We enjoyed Hamilton Nolan's bitter screed against D.C. reporters and their annual skit-performing love-ins with Dick Cheney and Co.—but thought it could use a local rewrite. Lesse... How about: "Every year night, usually in the Meatpacking District, the same reporters charged with covering our most important television celebrities and media conglomerate-owning millionaires come together to fawn over those same celebu-millionaires and perform acts of slavish self-congratulation that make light of our most serious televisual and business-empire crises. For journalists, whose reputation now hovers around that of used car salesmen who moonlight as back-alley hookers, these kinds of events are the best PR of the week. This is totally normal source-development work; this is a also semi-private spectacle that, fairly or not, comes to exemplify the public perception of a duplicitous, do-nothing media in the nation's world's capital." There! That feels a little better.

• Sewell Chan to start new Times blog about brutal rapes, pandas. Also, the Times is moving to a new building. [NYO]
  

• Jeff Greenfield returns to CBS after a long stint at CNN. Greenfield is known in the industry for his "wry perspective on events," which is like being a "comedian's comedian" for a group of people who have no sense of comedy. [WSJ]
  

• Sam Zell is the probable winner in the battle for Tribune. News of the end of this fucking story could come as early as this morning. [LAT]
  

• 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]
  

This morning, Doree roused herself at an ungodly hour to attend a panel discussion called "Do Newspapers Have a Future?" at the W Hotel in Midtown, with the New Yorker's Ken Auletta lobbing questions at Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet and McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt.

• Are Ron Burkle & Eli Broad back in the Tribune game? How will Sam Zell's bid work? When will this fucking story ever end? [LAT]
  

• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

• There's a lot of backbiting and infighting at the Los Angeles Times, which is completely unusual behavior at a major newspaper. [NYT]
  

Late yesterday afternoon, Imagine philosopher-king Brian Grazer's introduction to his ill-fated Current section was saved from the oblivion to which it was dispatched by the LAT's cautious publisher, whose decision to kill the stunt-edit called down from the media heavens a shitstorm arguably equal in filthy intensity to the one he was trying to avoid in the first place. Today, Grazer's statement on the matter is circulating in reports about the controversy (words probably lovingly composed by the same publicists who got him into this mess), hinting at the delights the intellectually voracious superproducer of easily digestible populist entertainments had planned for the Times' readership this Sunday morning. From THR:

• Times Co. to increase dividend by 31%. (But whose idea was it?) So enjoy that extra third of no profits, stockholders! [NYT]
  

With the LAT's unfortunate decision to callously discard all the hard work superproducing guest editor Brian Grazer had put into his masterfully curated Sunday Current section just because the paper caught a faint whiff of possible publicist-related impropriety, we feared that the words of introduction that Hollywood's Grand Inquisitor of Interesting People so painstakingly dictated to his assistants for later transcription might be lost to history. (Luckily for his support staff, their notoriously quixotic boss abandoned a poorly conceived plan to have his introductory remarks on his editorial mission pressed into a clay tablet in cuneiform—an idea that grew out of a brief obsession with producing an action-thriller set in ancient Sumeria—ultimately tasking them with translating his scattered thoughts into comprehensible English instead.) But thanks to LA Observed (and someone on the inside with access to the Times's editing system), Grazer's Lost Introduction has been preserved for as long as these blogowebs exist:

The dominoes in Grazergate have fallen, and fallen quickly: The paper's publisher this morning announced it would kill Brian Grazer's blockbuster Sunday Current section to avoid the appearance of undue publicist influence in the superproducer/intellectual dynamo's coronation as guest editor-king, prompting embattled, flack-entangled section editor Andres Martinez to quickly resign, and the Times Ouroboros to hastily swallow its deliciously scandal-tipped tail by immediately posting a story about the resignation. The real victim in all of this is Grazer, whose selfless desire to share with the public an all-consuming, lifelong curiosity about Stuff has now been tainted by controversy, with the pages upon which the precious words he so lovingly curated—but is tragically unable to read—were printed soon to be recycled into Best Buy circulars advertising specially discounted A Beautiful Mind DVDs.

This morning brings terrible—terrible!—news for the Hollywood community, who had been universally atwitter about the Very Special Guest-Edited Sunday Current Section superproduced by Brian Grazer that was scheduled for this weekend's LAT, opinion pages so jam-packed with action, adventure, and quirky material reflecting Grazer's legendarily restless, spongelike intellect that early tracking projected the paper to gross nearly $40 million in its opening frame. Tragically, the blockbuster project is now threatened with cancellation since it has come to light (Grazergate™ courtesy of LA Observed) that the editor of Times' editorial page is dating a publicist whose firm represents Imagine Entertainment, Grazer's movie studio/thinktank hybrid, a potential conflict that has many in the newsroom lighting their hair on fire, poking out their eyes with letter openers, and loudly wailing about having to toil in a town dominated by an entertainment industry bent on hijacking local journalistic institutions for their own nefarious, guest-editing ends.

• LAT will spend the day pulling out hair over Brian Grazer guest-edit; their editorial page editor is dating the 42 West publicist who's handled projects for Grazer's Imagine. Straight version: [LAO] Dishy version: [DHD]
  

• Read all about Hassan Elmasry, the Morgan Stanley portfolio manager who's trying to take the Times out of Sulzberger family hands, and the man responsible for tearing Pinch Sulzberger a new one at the late February board meeting. (In PowerPoint, no less!) [WSJ]
  

• Lady Black flips out on Canuck media outside hubbie Conrad's court date, calls producer a slut, claims "I used to be a journalist!" Oh my God, when? [CP]
  

An old Texas political adage concerning lobbyists goes thusly: "If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in the Legislature." But what of reporters, specifically the reporters who are screwing political consultants? Today's LAT takes a look at some of the reporters covering the race for the White House who happen to be married to various campaign aides. Fortunately, a number of the spouses are working for John McCain, so conflicts will be resolved by Super Tuesday. For the rest, it actually sounds like a cushy gig: If we were reporters looking to reduce our output, we'd start doing someone from a campaign immediately. Hell, new Portfolio D.C. editor Matt Cooper's been doing it for years, all part of a perfectly concocted scheme that has admirably kept him without a byline for as long as we can remember.

• Conrad Black trial driving Canadian reporters crazy. [Toronto Star]
  

• The Post has never heard of Whitewater. [NYP]