Slate's John Dickerson complained about the "lying on your expense report" part of his job. He's presumably OK with the "have work give you money under false pretenses" part.

The New York Times David Carr, meanwhile, provided some perspective on the terrible ordeal of expene reports.

When she's not having such a rough time, singer Mary J. Blige will look back on tweets like "people always understand estimate my intelligents" and laugh.

Yes, that was really actress Haylie Duff in your spin class.

A sloppy copy/paste job made George W. Bush's cousin sound like a critic of Sarah Palin's recent media appearances.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon producer Gavin Purcell hopelessly shopped for shoes.

CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy stayed focused on the big, important story of the day.

Slate writer John Dickerson exhibited profound laziness.

Meet the Press host David Gregory fell victim to Twidiocy.

Techmeme editrix Megan McCarthy made a joke about Google's nondiscovery of Atlantis.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times was starstruck at TED.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha had a weird dream.

Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Daniel Victor felt too popular for his own good.

Slate political correspondent John Dickerson prepared his daughter for a lifetime of oversharing.

Ashton Kutcher pretended to take a meeting but was really thinking about Demi Moore the whole time.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Oooo, a new reason to look out for racism! Are political cartoonists too obsessed with making Obama's lips big, hearkening back to the bad old days of caricature? Michael Cavna at the Washington Post makes a persuasive case that the lip-drawing has gone too far. Or, is this just all liberal hand-wringing, which will perpetuate our national Crisis of Comedy? Consult Pareene's opus for guidance.

There's a rumor going around that trade magazine publisher Incisive Media is laying off 40 people in New York today. Email us if you have details. [UPDATE: Several sources have confirmed that there were 42 layoffs at Incisive/ ALM today, including, we hear, two New York Law Journal reporters and one editor, and a few people at American Lawyer.]

Over on his personal blog, Slate writer John Dickerson is running, in serial form, a novel that he wrote about a loosely fictionalized version of himself as a brash young write at Time magazine. I read five chapters and so far the kid in the book is still working on his first story. It's stressful!

Quinn heaped meaning into every little back-stage artifact he saw, knowing the chaos that had blown through that end of the building four days earlier. The whole mess looked so impressive, like the speckled pots and hasty garlic skins left on the stove after a great meal. The appealing disarray was all ordered by some important purpose that someone talented had orchestrated.

A mad genius, that's what he wanted to be, Quinn thought. He lifted his arms as if to control all before him. It was 4:30 in the morning. It could be that he was just mad.

Will Quinn ever finish that Wall Street story? Does more stuff happen after that? We can't wait to find out in the remaining 217 chapters!

The House has defeated the bill delaying the switch to digital TV. So the date is still Feb. 17. All the technologically inept old people reading this internet blog, make a note.

NYT trend and Chinese food (and Chinese food trend) specialist Jenny 8 Lee's travel quirks revealed! She collects toothpaste! She can sleep on planes! She really, really likes Brazil! Read all that and more, right here!


Oh no: blog chatter about this year's upcoming crop of Super Bowl ads is down 20% from last year. What's wrong with you people? Coca-Cola is involved in this!

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times had her importance recognized on arrival.

Slate's John Dickerson watched an elderly woman triumph over adversity.

Thomas Burr of the Associated Press saw a famous black person who was not Oprah.

Times TV blogger Brian Stelter witnessed a collective cliché.

Ex-Googler Chris Sacca, a lefty blogger, overshared his bowel movements.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us their username.

Wired editor Joe Brown lived large on Si Newhouse's dime.

Gawker alum Choire Sicha gave an actor the hairy eyeball.

Slate columnist John Dickerson got in quality time with the kids.

Attention-seeking omnimedia entrepreneuse Sarah Lacy primped for a fellow pundit.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof even enjoyed a funeral.

Julia Allison, fameball extraordinaire
Dominant themes: Sex, famous people, faux-exhaustion

Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro
Dominant themes: Uninteresting media minutiae, uninteresting life minutiae

John Dickerson, Slate political writer
Dominant themes: His kids, pithy self-deprecation, Twitter itself

Jennifer 8 Lee, NYT trend specialist
Dominant themes: Food

Bonnie Fuller, former US Weekly editor, currently only vaguely employed
Dominant theme: Sad, Jackie Harvey-like simulacrum of the editorial content of an actual celebrity magazine

Dickerson:

The risk for journalism, of course, is that people spend all day Twittering and reading other people's Twitter entries and don't engage with the news in any other way. This seems a pretty small worry. If written the right way, Twitter entries build a community of readers who find their way to longer articles because they are lured by these moment-by-moment observations. As a reader, I've found that I'm exposed to a wider variety of news because I read articles suggested to me by the wide variety of people I follow on Twitter. I'm also exposed to some keen political observers and sharp writers who have never practiced journalism.

I thought everyone got their news from blogs, or is that a distinction without a difference now? The kinds of hilarious off-the-record set pieces Dickerson alludes to were once the stuff of shoptalk. There's something appealing about the secret-handshake quality of how a story gets written that is lost in the digital age of premature confession and on-demand tell-all. Who would want to read Gay Talese's memoirs, or any of Ron Rosenbaum's reminiscences about the old Esquire gang, if every professional writer began dishing his juiciest tidbits every five minutes?

[Nieman Reports]