Veteran New York Observer columnist Simon Doonan is (trendily) leaving to go write for Slate.

In your fearmongering Monday media column: vicious rumors of bedbugs at Elle, a mass exodus from the New York Observer, Sidney Harman has some ideas for Newsweek, media job moves afoot, and Philly wants to tax bloggers.

Former New York Observer editors Tom McGeveran and Josh Benson launched their online magazine in beta form today. It seems to have lived up to its advance billing as a sort of Politico-meets-Salon-meets-Observer.

New York Observer politics editor Katharine Jose is leaving for Tom McGeveran's new project, Capital.

Christian Lorentzen was hired by the New York Observer as senior editor last week. Before that, he was a senior editor at Harper's Magazine. But we hear he lost his last job following a sexual harassment incident.

This is how synergy works, folks. If you buy something from Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, you get a free subscription to the Trump New York Observer, the newspaper owned by Trump's husband Jared Kushner. No baubles just for subscribing, though.

Letters to the Editor: they're fun. But the New York Observer doesn't run many of them online! If they did, people would know how unhappy Mos Def is with the New York Observer. But the voice of the people...

This morning, New York editor Adam Moss lost deputy editor Hugo Lindgren to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He's certainly not the only magazine-world EIC to have a trusted confidante on staff. But they're a dying breed.

In your merry maudlin Monday media column: Changes on the NYO's political beat, Washington Post copy editors are a joke, a flack named Flack, and a reporter braves Wal-Mart, for journalism.

There is history behind the current WSJ/NYT spat: The New York Observer today has found a 2008 letter Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in an effort, basically, to make a Journal reporter lose an important award.

In your finally Friday media column: Harvard Business Review does coke off pregnant hookers like it's nothing, the NYO gets a deputy editor, E&P remembered, and Bill O'Reilly hates Law and Order.

Ivanka TrumpKushner is very upset about a profile of her and her new husband Jared that Crain's ran yesterday. Thanks for bringing that story to our attention, Ivanka! Also: The KushnerTrump brand is the future of the New York Observer.

• George Stephanopoulos will probably replace Diane Sawyer on GMA. [TDB]
• Now that Bloomberg LP is talking over BusinessWeek, columnists Maria Bartiromo and Jack Welch are both parting ways with the mag. [NYP]
• CNN is laying off four of its web anchors since it no longer plans to produce live video on CNN.com. The good news? With Lou Dobbs no longer on the payroll, it should save $9 million over the next few years. [NYT, [NYP]
• Euna Lee, one of the two CurrentTV reporters who was imprisoned in North Korea earlier this year, has scored herself a six-figure book deal. [NYT]
• Shares of Playboy jumped yesterday after it was reported the apparel conglomerate Iconix was in talks to acquire the (struggling) company. [NYP]
• Another senior Observer editor is bidding goodbye to the paper. [Politico]
• Fashion mags are expecting their fortunes to improve in 2010. [WWD]
• Is the Fox Business Channel a lost cause at this point? [VF]
• Television is more getting more and more obscene, supposedly. [NYT]

New York Observer executive editor Josh Benson is leaving the paper at the end of the year along with departing top editor Tom McGeveran. Benson tells Michael Calderone he's joining McGeveran in his non-Jared Kushner-affiliated future project. [Politico]

Things To Watch Instead of Mad Men: the day Jared Kushner announced hiring Kyle Pope as the New York Observer's new editor, departed longtime Observer editor Peter Kaplan went on Charlie Rose. He gave some great quotes. Here's good storytelling.

• Condé Nast is now swinging into damage control mode: It's retained Michael Sheehan, a "crisis manager and media coach" who's faced some steep PR challenges in the past having worked with President Clinton and AIG. [NYP]
• So is Oprah moving to cable? The discussions continue, reportedly. [AdAge]
• Kyle Pope doesn't seem to have been Jared Kushner's first choice to serve as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer. Times star business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin turned Kushner down twice over the past year. [NYM]
• More than 100 people were laid off at Lifetime and A&E today. [Variety]
• Philip Gourevitch is stepping down as editor of The Paris Review. [NYO]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes discusses the future of the media biz. [TDB]
• MTV did not rebuild the Berlin Wall for U2, in case you were worried. [UPI]

Observer owner Jared Kushner tried twice to recruit New York Times wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin to take over the newspaper, according to New York.

The New York Observer has a new editor: Kyle Pope, who was formerly the number two editor at now-defunct Portfolio. He replaces Tom McGeveran, who quit last week. Jared Kushner press release quote below!

• Is Oprah preparing to leave her syndicated show behind and take her act to OWN, her long-delayed cable network? That's the rumor anyway. [DH]
• The new editor of the Observer is Kyle Pope, formerly of Portfolio. [NYO]
• Cable meets kindergarten: Fox News will stop being mean to MSNBC only if MSNBC first stops being mean to Fox News, reports Rupert Murdoch. [NYT]
• Fortune and Time are expected to be hardest hit by layoffs at Time Inc. [NYP]
• Scripps has beat out News Corp. for control of the Travel Channel. [BN]
• Susan Plagemann has been named the new publisher of Vogue. Meanwhile, Tom Florio will now oversee Vogue, Bon Appétit and Traveler. [WWD]
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek (or BBW for short) has its new team in place. [NYT]

• The cuts continue at Time Inc. Fortune Small Business was shuttered today. And as many as 500 employees may lose their jobs when all is said and done. Meanwhile, parent company Time Warner reported a drop in revenues and earnings in the third quarter, as expected. [NYT, WWD, AdAge, NYP]
• Profits were up at News Corp. thanks to its film, cable, and book units. [BN]
• The publisher of Marie Claire has jumped over to Vogue. [NYO]
• Fox News came out on top in the ratings with its election night coverage. CNN performed miserably, dropping down to fourth place. [NYT, Politico]
• WNET is giving employees off between Christmas and New Year's. It's not to be nice; it's designed to cut costs since the days off are unpaid. [Crain's]
• A theory as to why Tom McGeveran quit the Observer. [Daily Intel]
• Highlights from last weekend's Tribeca Film Festival, Doha edition. [Vulture]