Fully embracing a recent mission to champion the unsung, trench-digging heroes of Hollywood kicked off by last week's introduction of their scribecentric Scriptland feature, the LAT today presents the first installment of Made-for-TV-Movie Directorville, which will explore the lives and work of the small-screen auteurs behind projects as wide-ranging as AMC's celebrated Broken Trail and less-appreciated masterpieces like Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?. The Times kicks off the new column by illustrating the MFTVM director's uphill battle for respect and recognition:

• Hewlett-Packard considered the feasibility of planting agents in two news bureaus. It's unclear whether or not the placement actually occurred; maybe Bill Keller can ask Patricia Dunn about it after dinner tonight. [NYT]
• New Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman wants to buy lots of small, cheap web properties. That ought to keep Redstone off his back for a while. [NYP]
• "Romenesko, the sex-offender registry of journalism ethics ..." [API, via TS-ORJE]
• There are about thirty parties interested in buying Time Inc.'s niche properties, but they're mostly European and don't know any better. [NYP]

• Warner Music has signed a licensing agreement with YouTube; Sumner Redstone immediately rehires Tom Freston to fire him again. [NYT]
• Has Katie Couric settled on a sign-off? Apart from an under-her-breath "Fuck you, Friedman?" [TV Newser]
• There are fewer full-time journalists now than there were a decade ago, mostly because Sewell Chan is doing all of their work. [IU, via JR]
• Dicks at Gawker mock 26-year-old orphan who's just trying to make a difference, damn it. [ETP]

Should Time Warner shed Time Inc.? David Carr seems to think it should, suggesting that Time Inc. prove itself quickly or be sold. "A very large boat," says Carr, "will have to be turned around very quickly with little additional investment." It's an industry-wide problem, and not just in print media: As Les Moonves recently told the Times, "we are changing our tires on a car going 80 miles an hour." Still, when one's employer has been likened by its own employees to an "ocean liner that turns slowly but with great power," we can understand a good transportation metaphor's appeal.

• Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone: Old and in charge. [LAT]
• Media readership falling? (Yes.) Maybe we should change the way it's measured. [Guardian]
• Social networking: The next big thing for parents. And dogs. [NYT]
• Memo to the NYT: When a guy's your go-to quote pretty much every time a new magazine launches, you might want to learn how to spell his name correctly. [Seth Mnookin]

From the media kit for 02138, Harvard's incredibly funded, independent alumni magazine:

Oh, fuck yeah.

• LAT editor sticks it to The Man; refuses to make cuts requested by Tribune overlords. [NYT]
• Member of CBS Evening News' elderly demographic likes Katie Couric. [AP]
• City claims recycling has declined because no one buys newspapers anymore, but that fails to explain where people are putting the eight million Metros shoved at them as they enter the subway. [NYS]
• Dick-licking victim Mandy Stadtmiller wins "Funniest Reporter in New York" contest. The jokes, they write themselves. Or at least they're gonna have to for this one, because we've got nothing. [NY1]

Seems like not everyone was pleased with that News & Observer decision to warn readers about the internal Michelangelo nudity , including many of the reporters who forwarded us the following note from Public Editor Ted Vaden's internal blog:

• Pinch Sulzberger and cousin Michael Golden hope that a $4 million employee bribe might help them keep their jobs for a little while longer. [NYO]
• Jeff Koyen likes the new Times Reader software. Jeff Jarvis does not. If you're still awake after reading those sentences, send us over some of whatever you're on. [Wired]
• CBS' Les Moonves wants to buy "the next YouTube." Probably a savvy move to wait until the current one gets sued out of existence. [Reuters]
• We sort of feel like everyone who watches Nancy Grace should kill themselves; can you guess what we think about her guests? [BG]
• When a guy cites the phenomenally successful "Times Select" model as an example of "where the industry will have to go," it's probably a good idea to discount the rest of what he says as well. [Barnako]

Under what has to be our favorite headline since "Revealed! Seahorse Sluts," Kati Cornell reports that reputed crime figure "John "Junior" Gotti made a failed bid to turn himself into a publishing king by investing in a celebrity-packed magazine for prison inmates called Hottie." We're going to forego the obvious suggestion that perhaps Maer Roshan missed out on an alternate opportunity to fund Radar and just point out the fact that even Victoria Gotti thought this was a bad idea, and she doesn't say no to anything. Still, we're not sure that her judgment was correct in this case: We've obtained a test cover Junior put together, and we think the thing shows potential. You'll find it after the jump.

• Apparently Apple made some sort of announcement yesterday. [Gizmodo]
• Is the White House spying on journalists? That's the kind of thing that can get you fired! [CBS]
• Hewlett-Packard Chairman forced out for investigation that spied on journalists. [USAToday]
• Of course, sometimes journalists act like spies. [NYO]
• NYT sells off its TV stations to focus on print newspapers, digital media, and launching new glossy magazines about sections that already exist every other month. [NYT]

More in sorrow than in joy (oh, who are we kidding) Keith Kelly reports this morning on the dismissal of the Daily News' Andrea Dove, vice president of classified ads. Kelly gives a roll call of recent News departures, both voluntary and less so: Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke, executive vice president Ira Ellenthal, investigative reporter Russ Buettner, feature writer Caitlin Kelly, food writer Isabel Forgang, and Michael Segell, Rebecca Louie, Breanne Heldman, Jami Bernard, Graham Fuller, Michele Ingrassia, Michelle Leifer and Celia McGee.

The owner of Kitson, the oft-tabloid-namechecked Robertson Boulevard boutique that offers the celebrity-obsessed the first opportunity to express their allegiance in various high-profile domestic squabbles through a trendy t-shirt purchase, is suing Us Weekly, the glossy that once delighted in publicizing the shop's free-spending, celebutard clientele, alleging that some legal feuds between the two parties have led the magazine to stop obsessively documenting the comings and goings of his business's famous patrons.. The LAT documents the currently chilly state of the two parties' relationship, which was once was as warm and snuggly as one of the store's sale-priced Cambodian babies nestled in an Ugg boot:

• Barbara Walters on Rosie O'Donnell: "As she always says, she doesn't want to drive the bus, she wants to ride it." Either way, it had better stop at Krispy Kreme. [Fishbowl NY]

• Blogs: worse than the sixties. [NYT]
• Walter Scott, Walt Whitman also guilty of "sock puppetry." [NYT]
• Joe Hagan throws pretty much everything but the revelation that Bill Keller loves "The Wire" into this profile. [NYM]
• New magazine to battle Portfolio for that all-important douchebag demographic. [NYT]
• Speaking of douchebags, it's hard to identify to twattiest statement in this profile of the Flavorpill folks, but we're going to settle on, "We've been called the Cond Nast of e-mail." [NYT]
• Apparently, people wanted to see pictures of Suri Cruise. [WWD]
• Bill Gates has no iPod. Thank you, Donny Deutsch! [copyranter]

• Hewlett-Packard hired private investigators to obtain journalists' phone records. Because there's nothing more interesting than a list of sex-talk lines called on the company dime. [NYT]
• The statistics in that Slate teen hummer piece suck. [Stats.org]
• Maureen Dowd is too worth more than "Always Crashing in the Same Car." [Newyorkette]
• Is the lonelygirl15 story over finally? Please? [Screens]

• Time Warner is moving its retail operations to Parsippany, New Jersey (nickname: The City of Lights). Does this foretell further moves west for other segments of the organization? Will Time be setting up shop in Secaucus? Probably not; that would require that its leadership have some sense of direction. [Fishbowl NY]
• Bill Clinton's got his (or some intern's) knickers in a twist about an ABC 9/11 "documentary" which claims that he pretty much flew those planes into the towers himself. [NYP]
• Aging talk show host has another four years to run his once legendary legacy into the ground. [ETP]

• New editor of Newsweek still believes in relevance of newsweeklies. Poor, deluded sap. [WP]
• Writer Lee Siegel "suspended" from TNR, ostensibly for misrepresenting himself on the web. Our theory: No one gets away with being more pretentious than Leon Wieseltier at the mag. No one. [NYO]
• Phillipe Dauman, newest recipient of Sumner Redstone's puppet-string implant surgery, wants Viacom to identify opportunities like YouTube before other organizations can. Seeing as Tom Freston got canned for failing to do that, it's probably a good idea. [Reuters]
• The stench in the CNBC newsroom isn't just that of failure. Well, at least not yesterday. [NYDN]

IvyLeak brings news of the feverishly-anticipated (at least by Harvard grads) 02138, the independent alumni mag backed by Atlantic owner David Bradley: Apparently, its logo pays homage to Cornell, which we're hearing rumors might also be an Ivy.