"They're the only owners who could make you wish for Murdoch."

"It seemed to show a lack of respect and a lack of desire to be helpful to your new property."

"People are so beaten down here there's not much of anything that could cause much of a reaction."

"Everything is different," said one. "The parking lot is half-empty, the cafeteria is half-empty. It's unbelievable. I remember when I couldn't get a space! You get to work after 10 a.m. or so, and the lines at the cafeteria used to be long. Now there's nothing. There's no one there."

Sounds like fun!

[NYO]

Cablevision makes a lot of money with its cable system. Madison Square Garden and the Knicks and the Rangers? Not quite managed as effectively. And now Cablevision owns a newspaper and no one knows why except maybe it's just the Dolans being insane or Jimmy trying to prove to dad that he knows how to run a company or something. Obviously owning a Long Island newspaper will present some synergistic benefits to a company that owns a cable tv system, but not necessarily $650 million worth. Plus the deal comes right after Cablevision inexplicably bought the Sundance channel for almost $500 million. That deal made even less sense, really, though at least the price wasn't as embarrassing as everyone worried it might be.

Some Wall Street types are pretty sure the crazy Dolans are just trying to mismanage the company to annoy all the shareholders who didn't let them go private last year. We suspect Jimmy just decided to buy a newspaper because he wishes he could be an awesome media baron like Rupert Murdoch.

Cablevisison Strikes Deal to Buy Newsday [NYT]

"Mr. Murdoch spoke on the call with Wall Street analysts and the press after the release of quarterly earnings from the News Corporation, the global media conglomerate he controls. On the call, he said, 'No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail; just be patient for a couple days.'

"Several weeks ago it appeared that News Corporation had a tentative deal to buy Newsday, based on Long Island, for about $580 million, but two other bidders have come forward.

"Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner of The Daily News, matched Mr. Murdoch’s offer, while Cablevision, the Long Island cable operator that also owns Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks and Rangers, was a late entrant but upped the ante to $650 million." [NYT]

Also? Murdoch gave bubonic plague to three of the Seven Dwarves.

• Here come the layoffs at the Philadelphia Inquirer. [NYT]
  
• The Times might feel confident enough that everyone's forgotten the whole Jayson Blair thing to ditch the Public Editor position altogether. [NYO]
  
• Gerry Levin's "inner poet" turned out to be some dude who runs a spa. [NYP]
  
• That Allbritton online politics thing scores another defection; this time it's Ben Smith of the Daily News, who snared yesterday's scoop on the stolen Giuliani documents. [NYDN]
  
• Radar's John Cook, Jeff Bercovici get all Woodward and Bernstein on some dude who wrote a mean thing in Brit Hume's Wikipedia entry. [Radar]
  

• Diane Sawyer's not going anywhere. At least until June. [NYT]
  
• Liberty Media's John Malone looking to pick up some Cablevision assets. [NYP]
  
• Union representing WSJ reporters and editors takes out ad in NYT lambasting its own paper. [WWD]
  
• Did the Times use a source who had an interest in the direction of the story he commented on? We're shocked. [Brooklyn Vegan, first comment]
  
• We hope Jon Friedman isn't as quick to pull the plug on his loved ones as he is on Katie Couric. [MarketWatch]
  
• WaPo's Richard Cohen makes HuffPo's Rachel Sklar fear for her decayingg ovaries. [ETP]