Rupert Murdoch is simply a man who likes to fight. End of the psychological profile! He has big plans to fight the New York Times. He has big plans to fight Google. And he could win both.

The Wall Street Journal is planning to hire a dozen new staffers to cover local news in NYC, Media Decoder reports. Let us point out every last implication to this news!

British authorities are launching an investigation into allegations that Rupert Murdoch's UK newspapers paid more than $1.5 million in hush money to try to cover up the fact that they were illegally hacking into cell phones in pursuit of stories.

The Washington Post did a terrible thing, the New York Times reports. "Why is the WP so morally bankrupt?" the NYT wonders. The Post has issued a laughably weak apology for being a cheater loser paper, reports the NYT!

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are now in a full-blown pissing match over circulation. The name calling must be more comfortable for the newspapers than grappling with their real problems.

Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson sent out a staff memo this week crowing about beating the NYT in circulation growth. Now the NYT strikes back with its own sternly-worded response. This is catty war!

Those young reporters at the Cypress Bay High School newspaper who are starring on the new MTV reality show "The Paper" better straighten up and fly right before they learn some hard lessons that grizzled journalism veterans already figured out, according to Middle Tennessee State University newspaper writer and senior journalism major Andy Harper. These kids should have known that journalists are here to relay the hard news, not mess around with this reality TV thing—a genre in which "everyone loses." Indeed, they could have asked senior journalism major Andy Harper for a bit of advice before they went and let their on-camera kissing and alcohol sipping leave their "byline tattered with a mixture of mud and shame."

Remember the Howard Kurtz piece about how the New York Times and the Murdochifying Wall Street Journal have a little war going on, or something? As usual, Kurtz missed/buried the story. The Times refused to comment on bitchy things said by British-import Journal publisher Robert Thomson. But a "Timesman" apparently called up Toronto Life's Spectator blog to give his side. Huh. Maybe he thought his unauthorized comments wouldn't be noticed in a Canadian publication? "Whatever it says on the masthead, Thomson's the editor," Mystery Timesman reports. "He's moved his office next to the news floor." Murdoch will destory journalism!!! There's more off-the-record sniping and gloating, below.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz takes on Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal today, in Kurtz's inimitable "not actually taking anything on" style. Some say Murdoch will push the paper to the right or destroy its essential character! Others say he won't! What's indisputable, though, is that Murdoch's Journal is trying to establish (or re-establish) itself as a national paper, maybe a tough sell in a media landscape where only the New York Times really holds that title. But Murdoch's got lots and lots and lots of money! Fun facts: the newsroom staff is up to 750, from 600 two years ago. They are adding Washington and foreign reporters. Madness! It's almost as if no one told Rupert that print is dead. But the irreparable damage to the paper's character! What about that?

According to a New York Times staffer who spoke to Gawker, the first major newsroom layoffs at the Times didn't surprise the 200 employees who got the news this morning from executive editor Bill Keller at his annual "Throw Stuff At Bill" meeting. "In some ways it was anticlimactic," the staffer said, noting that "it's stunning" how many Timesers sit around on their hands all day. Funny, this stuns us not at all! During the meeting, Keller mentioned the crummy economy and industry as a reason for the cuts. He also spent a good deal of time discussing how the Times could beat Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, or, as Keller put it today, "The New York Times Lite." Ouch. "We would be fools to underreact or to overreact," Keller was said to pronounce. "We cannot win by being defensive, we cannot curl up and act that way." Oooh! It's a real-live newspaper war!

About a month ago, Time Inc. announced their decision to cease publication of 'LIFE,' the once-iconic magazine that had been existing quietly in the form of a free weekly newspaper insert since 2004. According to the press materials, LIFE had served as an insert for 103 American newspapers. This weekend marks the last time that will ever happen.