Your usual host Hamilton Nolan is off for the rest of the day, so you're stuck with me. Rest assured, I'm as sorry about all this as you are.

A fellow calling himself Bob Anderson is going around pretending to be a writer for W magazine. He even registered an entire fakey domain name, fairchildgrp.com, to make his emails look more legit, according to an email exchange we've reviewed between him and a media event organizer. But the scammer was nevertheless excluded from a recent event after he was busted trying to pass off another writer's online column as his own. The writer is a lady of the female persuasion, and her byline is on the online column submitted by "Bob Anderson" as credentials. So, be on guard against this guy, if you are very very easily fooled.

Forbes' executive editor for technology, Betsy Corcoran, is leaving the magazine after ten years. The Silicon Valley journalism fixture is launching a startup to bring more technology into America's classrooms (Lucere.org, not yet live). She tells us her departure is "really and truly about my passion for education and technology" — and not the relentless rounds of layoffs at her magazine.

Eighteen years worth of National Lampoon covers, starting at the magazine's 1970 inception, have been posted online. (Via Robert Newman). A perfect way to burn through the rest of your last day of "work" this week, no? (For the youths: The Lampoon was like The Onion of the 1970s and 1980s, but with a little bit more actual news, and a lot more questionable taste.)

Why is conservative, gay-marriage-hating Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz pouring money into right-wing DC media sinkholes like the Examiner newspaper and the Weekly Standard magazine? Because he can, is about the best answer anyone can come up with, according to a profile in Politico. Just your basic propaganda play, but with dying media. That should end as well as Anschutz's dabbling in movies, probably (i.e. poorly).

Philip Anschutz, owner of the Examiner newspapers, is your bog-standard eccentric billionaire right-winger. He bought David Beckham, runs a Christian-friendly film company that produced the Narnia movies, and his Discovery Institute tirelessly battles the heretical idea that we evolved from monkeys. He owns many, many things. And now, one of those things is the Weekly Standard!

Being a right-wing writer is a pretty great gig because your owners do not give a shit if you make any money, as long as you're helping the cause. So congrats to Bill Kristol, the luckiest idiot in the world, because his position as editor of his shitty little magazine is probably safe. The guy cannot ever lose.

We don't know how much the mag went for but we are going to say "thirty-seven cents."

Anschutz, notoriously secretive, made his money in the oil business and through Qwest Communications, which paid huge fines to the federal government for signing up long distance customers against their will and for an accounting scandal.

A few years ago, he was intriguing new media mogul. He had started the Examiner chain of giveaway daily newspapers, which stretches from San Francisco to Washington, DC. And he produced the movie "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" with Disney, eventually grossing more than $700 million.

His well-documented support for Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2 and groups like Colorado for Family Values were often noted but generally not seen as a hindrance.

Maybe they weren't, but something seems to be going wrong: In 2008, a joint movie venture with 20th Century Fox all but ended; the co-founder of Anschutz's film company Walden Media made a surprise departure; and now, reports Variety, Disney is pulling away, declining to finance the third "Narnia" film after the second grossed an apparently disappointing $419 million. Walden, meanwhile, is only making about one quarter as many movies as originally planned.

And does anyone really think the giveaway newspaper business could possibly be going well?

His fall from grace hasn't come as quickly as, say, Sam Zell's, but Anschutz is well on his way to becoming another failed, would-be crossover media mogul. He can always blame the gays!

Slate media critic Jack Shafer, who used to edit the SF Weekly, has obsessed over the Examiner's "mash-up of short local stories by staffers, brief wire pieces, and abridged articles from the New York Times and other newspapers" into a daily 20-minute read for an Internet-fed world. "Tabloid format. Not tabloid journalism" the Ex claimed in one of its ads.

I usually wait until partygoers have a few drinks before conducting an ad hoc poll: Invariably, more middle-class technorati confess to reading the Examiner than the San Francisco Chronicle or San Jose Mercury News. Not because of the glossy online edition, or the built-in Digg and Fark buttons on every story, they say, but because the lightweight, free newspaper is easier to pick up and hard to put down.

The Examiner's politics have pushed nothing near a far-right agenda. Instead of a David Brooks or Michael Savage on the opinion page, we get right-of-center everyman Ken Garcia, rescued from the soft-sinking Chronicle. He's kind of hard on Gavin Newsom, but nowhere near Bush-team material.

After all this careful seduction of local readers, today's front-page endorsements in both the San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Examiner seem clumsy and pointless. Is anyone going to change their vote because of the paper?

Endorsing candidates on the front page is a relic of the time when newspapers were the dominant voice on the street. It's a throwback to The Examiner's original owner, William Randolph Hearst. I expected that by now, the editorial and marketing minds who've convinced me to openly read The Examiner in front of the New York Times-toting snobs at Whole Foods would come up with something smarter than plastering their partisan politics across my front page.

And yes, I'd feel nearly as stupid carrying around a front-page endorsement of Obama.

If you can write three concise, timely and relevant posts each week in your topic of choice, then we want to hear from you. Just picture it now: your name in lights all over your city. Your mom will be so proud.

Oh, and we'll pay you for it. A little at first, but as your page views grow over time, so will your ability to make more.

Sound good? Then click the Apply Now button below. We'll ask you some questions and get some information we need to process your application, including the city in which you'd like to contribute and the category you think is most relevant. Not sure? Pick one and we can work with you later on getting it right. For example, if you want to be the Yoga Examiner in Des Moines, you will choose your edition: Des Moines and your category: Fitness. Your topic may have appeal in more than one category, but choose the one you think it fits into best.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future of media: today the Yoga Examiner in Des Moines is spamming you with Digg requests, tomorrow... oh, wait, this is the present of media, right here in New York.

(Also, they are not bloggers. "They are not bloggers, but Examiners, which means they look closely at topics and examine every aspect of them." Ok then.)

The promotional campaign kicks in next week so get excited! Get particularly excited if you're a traditionally paid staffer at an Anschutz paper (all six of you guys!), 'cause this seems like a dangerous experiment.

• Very odd array of online publishers, print media, and actual businesses look to cash in on whole environment thing. [LAT]
  
• L.A. Times to cut about 150 jobs, Chicago Tribune looking to shed 100. [A.P.]
  
• Everything you ever wanted to know about secretive media mogul Philip Anschutz. [NYT]
  
• Financial Times redesign. [Guardian]

• Time Inc. about to lose its pole position in ad-page race to Conde Nast. [NYP]
  
• Philadelphia Inquirer: does front-page sponsored column. [NYT]
  
• Don Imus lawyers up. [BW]
  
• Dick Snyder: still alive. [NYP]
  
• Fortune has a section called "Portfolio," Portfolio uses the word "Fortune" in one of its story titles. Lamest "this thing looks like that thing" ever. [NYT]
  
• New York magazine: Yet another blog. This one, "culture," edited by former Wonkette contributor Dan Kois. [WWD]
  
• Slideshow tour through the new Times building. [apartment therapy]

• Ben Brantley: bad gaydar. [WWD]
  
• Sam Zell: "Fuck you, Eli Broad." [NYP]
  
• Big gay powerhouse Stuart Elliott reports that The Week will publish an online-only issue about the environment. The mag claims it's an attempt to spare trees; we see it as more of an admission that no one gives a shit about the environment enough to pay for a magazine about it. [NYT]
  
• Stealth mogul, theater-owner and creationist Philip Anschutz needs to intelligently design a plan to keep himself off the witness stand. [LAT]

• Larry King will live forever. [NYT]
  
• Page Six speculates that "The Today Show" is losing viewers "because it has abandoned hard news." Yes, really, that's what they said. [NYP]
  
• Crony of incoming British Prime Minister Gordon Brown named chairman of BBC. [Guardian]
  
• Chicagoans really like the word "Chicago." You know what else they really like? Clogging their arteries with greasy food. Seriously, fuck Chicago. [CHICAGO Tribune, via]
  
• Where's our damn Peabody? We thought that suicide post made us a lock. [LAT]