• Holy crap, Ian Urbina did a lot of work in this piece on kids who just want to sell magazines but wind up hanging out with meth-addicted prostitutes. Only 11 months and one week until the next Pulitzer deadline! [NYT]
  

The scene at Penn Station, where Radar sits alongside Mujer. Many Spanish-speakers are concerned about the heterosexuality of their babies, so this may be a savvy move.

• Sports Illustrated and Dasani water team up for world's biggest blowjob billboard. [NYP]
  

• Comedy Central and TVLand head downtown to Hudson Street, although that may just be a plot by Viacom to make mass layoffs easier to handle. [NYP]
  

• Tabloidism is allegedly the most radical change in the New York Observer's history. [NYO]
  

The Hollywood Reporter runs a relatively standard-issue Second Life trend piece, with a slightly novel presentation of entertainment and advertising companies' reactions for/against. Dennis Miller of Spark Capital does get a good quote, describing the current scene quite cogently as one of "maximum paranoia and minimum clarity." However, much better is Linden Labs' Philip Rosedale in a related interview, holding forth in something akin to dorm-room stoner talk.

• Magazine circulation for the second half of 2006? Not so good. The big winners were the celebrity weeklies and Men's Health, which may have found a winning strategy in sticking Dave Zinczenko on the "Today Show" every goddamn day. The big losers? Everyone else, particularly Marie Claire, some copies of which reportedly returned themselves. [WWD]

• Fox to do for business what it's done for the Republican party: Convince gullible yahoos that it isn't a soulless machine out to exploit the most vulnerable members of our society for the benefit of those who were born with all of life's advantages in the first place. [NYT]
  

• Melissa Lafsky gets her chilly paws on an actual! print! copy! of Radar, and finds that our new helmsman is represented within. Also within: a timeline about cocaine, and a guide to which celebs have "Inner Fatties." We're drooling like Tinsley Mortimer over a burger. [ETP]
  

Today, Variety.com unveiled Digital Variety, an "online reproduction" of the Daily Variety paper that allows computer-based users to simulate the excitement of "flipping pages," a luxury once reserved for those idling in the waiting areas of studios and agencies. While the new product lacks the one of most crucial features of the physical paper—an ability to be easily rolled into a glossy cudgel suitable for the bludgeoning of an incompetent assistant—DigiVar (Digiriety?) does finally allow those of us toiling in the ghettos of the blogoweb to have online access to the publication's many fine awards season ads, like the one reproduced here, taken out by Paramount publicists desperate to have the hard work that was largely ignored by Academy voters recognized in a wound-salving win at the Flackies.

• Jeff Zucker's new CEO of NBC job is going to be sort of a tough gig. [NYT]
  

• Jeff Zucker to be named CEO of NBC Universal, because he's done so well so far and everyone loves him. [NYP]
  

• Sulzberger to Morgan Stanley: "I'd like my money back, thanks." [Fortune]
  

• Hey, ladies, Sheryl Crow reads the Wall Street Journal. Shouldn't you? [NYT]
  

We're hearing that Tom Foster, editor of Men's Journal, has resigned, citing irreconcilable differences with Jann Wenner. He'll be out of the office by 1 p.m. today. A tipster speculates:

Nestled between today's Page Six items concerning a Diddy goon's seizure of a digital camera memory card that may have contained unauthorized images of their boss dancing with Sienna Miller and a discarded Trump trophy wife's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions is this bizarre mash-note about Monday's news that recent Paramount pinkslip victim Gail Berman and Lloyd "All Media Mentions Of Me Must Include A Reference To My Role In Shepherding ABC Megasuccess Lost" Braun were joining forces to seize back control of their Hollywood fates:

• Scooter Libby would call Judy Miller at all hours just to tell her that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. [WaPo]
  

There is little in this world more heartwarming than tales of how fascinating real-life stories make their way from touching Sunday newspaper features to full-blown Hollywood lust objects, complete with nasty bidding wars that create overnight millionaires out of good-natured souls engaged in acts of movie-ready charity. Today's WSJ recounts how NY Times reporter Warren St. John's article on Luma Mufleh, a Jordan-born woman who became a soccer coach for the "Fugees," an adorable collection of kids from various war-ravaged countries who were then displaced from their Clarkston, GA soccer field, made the journey from the Times' pages to big-screen-tearjerker-in-development. As all such stories must, this one begins with "mercurial" (read: blunt-object-hurling) uberproducer Scott Rudin given just cause to maim an employee, and ends with an acquisition by a big studio:

• What do all these kids have in common? They're being exploited by a Murdoch-owned paper to boost sales in the wake of that whole racist "Big Brother" episode. [Guardian]
  

• CNBC is backing Maria Bartiromo because, really, what else do you know about CNBC apart from Maria Bartiromo? [NYT]