We're certainly not paying $2 billion for Facebook. If the price was right I'd be interested in it.

It's not been the most wonderful time of the year for the poor children of the Daily News, as EIC Michael Cooke departed earlier this month, leaving editorial director Martin Dunn to play editor in the interim. And because you always kick 'em when they're down and fetal, News Corp has proudly announced the hiring of Les Goodstein, formerly the COO and president of the Daily News, as their shiny new Senior Vice President. We do admire Rupert Murdoch's restraint, however, in not stealing columnist Lenore Skenazy's lunch money.

• Those News Corp kids sure do know how to throw an incredibly odd Christmas party. Weirdness aside, things were moments of normalcy: after the picture at right was taken, she ended up in the broom closet with dude dressed like a giant beaver-like thing.
• It was inevitable, really, that LIRR tickets ended up on eBay. Go ahead and collect your little piece of hell! [eBay]
• In the meantime, the TWU and MTA mediators are kinda passing notes back and forth, but it might not last long if the authorities jail union folk. [Gothamist]
• Tomorrow at 12:30, you should probably go meet this freak on a corner and sumo wrestle him. [Craigslist]
• The world's best Christmas list always starts with a request for one-night stands who appear with perfect boners. [NYO]
• How to kill yourself like a man. [The Best Page in the World]
• Maybe we missed something, but how, why and when the hell did the New Yorker make Bill O'Reilly's blacklist? [BillOReilly.com]
• Why Jews secretly love Christmas. [Pdhyman]
• We always knew Oprah was to blame for America's reading crisis. Bitch. [n+1]
• Pac-Manhattan hits the University of Michigan, becomes just reality Pac-Man. So that means this stuff takes approximately two years to trickle towards the Great Lakes. [Boing Boing]
• If you win a prize involving financial support from evil realtor Barbara Corcoran, is it really winning at all? [GMA]

Always wanted to dine with the devil? Here's your chance, and it's even for a good cause.

• At Puerto Rican confab, ASME updated its church-and-state guidelines on advertising. We're sure the one man in America who can't tell New Yorker content from a Target ad — and who happens to have a column in the Chicago Sun-Times — is still unhappy. [Folio:]
• And what's a media yakfest without a panel appearance by our slutty sister? She's in Puerto Rico, natch, this time commenting on Millerpalooza: "As I've said before, it's OK to be in bed with your source, but then you have to fuck him." [WWD]
• Now that his News Corporation is a U.S. company, Rupert Murdoch will stand for election to its board of directors for the first time ever. We bet he wins — but, then again, we also said that about Al Gore. [Bloomberg]
• What do editor's-letter photos really mean? An exegesis on why Janice Min shows leg, David Granger crops his head, and Graydon Carter is smirking. [Radar]
• Paul McLeary doesn't like cliches. [CJR Daily]

• MPA finally decides which editors will get the privilege of bantering with Jon Stewart: VF's Graydon Carter, Time's Jim Kelly, Cosmo's Kate White, and Men's Health's Dave Zinczenko. "Here's hoping he's a Men's Health fan," says Zinczenko. Oh yeah, we're sure he is. [WWD, second item]
• The special prosecutor might try to keep Judy Miller in jail for even longer. Which means only one thing: More Mediterranean cruises for husband Jason Epstein! [E&P]
• Now Roger Ailes is in charge of Fox's TV stations, too. They'll be even fairer and balanceder. [NYT]
• Effective yesterday, it's World News Tonight, not World News Tonight With Peter Jennings. [USAT]
• In the all-Target New Yorker, the discount chain comes off as like Kim Jong Il. Or something like that. [Design Observer]

• At Advertising Week in September, the headline event will be Jon Stewart interviewing four yet-unnamed prominent magazine editors. We really hope it's Newsweek chief Mark Whitaker. We hear he's a laugh riot. [AdFreak]
• "[B]logs are often just a way of making oneself appear on the Internet," observes NYT editorial. No word on whether newspapers are a way for making oneself appear in print, of if TV is a way for making oneself appear on TV. [NYT]
• More on the Murdoch Family Feud: It wasn't that Rupe couldn't let go, it was that Lach just didn't care enough. And dad was very disappointed in him, young man. [Economist]
• Top flack Peter Costiglio to leave Time Inc. at end of summer. Also, EIC Norm Pearlstine could hand over the top chair to editorial director John Huey around then, too. Ah, they grow up so fast these days. [NYP]
• Army Archerd to end column, but not leave Variety. [NYT]
• Will Fairchild honestly name a new editor to take over Jane within the next week? And does this new editor actually exist as of yet? [Folio]

Some numbers from today's Journal:

Just days after our media lust-object Lachlan Murdoch resigned as publisher of the Post and, in turn, from his father Rupert's News Corp. media behemoth, Rupert himself has announced that he will take over as publisher of the Post. Official mouthpiece Howard Rubenstein says the move shows advertisers Murdoch's faith and commitment to the paper, although for Post staffers who have had to deal with Murdoch's constant tips ("I've told you dozens of times: You must use a derogatory adjective when referring to Hillary Clinton!"), Murdoch's new position really isn't much of a procedural or editorial change. The only actual change, we imagine, is yet to come:

• Murdoch Family Feud: It's all about control. [NYT]
• Bad news on Posner's NYTBR "Bad News." [Slate]
• NYT, NYTimes.com to fully integrate newsrooms. [Romenesko]
• LAT media writer David Shaw dies at 62. (Gawker's earlier thoughts on Shaw.) [LAT]

The Times today explains the reasons for last week's surprise departure of Lahlan Murdoch from his high-level News Corporation gig, the publisher job at the Post, and, in its entirety, New York City.

Remember back when Lachlan Murdoch resigned from News Corp? Seems just like this morning... We're nostalgic for the mystery surrounding his departure, although we hear it might have to do with some creative number crunching for the Post's circulation. (To which we say: Big whoop. What paper DOESN'T fudge the math these days?)

Now this is shock and awe: Lachlan Murdoch, the 33-year-old Chief Operating Hottie for his father Rupert's world domination machine, News Corp., has announced that he is resigning from the company as of August 31. There's a Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader metaphor somewhere in here, but we're too flustered to work it out.

You gotta hand it to the old man. NewsCorp numen Rupert Murdoch wouldn't go and buy some internet company if he weren't already very familiar with it, now would he? Of course not. So we don't understand why everyone's assuming that Murdoch's profile for his newly-acquired online network MySpace is just the work of some prankster. From his profile:

Homophobic and idiotic, yes. Gay, no. Sandy Koufax is threatening to sever all ties with the LA Dodgers, which is owned by News Corp, because an item in Page Six may or may not have insinuated that he was gay. The LA Times very transparently defends Koufax's honor, as if he'd been wrongly accused of child abuse or mass murder. ("Take that, News Corp!") And I say "may or may not have insinuated" because it was a blind item. Common sense to Koufax: chances are, 99% of the people that read Page Six wouldn't know the item was talking about you if you weren't so loudly, publicly and repeatedly insisting it wasn't.
Koufax shuts out Dodgers [LATimes]