MySpace is sick, and its Slingshot Labs spinoff looks like the first appendage of the social network to be amputated. We're told Rupert Murdoch's social media lab is finally dead.

We hear Steve Jobs has tentatively agreed to appear on stage at the Wall Street Journal's high-profile D Conference for the first time in three years. The June event could be a major landmark in the Apple CEO's public recuperation.

When Rupert Murdoch commits his progeny to Christ, he doesn't fool around: Chloe and Grace, his daughters with third wife Wendi Deng, were recently baptized in the river Jordan, at the very spot Jesus is said to have been baptized.

In your counterfeit Friday media column: Rupert Murdoch launches the first volley in the new paywall wars, ABC News employees face a buyout deadline, Forbes loses a key editor, and Variety throws a hissyfit.

Rupert Murdoch has announced that his lively banking newsletter The Wall Street Journal will by next month have a New York metro section. In full color! Every last urban rapscallion and common street urchin will soon have his own stipple headcut, just so Chairman Murdoch can get in on some of that local-print-media…

Rupert Murdoch—the dashing, daring, fearsome and fearless press baron, the mogul among moguls—will celebrate his 79th birthday next month. As he approaches his final years at the helm of his empire, he finds it crumbling around him.

We know that Apple's CEO is no fan of Flash, the Web animation software. But it sounds like Steve Jobs really unleashed on the Adobe system to try and convince the Wall Street Journal to ditch it for the iPad.

The struggle for MySpace's future pitted East against West and North against South. Silicon Valley lost; Los Angeles and New York won. And all fired CEO Owen Van Natta could do was smile, shrug and crack open some cold ones.

Rupert Murdoch sent out a memo today to reassure his News Corp. charges that, recession or not, their media conglomerate remains on top and is growing revenue. "Organically," which is heartening. Full memo after the jump. But don't let the hippie-dippie "organic" language fool you into thinking Murdoch is turning…

We hear News Corporation is winding down MySpace spinoff Slingshot Labs, a vestige of the media conglomerate's efforts to retain MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe. But the labs are hatching one last diabolical plot, on behalf of the Wall Street Journal.

Forrester Research has a new study out that Rupert Murdoch should probably download: Of 4,000 people polled, 80 percent will not pay for online newspapers or magazines, and the rest are divided on how they want to pay.

MySpace now says it is no longer competing with Facebook, the rival social network with far more users. No, now MySpace will focus on the niche of music and digital entertainment. And compete with Apple and Google.

The Wall Street Journal uses an astounding 30 to 60 staffers to produce an underwhelming webcast knockoff of CNBC, says Business Insider. (Update: WSJ says closer to 10.) That would help explain the rumors that the newspaper is hemorrhaging money.

Bill O'Reilly, call your office: Citing CNBC, Reuters says Rupert Murdoch is interested in buying a piece of NBC Universal, which could lead to a major embarrassment when O'Reilly draws Keith Olbermann in the corporate Secret Santa program.

Sandra Guzman was correct, if soft spoken. The New York Post editor publicly objected to an offensive cartoon in her newspaper. Her boss Rupert Murdoch objected too. But his henchmen just cast her out.

Goldman Sachs is in the process of selling the Dow Jones Industrial Average on behalf of News Corporation, John Carney at Business Insider reports. But is it really worth much?

OK, maybe Rupert Murdoch really is serious about charging for online newspaper content, after all: The News Corporation chairman has reportedly dispatched his lieutenant to form some kind of newspaper pay-wall gang.