• Ron Burkle and Eli Broad top Sam Zell's bid for Tribune by a buck a share. Why do we feel like our grandchildren will still be awaiting resolution of this fucking story? [LAT]
  
• Joe Dolce is a free man come May. Maybe now he can resume his career in the movie business! [NYP]
  
• The only way to get people to watch "Dirt" is to show Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston lezzing out. [WWD]
  
• How to write a Village Voice Media story. [ Alt-Weekly Death Watch]
  

• Conrad Black trial driving Canadian reporters crazy. [Toronto Star]
  
• Viacom big into online advertising; Joe Nocera enlists his teen to help explain the Viacom/YouTube battle to old people. [NYT]
  
• Annie Leibovitz sells Paris apartment to Jann Wenner. We're not sure whether to go with a "tidying up" joke or one about Jann being "a free man in." Oh wait, Jane! Jane Wenner. Hmm. [WWD]

• A slightly dry sociological bit from the U.K. on why the news is better in Europe than America. [Independent]
  
• Helen Thomas regains front row seat in White House Press Room originally given to her during Van Buren administration. [E&P]
  
• Who will replace WSJ's Paul Steiger as managing editor? Some white dude, apparently. [Talking Biz News, via Romenesko]
  Cookie's Eva Dillion leaves Conde Nast for Reader's Digest. [FishbowlNY]
  
• Celebrity coverage moves magazines, bears defecate in forested areas. [Mediaweek]
  
• David Carr on collaborative virtual newsrooms. Do not read while operating heavy machinery. [NYT]
  
• Tracy Morgan one more season away from collecting unemployment. [B&C]
  
• Anything godlike genius Chris Morris does is worthy of note; this time it's a comedy about suicide bombers. [Independent]
  
• Village Voice Media facing insurrection, competition in the O.C. [LAT]
  
• Rachel Sklar: not only Canadian and stacked, but "gracious." [AdAge]

There are two types of blogospheric sensations: the utterly predictable (the electronic op-edification provided by the Huffington Post, the breathless bitchiness barfed up by Gawker) and the truly original. We lean toward the latter around here—you know, stuff that actually involves independent thinking.

• Denver's Westword has an article about a guy who's a big star amongst fellow World of Warcraft players.
  
• Broward's New Times discusses Anna Nicole Smith, a celebrity who recently passed away.
  
• Phoenix's New Times discusses Anna Nicole Smith, a celebrity who recently passed away.
  
• Kansas City's Pitch profiles the Scissor Sisters, an "over the top" musical act.
  
• San Francisco's Weekly examines why dogs go bad.
  
• The East Bay Express reveals that there are private detective agencies that will spy on cheating spouses.
  
• Miami's New Times examines "the little known dark side of South Beach."
• 
  You get the point. (Bonus: Every paper has Nathan Lee's review of The 300.) We can't wait until Tony Ortega brings this kind of independence here to New York. We really need it. Our suggestion: something about when Jake Shears' dog goes crazy on the seamy underbelly of the Lower East Side and the detectives who spy on him while he dresses Ana Matronic up like Anna Nicole Smith.
  
  Village Voice Media

• Rick Kaplan brought in to save ratings-challenged Katie Couric. [NYP]
  
• Tribune has "no plans" to sell other papers, ever let this fucking story die. [Chicago Tribune]
  
• New Seventeen EIC Ann Shoket needs a new number two, as her executive editor is returning to Allure. [WWD]
  
• More departures at Star. [NYP]
  
• Village Voice Media staff as Soviet revolutionaries. It sorta works. [Alt-Weekly Death Watch]
  
• DLC Chair Harold Ford, Jr., signs a TV deal with Fox News. No word yet on former pal Julia Allison, but we know it's gonna happen someday. [TVNewser]

Calderone notes that Blum "seemed more at ease with recent hires, plucked from Columbia's journalism school—where he has worked as an adjunct—than with the strong-willed Voice lifers." Tony Ortega, the new Voice head, comes off as the ultimate company man, not just for his ability to follow the [piece of shit—Ed.] New Times model for an alt-weekly, but also for the fact that, whatever Mike Lacey is selling, he'll be first in line to buy.

Poor Blum. New Times talked to Ortega "weeks" ago about coming to New York. But best of all: When the New Times dudes come to town from Phoenix? They insist on reservations at the Waverly Inn. Of course they do.

We're not going to get into a whole "our sources at the paper" pissing match, but here's what you need to know: David Blum was not the right hire. You cannot afford to let someone learn on the job, even at a paper whose reputation has diminished as badly as the Voice's has. It's hard enough to edit a weekly with the most calcified staff outside of the New Criterion's; it's that much more difficult when you're a neophyte in the spotlight. Ortega, rightly or wrongly, will bring the Voice into line with the rest of the company's titles, and hard. So the Voice will start to look like every other alt-weekly in America. Big deal. New York is starting to look like every other city in America; why shouldn't we have a crappy free paper that reflects that as well?

Why The Smear? Village Voice Bloodletting Gets Messy, Public: "No One Thinks That's Why Blum Was Fired" [ETP]
Voice Publisher Rousts Its Editor After Bumpy Ride [NYO]
[Image via]

• Bonnie Fuller is allegedly "reaching out to Hachette Filipacchi and to TMZ.com." There are the usual denials all around, but we think if anyone can revive Shock, it's Bonnie "Bon Temps" Fuller. [NYP]
  
• Less than half the targeted "volunteers" at Time Inc. have yet to take their packages and go. Guess Ann Moore underestimated the appeal of working near a big pile of shit. [WWD]

• The BBC does a deal with YouTube. [Guardian]
  
• We've been following the battle between Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson out of the corner of one eye, but it looks like it may be worth a little more attention. [Independent]
  
• The Washington Post's fourth quarter numbers were not so good. [MediaPost]
  
• NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly gets a new, multi-year deal. Thank you, Jason Lee's moustache! [MediaWeek]
  
• Remember HOTSOUP? Of course you don't. That's probably why Souper Ron Fournier is heading back to the A.P. [E&P]
  
• Oh, God, still more Tribune. [Chicago Business]
  
• Village Voice Media talent or 18th century American painter? [Alt-Weekly Death Watch]
  

The absolute best bit concerns the Seattle Weekly:

Another point cited in [new editor] Fefer's favor, though, is that he's more sophisticated than managing editor Mike Seely, who joined the paper after the merger and ran it between Berger's departure and Fefer's arrival. Seely, this former staffer complained, is "kind of a backwards-hat guy." Dawdy, too, is a vocal Seely critic, and references an e-mail exchange he had with Seely last October to bolster his case. The conversation began with Seely citing a story from the East Bay Express, the company's paper in Oakland, as an example of the kind of stuff he'd like from Dawdy, who specializes in mental-health issues. The article in question, by Lauren Gard, was on the link between the Internet and sex addiction. "One thing the writer hints at here are the tendency for massage parlors to double as hand-job factories or more," Seely wrote. "I'd love for someone to gauge whether this sort of thing is going on in Seattle."

Dawdy then mentioned knowing a therapist whose business consists largely of Internet-porn addicts working at Microsoft. Seely asked if the therapist would go on the record. Dawdy said it was doubtful, but that details could probably be gleaned from online chat rooms. To which Seely responded:
"yep. think it might be futile to start from there and simply replicate this story. frankly, if you were up to visiting some massage parlors to see if certain practitioners would finish you off, that's the sort of street-level expose i'd be up for running. but i'd never force you to do that."
Dawdy took a pass. A week later, he quit.

In an e-mail, Seely confirmed this exchange, but noted that Dawdy wrote a story on a Star Wars-loving, gay-porn-producing, suicide-committing Seattle-ite that ran that same month.

Less well-known, but equally telling, is the hostility [Village Voice Media executive editor Mike] Lacey and his lieutenants reportedly have for what they term "victim stories." Broadly speaking, these seem to be stories in which a member of some marginal group — the physically disabled, the mentally ill, the poor — is ill-used by a particular system or society at large. According to several current and former staffers, Lacey and his editors generally balk at these pieces unless something sets them apart, like a counterintuitive twist (victim as victimizer!) or plenty of lurid detail. So defined, "victim stories" were the specialty of Gonnerman, arguably the Voice's best young reporter before her resignation last year. They were also the stock in trade of Jarrett Murphy, who wrote extensively on poor neighborhoods for the Voice and recently left the paper. And they were the kind of pieces Dawdy frequently wrote for Seattle Weekly.

"Anything where there is an identifiable victim, or a little-guy hero, for lack of a better term — any story that has that kind of narrative arc — they hate on sight, without even reading it," argues Dawdy. "They consider it veritable socialism to get any little person's back. I'm not that ideological as a journalist, but sometimes you do end up in those places, and you end up writing those stories." "Nobody is willing to do these stories," adds a current VVM staffer.

In a weird way, this piece is kind of the ultimate "victim story": Who's more marginalized than alt-weekly journalists? Also? "Star Wars-loving, gay-porn-producing, suicide-committing Seattle-ite " should so be a T-shirt.

Culture war [Boston Phoenix]