It seemed strange that the Wall Street Journal-so concerned about beating the competition in hard news-would choose for a Page One story today a piece on business people who do yoga. Really, WSJ? It's a pretty standard, low-hanging "take a trend, and add business angle" story that might have more rightly been in the back pages. But their work had this added benefit: a WSJ editor owns her own yoga studio, and one of her employees gives great on-the-money quotes: Tina Gaudoin was brought over to the WSJ from the UK early this year to edit the paper's upcoming "lifestyle magazine." She's also the owner of Triyoga, a chain of yoga studios in the UK. And she used to tout that fact over and over again in her column! Which tends to go over less well in the US than in the UK. Still, it was so hard for the WSJ to find a good yoga-as-business quote that they ended up using this one, from Claire Missingham (pictured):

If you want an efficient, capsule summary of why you haven't read anything in newspapers or seen anything on major network news about how John Edwards ran from National Enquirer reporters in a hotel parking garage, about how he hid in a bathroom for 15 minutes, and about how he was holed up overnight with his alleged mistress and love child — an awesome, amazing story — parse these three revealing sentences from Washington Post "gossip" columnist Roxanne Roberts, in response to one of many persistent questions about the scandal in an online chat yesterday:

See, this is why I will always stand behind Profnet as my preferred place for reporters to find sources for bizarre stories, no matter what cheaper competition comes along: because of Profnet's unparalleled sophomoric joke opportunities! For example, are you an expert on masturbation and all of its ins-and-outs, ha? Well "Em" of "Em & Lo," sex book authors and your source for "all things love, sex, and star related," wants to talk to you right away! And she'll happily promote your masturbation projects in return:

Dude, how much would it suck to be a reporter covering the McCain campaign? I mean they're probably all riding the Straight Talk Express rolling their eyes like "I went to J-school for this? I could be at a school board meeting right now." J-Mac knows he can't win this thing, but he's still hoping to come out of the campaign with enough good will to be able to get at least five or six reporters to join him for his biweekly cribbage games when he moves into The Home. So his campaign is handing out some fakey press passes ribbing the journalists about what a crappy assignment they have being stuck eating Freedom Toast with the red-blooded Americans. Hey, at least they're not covering Obama off in France or wherever he is!:

A flack named Peter Shankman (who enjoys getting tased) has built up quite a little reporter-helping service! Through a free website, Helpareporter.com, Shankman takes in queries from reporters in search of sources for random stories, and then sends those queries out to the PR world, who-coincidentally-like to be featured sources. Everybody wins! Except for the other reporter-source website called Profnet, which does the same thing, but charges a big fee to flacks to participate:

You can do a lot in a 140-character Twitter entry, writes John Dickerson at Nieman Reports. And no, the online squib will not spell the end of long form reporting. Dickerson's right that Twitter affords weary political correspondents like himself the ability to share fun anecdotes from the field that would otherwise get cut from proper pieces. Example: "Weare, NH: Audience man to McCain: 'I heard that Hershey is moving plants to Mexico and I'll be damned if I'm going to eat Mexican chocolate.'" But old hack nostalgics have a legitimate point about how this new mode of digital diary-keeping can take its toll. It's the style, not the substance, of journalism that's at issue.

Crackhead-turned Times reporter success story David Carr is loved by media types for being a cool guy, and is basking in the generally positive public attitude towards his upcoming memoir. But everything is not well in Carr's world. Oh no. Just as Carr has found the strength to open up to the world about his past drug use, an even bigger scandal threatens to overwhelm him: his incurable fondness for potatoes.

You remember Marcus Brauchli? First, short-lived editor of the Wall Street Journal under the reign of Rupert Murdoch and now the newly-installed executive editor of the Washington Post? Well, it's a good thing Brauchli finally escaped the Journal, because Paul Gigot and his gang of conservative editorialists must have given him unending grief over his father's awesome left-wing blog! We were just alerted to the existence of the site, but the dad, a lawyer and contributor to sites like Spot-On and Counterpunch, has been at it for some time, posting items steadily since 2005. Officially, Christopher Brauchli's site is about more than Bush — "political commentary and satire," the tagline reads — but, more often than not, the president makes an appearance. And you know what? The site is pretty damn funny! In fact, I'll take Christopher Brauchli's posts over most of the op-ed content in American newspapers, the Post and Journal included. After the jump, a sampling.

So take a look at that first sentence there (the "lede" in douchey old man newspaper talk). Was this story filed from John McCain's imagination? If so, shouldn't there be more blondes? (Also it should be "was due to stay.") Screencapped in case they rewrite it! [Reuters]

Barack Obama's advance staff confused everyone when they told journalists not to wear green during their trip to the Middle East. Obama's staff claimed green is the color of Hamas, which is actually isn't really. Though it is the color of Islam in general. So Obama is distancing himself from all the Muslims in the world, which should help dispel those rumors about him being a fist-bumping terrorist by seeming like he's trying way, way too hard, almost like a man with something to hide. Or maybe some staffer just did a shit job of research and thought that was a helpful and clever suggestion. Journos are also prohibited from wearing nail polish and tank tops and from actually asking the candidate any questions, as Andrea Mitchell bitches about in this attached Hardball clip. Chris Matthews is so thrilled that Barack Obama can shoot a basket (he is also shocked that there are so many black people in the military!), but Mitchell seems to think pretend interviews organized by the military are maybe a bad thing? She's not wearing green, though. Don't you hate how biased everyone is?

To pimp its sugary, 200-calorie iced coffees, fast food giant McDonald's offered to pay some local TV newscasts for product placement. And of course the newscasts went for it, since local TV journalism is where ethical standards go to die. Meredith Corporation is putting the drinks in front of anchors at the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas (pictured) and at two CBS affiliates elsewhere. Tribune Company has the coffee at its Fox affiliate in Seattle. Even national Fox News is playing ball, placing McDonald's product at the News Corporation-owned station in Chicago. Station operators offered the Times any number of excuses, but the best has to be from the news director at the Las Vegas affiliate: He argues the placement is ethically OK because it is restricted to the "lighter, news-and-lifestyle" portion of his morning news show. Sounds like the portion of the program that might normally be given over to, say, segments on weight loss, fitness or preventing kids from becoming obese. But these days, if the station wants to do any reports that might upset McDonald's, it is supposed to yank the lucrative cups:

Were you reading the Times this morning, wondering why there weren't more sexual stories up in there? Were you thinking some sex would fit particularly well in the metro section, squeezed between reports on rent control for VIPs, that Harlem neighborhood photographer and that guy who died in the triathalon? Well, then, you're in luck, because Joe Sexton (ahem), leader of the metro section's scoop ninjas, is saying the paper will likely deliver more discourse on intercourse. Apparently their Eliot Spitzer hooker exclusive was just the beginning! Here's what Sexton wrote on the Times website today, responding to a question about the newspaper's plans to expand New York City coverage:

The British press is different from the American press. According to the Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman, the American press walks like this: "self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy." And the British press walks like this: with making shit up and alcohol! Hah. Another important difference? KNIFE CRIME.

New York Times publisher and genial buffoon Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger is not worried about how his newspaper's circulation sucks and the share price is at a historic low. You know why? Because Craig Newmark, the guy who invented Cragslist and destroyed the newspaper revenue stream, just got a Times subscription! So hey, no worries, Times staffers. If there's one thing Pinch has learned since he took over as publisher 16 years ago, it's to always mention the moose in the room. But not to bring an actual moose with him anymore.

Bitter personal rivalries usually aren't forgotten in journalism, much less laid aside in the interest of craft. (Just you wait till we all answer to Julia Allison). So it's pretty big indeed of Sir Harold Evans, author of the five-volume newspaper aesthetics bible Editing and Design, to dispense kind words about his archnemesis Rupert Murdoch. The sage old husband of Tina Brown tells The Independent, "The Wall Street Journal has, in the last two or three months since Murdoch took it over, been dramatically improved. They've got rid of the Cheltenham mountainous face, that is still in The [New York] Times...They've made the mistake of still continuing the upper capitalisation but the whole Journal is well-designed – a major improvement in my opinion." What oceans of hostility lie beneath this happy talk of typeface.

Gnomish, Harley-riding media Methuselah and Tribune Co. boss Sam Zell inspires a bit of resentment amongst his minions, mainly for doing things like laying them all off while cussing them out. But his ex-Tribune employees are now striking back-on a blog! Prepare to be hoisted on the new media petard of broke, grizzled newsmen, Mr. Zell the multimillionaire!

So is the media blitz accompanying Barack Obama to Iraq actually evidence of that nasty pro-Obama bias we keep hearing about? Sure, whatever. WHO CARES. The media's been self-flagellating about everything for the past, like, six months, so all the pro-Obama bias is corrected by the Obama hype-debunking and "oh we are being unfair" handwringing that every cable news panel has to engage in. Half the coverage of the Obama trip has been of the "will this dispel the myth that he's a naive fool about foreign policy?" nature. Which is goofy because, hey, John McCain's foreign policy chops are not exactly respected by anyone. But he's old! Of course then Nouri al-Maliki (we actually can't believe ol' Nouri is still alive, good on him) accidentally endorsed Barack Obama's Iraq plan (the 'get the hell out of Iraq' plan). This is "a PR boost" for Obama. We're including this MSNBC clip covering the trip primarily because they break in halfway through to show "new video" of Obama in a room with some Iraqi officials like it is somehow enlightening.

Pioneering Sunday Times editor, husband to Tina Brown: "Should The New York Times be redesigned? Absolutely... If your wife or husband is already reading the C section and you have a jump... from the first section... it's impossible." [Independent]

After the New Yorker ran its controversial Barack Obama cover satirically mocking smears against the candidate, the presumptive Democratic nominee acted like it really didn't bother him all that much. "It's a cartoon," he told CNN. That seemed very reasonable! But it sounds like Obama was more angry than he let on. The New Yorker was shut out of much-coveted plane tickets for the senator's trip to the Middle East and Europe next week. Neither Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza nor, Politico's Mike Allen confirms via email, anyone else from the magazine is among the 40 journalists blessed with seats. Granted, some 200 people applied for tickets. But given the New Yorker's circulation, influence and often heroic coverage of not only politics but also the war in Iraq (George Packer), U.S. intelligence and covert military operations (Seymour Hersh, Steve Coll), American torture (Jane Mayer) and the inner workings of the Bush administration, it's hard to see the snub as anything other than payback.

Metro, the free paper best known for causing track fires on the NYC subways, ran a cover story yesterday that is totally indefensible, even by the lowly journalism standards of free morning papers. Radar spotted it: a front page splash about an innocent grad student girl who was supposedly attacked by four wild young black females because she was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan, "OBAMA IS MY SLAVE." The paper's one and only source? The untalented media whore designer who sold the mystery girl the shirt. (We would feel dirty giving him more PR than necessary, but it was this prick). But guess what, Metro: we got that press release too. And if this whole story isn't a hoax, I will personally buy one of those shitty shirts.