of Spears' collapse on your website. Which is it, 'BOOZY' BRITNEY FAINTS or the AP's contradictory 'Spears Falls Asleep At Vegas Nightclub'? The latter has the maligned Spears "finally . . . acting like a new mom" by dozing off after leading the New Year's Eve countdown at Pure, and quotes manager Larry Rudolph as saying that Spears "was not drunk." The Post's own take is closer to the Daily News's, citing reports from "witnesses" who saw Spears "talking with one of her male dancers on a tented cabana bed when she said she wanted to leave, stood up and "she went into a dead faint and just fell right to the floor."

And here's hoping it's a healthy one, too. Especially because, well, you just got way shittier health benefits — we hear that an internal memo routed a few weeks ago that announced a New Year's switchover from gold-plated Oxford to middling Aetna. Liked your old doc? Too bad — she's probably not on the new plan. Any Daily Newsies want to confirm, deny, or just bitch about Morty's latest bout of grinchiness? You know where to find us.

That's right: the three-year battle over massive Brooklyn development project Atlantic Yards is over. Forest City Ratner's $4 billion project was approved yesterday by a state oversight board, clearing the way for groundbreaking this January. Construction on the Nets arena, the main "it'll bring jobs and revitalization to Downtown Brooklyn" centerpiece of the developers' plan, will culminate in Fall 2009. The Post's rah-rah article quotes ACORN executive director Bertha Lewis as saying that "The Atlantic Yards project represents a historic 50/50 comittment to affordable housing," — uh, not quite. While the number of planned market-rate rentals and and "affordable" rentals is equal, there are also 1,730 market-rate condos planned — and only 200 "affordable" condos. The entire project is slated for completion in 2017. We don't know about you, but for us, that coincides with the period of our life when we thought we'd be throwing in the towel on being cool and succumbing to Bugaboo-trundling through tree-lined brownstone streets. Guess we'll be trundling our Bugaboo through Portland or something.

State Approves Major Complex for Brooklyn [NYT]
The Nets Win [NYPost]
Here Come The Nets [NYDN]

Remember our obsession with free newspaper sex columnist Julia Allison, last seen wearing a Halloween costume made out of Trojan Magnums? Also, recall that fun Daily News article about her mercenary almost-trip down the aisle? Well, just in case you don't:

So this is just crazy enough to be true, but still pretty frigging crazy: the News is going to fill its lady vacancy (created by the canning of Lenore Skenazy) by giving a columnist job to... wait for it... Dawn Eden! That's right, the professional hymen-regenerator herself. Our source on this sounded slightly dubious, and who wouldn't? If you know anything, send it in.

Yesterday was Meth Appreciation — sorry, 'Awareness' — Day, and the Post and Daily News are celebrating today with stories about Citigroup exec Michael Knibb, who transformed his $6,000/month penthouse into a "sophisticated" meth lab. That's a picture of the classy setup on the right. It got us to thinking — what crank-addled friend of Tina couldn't use a few new decanters and vases that double as meth-brewin' vessels this holiday season? Well, since we're not afraid to be servicey, we thought we'd suggest a few.

So asked the Post during their humble celebration of eclipsing the News in circulation. Apparently not Mort Zuckerman, who canned Skenazy after nearly eighteen years with the paper. Keith Kelly's crocodile tears fall thickly on the page this morning as he reports the dismissal:

In the past, we've certainly had our suspicions about the horniness/party animalness of Columbia co-eds. We'd assumed, based on a potent mix of vicious stereotypes, personal experience, and stories in their paper of record, that Columbia students were just dorks whose idea of a raucous good time was reading excerpts from dirty poems aloud. But according to the Daily News, we were so, so wrong. Apparently, Columbia is a regular 24/7 bacchanal (if by bacchanal you mean "average American college")! They don't just show homemade, boring porn on their school TV channel, they have "clothing optional" parties and an S&M club! And just listen to this scandalously ribald quote:

• News headline disappointingly misleading. [NYDN]
  

• NBC News layoffs: Dateline, Today hardest hit. Ann Curry still there, unfortunately. [LAT]
  

Great news! The Daily News, reports the Daily News, is still on top, circulation-wise, provided you squint and use a different system of metrics than the Audit Bureau of Circulations:

There's a curious incident in today's Post dating column. A lucky dumbass is faced with the following dilemma:

At right, an ad in today's Post that reproduces an editorial from yesterday's Observer. The pink sheet congratulated the Post for its recent rise in circulation, saying that "the paper has worked overtime to create a voice that appeals to its readers, capturing both the street-smart and the smart-aleck, while becoming a brash player in the political arguments of our age." It's heartening as it is to see one money-hemorrhaging organization salute another; we can't wait until the Observer finally reaches profitability by shedding half its staff and the Post reciprocates with a similar reach-around. Celebrations continue in the nation's fifth-largest paper, which runs a gossip item quoting Donna Dees, the recently-axed News flack. "If I were still there," she says of her former employer, "I most likely would have been under my desk drinking kamikazes and committing hara-kiri instead of at Nobu noshing on sushi and sipping sake." We're not sure why Zuckerman canned Dees: we can count at least three alliterations in that one sentence alone. Talent like that is hard to come by.

The Post Makes News [NYO]
Happy Escapee [NYP]