• Meghan Daum is still finding ways to make money off of having lived in Nebraska. [Salon]
• It's been a year since Judy Miller went to jail, and ain't a damn thing changed. [HuffPo]
• Shock magazine review. Apparently it's for illiterates. [WP]
• Whether or not she's a plagiarist, alleged plagiarist Ann Coulter should be careful about picking a fight with The Post, which could show her picture alongside an embarrassing heading. For example: "45-YEAR-OLD PLAGIARIST." [Political Cortex]

• Sports writers are predominantly white and male. [WP]
• Travel writers are essentially bought off by the outlets they cover. [MH]
• Celebrities sometimes collude with magazine editors for coverage. [Jossip]

• Jeff Jarvis thinks everything's about the web. We're as shocked as you are. [Guardian]
• Dana Priest, John Harwood, and Bill Safire gang up on William Bennett. Maybe Bennett can head down to A.C. to console himself. Oh, right. [E&P]
• Shreveport paper concludes Ann Coulter "more about entertainment and self-promotion." Also plagiarism, allegedly. [Shreveport Times]
• In a loft on Spring Street some dude checks his e-mail, doesn't bother to pretend he's paying attention to David Carr. [NYT]
• Edger Bronfman, Jr., won't be happy until he pisses his entire family fortune into the ground. And not in the good, Warren Buffett kind of way. [Guardian]

My Heritage is a face recognition program that scans its database for famous face matches to any portrait you upload. This is useful if, say, you want to settle an argument over whether or not you look like Brad Pitt, but for lazy summer purposes, it's a fun excuse to laugh at pictures of editors. After the jump, the fruits of our procrastination.

We were trying to make sense of today's LAT story on the ongoing FBI investigation of a former Us Weekly editor accused of hacking into (read: using someone else's password to access) the magazine's e-mail system to gain an unfair competitive advantage in obtaining scoops about the newest busty brunette with whom Nick Lachey may be having intercourse, when our eye drifted over to the Related News box at the right hand side of the page. The article does mention Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards by name, and is certainly an "entertainment" story, but there is no explicit mention of "hot chicks"—trust us, we checked. (In the name of research, we also visited the web presence of the aforementioned brunette to confirm her hair color and relative bustiness, and she checks out on both counts. We are nothing if not thorough.) But compounding the sin of the Topix Related News box's cynical attempt at attracting click-throughs with suggestive keywords is the fact that no "Hot Chicks" topic page exists. [Audible gasp.] We trust that the FBI will immediately abandon its piddling Us Weekly investigation and launch a new probe into Topix's criminally misleading practices.

It's come to our attention that one of Mediabistro's ever-helpful panels may not be selling too well, the irony being that for once, it seemed like a not-horrid event. Rather than learning how to pitch AutoWeek, this event was a gathering of mildly interesting journos-cum-writers to talk about making the change from magazine whore to book whore. Just a thought, but if the arguably unboring gatherings aren't selling, could it be the first, tiny sign of the death of the media panel? And if so, how long until Michael Wolff keels over?

• Tyler Green asks the hard questions about NYT art critic Grace Glueck's relationship with the Clark Art Institute: "[W]ho at the NYT knew? And why wasn't it flagged as an obvious conflict of interest?" Our question: Grace Glueck? Clark Art Institute? Should either of these names ring a bell? [Arts Journal]
• Boobies + alcohol + college kids + Internet = $. If you've never read a piece about CollegeHumor.com, today's the day to smack yourself in the head and say, "I coulda done that!" [Fox News]
• Majority of English hacks privately educated, owe their jobs to school connections. Thank God things are different here in the U.S.A. [Guardian]
• Blogger-turned-Time columnist sticks it to The Man, gets fingered. [The Nation]
• Acting like a hyperventilating batshit loon who's one step away from the bughouse is one thing, but when you add props to the occasion, you're crossing the line. [Marketwatch]

In an embarrassing mix-up that will almost certainly result in the firing of several editors, Forbes magazine today mistakenly republished the results of its 2001 Celebrity 100 list as its new, 2006 version of the world's most influential famous people, a five-year-old data set which proclaimed then-universally-beloved megastar Tom Cruise the most powerful celebrity in the world. That 2001 report boasted that Cruise had "never been hotter" following the $215 million Mission: Impossible II raked in at the domestic box office, lauded his attempt to "tackle something with more weight" by signing up for Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, a complex psychodrama that will "test the limits of the legendarily intense actor's chops in a new and exciting way," and credited his quiet, private devotion to the "somewhat controversial" religion of Scientology with getting him through the difficult dissolution of his marriage to "soulmate" Nicole Kidman "without missing a beat," all tragic reminders of the recent erosion of Cruise's once-immense popularity.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Sergey Brin!

You know Nielsen? The TV-ratings research company that, a couple of years ago, told the world that men ages 18-35 had stopped watching TV and then a year later discovered that, hey, maybe they were watching after all? Yeah, those guys. Well, yesterday the company said "that it would integrate TV and Internet measurement, add ratings for viewing on such portable devices as cell phones and iPods, and gave a firm date of 2011 for the end of paper diaries in even the smallest markets." It's a bold move that you can read about in The Hollywood Reporter, which says that the news " stunned many in the media industry," and that " the company was universally praised for its action." While it's a "potentially risky course for Nielsen," the company "has got generally good reviews for its proposal." Sounds great! What kind of company wouldn't want coverage like that? Certainly not one owned by the parent company of the paper in which it was reported. Just sayin'.

We know a certain segment of our readership comes to Gawker for its high-quality, up-to-the-minute media gossip. (Related: We hear they're handing out free Posts at the Times Square N/R stop.) And we realize that a portion of that audience occasionally feels neglected, what with all the regular gossip we focus on. So just because we want you to know how much we appreciate you, we've got something special for you after the jump. (HINT: It's a photo of a prominent media celebrity unwittingly displaying some skin.*)

For years, the official press line was that Microsoft is like the Borg, assimilating companies into its cold, heartless race. But now the party line goes, "Google is the new Microsoft." It comes up in the New York Times' Google Oregon complex story:

• New Yorker writers are dismissive about blogging; prefer to use their finely-honed talents discussing Bazooka Joe, bridge suicides. [NYO]
• Frank Barnako would pay to see Tom Friedman blog. Apparently it's not enough for Tom to be wrong on Wednesdays and Fridays. [Marketwatch]
• Reporter for paper no one reads leaves to take job in sport no one watches. [BG]
• MSNBC won't be renamed, even though alternate identification "The Change the Fucking Channel Already Network " has 100 per cent viewer awareness. [LAT]
• Pot remarks upon patina of kettle. [ChiTrib]

The HuffPo's virgin media blog Eat the Press has an entertaining new time-waster: the People Ranker, which charts the levels of buzz in the blogosphere. Just enter a string of names, and the fun little gizmo spits out popularity contest-style results. We love it — it's so much easier to be snotty and judgmental when you have concrete data.

While we shake our heads at the consistently uncomfortable "gotcha!" programming about the dangers of online pedophiles, NPR plays the voice of reason:

Defamer has exclusively obtained via another website this EXCLUSIVE! reproduction of the cover of a publication that has paid an extravagant fee (People reportedly paid $4.1 million at auction for the American rights) to publish the first photographs of pre-sainted celebrity offspring Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt and the two people whose selfless combination of their genetic material has ushered in a new era of peace, harmony, and perpetual, joyous high-fiving into a turbulent, evil-plagued planet. Mere moments after staring upon the Chosen One's image, we felt as if we were bathed in the same golden light that surrounds the infant's still-frail form, and our usual feelings of crippling insecurity and anxiousness were quickly supplanted by a general sense of warmth and well-being. That's all the secondhand grace we can endure for now, but later we plan on exposing a troubling mole with irregular borders to the young Shiloh's placid image, hoping that the blemish will shrink into benign nothingness and save us the copay for a trip to the dermatologist.

• Brad Pitt announces that his baby with Angelina Jolie is "imminent." Really? Did he just figure this out? What tipped him off? Did Zahara tell him? [CNN]
• Former Nanny Fran Drescher tells Howard Stern that she'd love a career in New York politics. Too bad not many people would willingly listen to her while she explained her platform. [Cityrag]
• Times mag on May 7; New Yorker on May 15; the Times today. It's official: the Dog Whisperer is overexposed. [NYT]
• Al Roker goes to Philly and gets a face shot. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• Got a hipster band but no success to speak of? Strong arm your way on the Misshapes playlist with a Joy Division cover. Ian Curtis = cash money. [My Old Kentucky]
• In LA, Madonna kicked off her world tour in fine form: by hanging herself from a giant disco crucifix. Those $400 tickets are going to be worth every penny. [AP]
• Kelly Ripa smells like fish. She won't tell you why, but we've some guesses. Nothing a little Summer's Eve can't fix. [BWE]
• Attention ladies and gays: looking for love? Try riding the subway between 5 and 6 AM, when the male/female ratio is 9:1. [Graphpaper]

The Comedy Central bowlers stopped by to collect the coveted NYAMBL Bowling Pin on their way to pimp out the team yacht.

Remember Bono? Irish fella, used to sing in a band? They named an iPod for him or something? Well, today he's editing the U.K.'s The Independent as part of his whole campaign to "Save Africa" or "Cure Poverty" or whatever the hell thing it is that makes hanging out with Jesse Helms acceptable. So what's a Bono-edited paper like? We don't know: it's kind of earnest, and you understand that there are good intentions behind it, but it just seems like the same three chords, over and over again, and it gets a little too preachy after a while. It feels just like the last two records papers. Your dad will probably love it, though.

Google continues to expand its palette of random bells and whistles (just wait for Google Gyno!), most recently launching its Google Trends Project, which allows users to track the popularity of search terms by time and location. Wanting to better understand the zeitgeist, we entered two words we think are fundamental to modern life: media and porn. Below, the search volume for each term since 2003: