New York Times tech writers are confused, or at least a little bit lazy. Over Christmas Eve they posted to the Bits blog a post titled, "Questions We Thought, But Didn't Ask, in 2007." Then, "A Few More Questions" And then, "More Questions." Reading them, it's clear that coming up with questions required no reporting, little research and maybe five minutes. Why didn't we think of that? One very special correspondent could have actually seen his wife over Christmas. Here are their top three questions — and our helpfully provided answers.

So, there was a huge (which is to say, tiny!) dust-up over a Washington Post story that ran on November 29. The story was about Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his "Muslim tie rumors" which are totally just that and so this journalism professor was like "Okay this story sucks!" (It kinda did! Mostly due to bad editing.) Then Romenesko linked to it. Everyone got upset and defended the reporter! Times reporter Ad Nags wrote a really nice note. But WaPo executive editor Len Downie wrote a really bitchy letter! The Times wrote about it. Trevor Butterworth at HuffPo went to town on "Bacongate"! CJR then criticized Downie's bitchy note! But inside this crazy-fest, at least two people were having a not-at-all explicit coded conversation!

With the news that Britney's little sister Jamie Lynn Spears was preggers came an avalanche of media insanity. Will we have not one, but two Spears vaginas to keep track of now? Whose baby will fetch more cash for tabloid photos? Whose baby's daddy will have the worse rap career? And what about Gramma Spears' bookdeal? Let's take a look at the sibling rivalry and the JLS reaction.

In his own, not-so-subtle way, Rupert Murdoch is screaming Face! at all of News Corp.'s competitors, detractors, and new Dow Jones employees. The form of his victory lap? Despite the fact that every major news outlet has covered Murdoch's $5 billion acquisition of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones since the first whispered rumors, the billionaire found it prudent to spent $2 million on a global ad campaign — a three-page advertisement that flaunts the history of News Corp.'s acquisitions. With Murdoch's oft-undermined slogan — "Free people, free markets, free thinking," except when he's doing business in China — the promo is running today in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. "We make the stuff that excites, entertains, informs, enriches and infuriates billions of imaginations." Indeed.

A Reaganesque landslide: Dow Jones shareholders voted 60 percent in favor of Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the company which publishes the Wall Street Journal. The Bancroft family, split as always on the deal, tendered 54 percent of their supervoting shares to approve the deal, while an overwhelming 78 percent of common stock was voted in favor. Murdoch has already started replacing execs at Dow Jones, and News Corp. takes formal control tomorrow. (Photo by AP/Evan Vucci)

"The world has changed," Martha Stewart reports. Younger people, she explains, access information via blogs and the Internet. And also "even through their cell phones." What's it mean for America's homemaker? The end of her latest tree-killer product, Blueprint magazine.

So it's past midnight at the Valleywag holiday party when I answer the door. "Owen's totally wrong about that Facebook thing," blurts out Kara Swisher, whom I hardly know, in the conversational space most people would waste with a vacuous Hello it's good to see you can I come in. "What's with Loudmouth Gay Guy," she adds, nodding toward a tipsy guest. "Handle it, will ya?" I used to wonder why Owen had such an obvious thing for Kara, but I get it now: Kara Swisher is the ruthless-yet-right reporter we wish we could be, but can't. Back to book reviews for me. (Photo of Swisher not impressed with the animatronic reindeer by ... oh wait, I took this one.)

You might be surprised to learn that MySpace is bigger than Google. This, according to Barbara Walters, or at least the notes MySpace PR flack Dani Dudeck handed her before she interviewed Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. Don't miss the tough questions like, "If I were a Martian. I come down from outer space. I hear about something called My Space. What is it?"

How excited is Robert Thomson to come to America to be the publisher of the Wall Street Journal? Possibly he has some mixed feelings! In a January, 2001 Business Week profile, Rupert Murdoch's boy actually savaged his new home. Thomson was at the FT then, and said that the Journal is best on cute little stories like ''midsize companies doing middling deals in the Midwest." Comparing the FT to the WSJ? "It's a Lexus-Taurus thing." We figure either he really does think the WSJ is a pile of crap—or he just likes to trash-talk because he's Australian, and therefore doesn't mean anything he says.

As expected, Robert Thomson, a News Corp. editor close to Rupert Murdoch, is taking over as publisher of the Wall Street Journal. What does this mean for the Valley? Well, that Thomson will be headed her soon on a goodwill tour to shake loose advertising dollars. Not much else. [WSJ]

E.W. Scripps COO Rich Boehne told a conference yesterday that Yahoo's HotJobs.com will account for as much as 5 percent of its newspaper revenues in 2008. That merely confirms what we've heard: The classifieds jobs site is the only part of Yahoo's newspaper consortium that's working. And that's likely because Yahoo bought HotJobs instead of trying to build it. HotJobs isn't the reason why Gannett, Tribune, Hearst, MediaNews, and Cox Newspapers are starting up their own one-stop shop for online advertising — it's the rest of Yahoo's unfulfilled promises. (Photo by Gastev)

An extraordinary public slap, rarely seen in the genteel world of magazine publisher Time Inc.: Fortune appears to have momentarily taken executive editor Josh Quittner's Techland blog away from him and handed it to rival tech writer David Kirkpatrick. Quittner's recent blog rant about Facebook's Beacon was wrongheaded enough, but entirely undeserving of this humiliation — republishing, duplicatively, a Fortune.com column by Kirkpatrick in Quittner's blog. Kirkpatrick, left, declared that Quittner, right, had been "silenced" on the Facebook issue. He went on to tear apart, at length, Quittner's argument. All the more shaming, because Kirkpatrick is — how to put this gently? — a laughingstock among his colleagues.

I remember, distinctly, when former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner's love affair with Facebook began this spring. He couldn't stop talking about it, and I could hardly avoid hearing about it, since my office was next door to his. With all the zeal of a late convert, Quittner evangelized Facebook for most of this year — and now, feeling betrayed by Facebook's Beacon ads, he has attacked them with all the betrayed fury of a new apostate. Facebook is dead — to him, at any rate. Quittner's fickle rage perfectly captures the Silicon Valley hype cycle, and the press's complicity in it. Having built up Facebook, Quittner and his fellow reporters must, inevitably tear it down. But in this latest episode, it's Facebook's critics, not Facebook, who have jumped the shark.

With the Olympics and a hotly contested presidential election, 2008 should be a bumper year for TV networks, newspapers, and magazines. And on the surface, a report by Universal McCann confirms that, predicting an increase of 3.7 percent in the advertising market in 2008 to $294.4 billion. Growth this year is forecast at an anemic 0.7 percent, far below the performance of the economy. Online advertising should grow 24 percent, or $8 billion, to $45 billion next year. One-time events like the Olympics and the election add another $6 billion, not to be repeated. Discount that amount, and take away the growth of online, and you'll see a traditional ad market that's shrinking, not growing. (Photo by azrainman)

We've always known Natali Del Conte, the host of Podshow's TeXtra, was destined for a bigger stage. And she's found one in a new gig at CNET — in New York City. In addition to online video for CNET, she'll be making the rounds of television shows like Good Morning America to explain gadgets and websites to the masses. Broadcast television viewed by millions, not a podcast downloaded by hundreds, is still the proper ambition of anyone with killer looks and a telegenic personality. We doubt Del Conte's stay at CNET will be any longer than Soledad O"Brien's stint on The Site. Give Natali a year and she'll have pushed out notorious nobody Julia Allison as Fox TV's token brunette. Sucks for us, Natali, but hurray for you.

Remember SimCity? Remember what a joy it was to build up a fully functioning, living, breathing city, full of life and wonderment? Then, at some point down the road, after you've built up your city to the peak of its productiveness, you'd start mashing the disaster button and a wide variety of tornadoes, earthquakes, and fake Godzillas would come tromping through, laying fiery waste to every bit of what you'd worked so painstakingly to create? Yeah. It's a little bit like that. Except someone hit the disaster button for me.

Walt Mossberg, surprisingly slow out of the gate, has finally deigned to review Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader. He was not kind, calling it "mediocre" and "marred by annoying flaws." He also says that Amazon "nailed the electronic-book shopping experience," which is no surprise given the success of Amazon.com, "but it has a lot to learn about designing electronic devices." Harsh words from a top reviewer who can make or break a device. Here's our question: what took him so long?

If we're going to make fun of CNBC's inability to spell, we should probably poke fun at Fox Business News as well. In a screenshot from earlier today, the Dow Jones Inustrial Average must be an innovation from News Corp. TVNewser has an interesting quote from an ex-CNBCer:

Fortune.com — what magazine publisher is calling Fortune's little corner of CNNMoney.com — relaunched today, and the Observer's Media Mob notes the site is "sleeker, whiter, cleaner" but bears a "strikingly" duh-we're-copycats resemblance to Portfolio.com. Whatever, let us know when Forbes.com relaunches with a design inspired by Fake Steve Jobs's Blogger template. In the meantime, here's a Valleywag poll asking you to pick which Web design best helps you forget that no one reads magazines — if you can even tell them apart.

Fox Business's flubs we could blame on the cable channel's teething pangs. But how to explain CNBC, which seemed like a high-school video project gone awry this morning? David Faber, reporting on Citigroup's current woes, said "Look at that: All the financials are up — except Citi!" The problem? Citi was actually up 84 cents, as a graphic showed five seconds later. But wait, there's more! In another graphic, shown above, CNBC had three separate misspellings. Video of the incident is after the jump.