Media

According to Reuters, Richard Parsons, Time Warner's chairman, is planning to step down in 2009. "This is my last shot at this," Parsons is quoted as saying during a shareholders meeting. "I will be the outgoing chairman after this year, probably."

Get ready for journalists to start another round of the "Richard Parsons, future New York City mayoral candidate" meme.

Flashback: AOL-Time Warner's New Chief, Richard Parsons, Makes His Social Debut, December 23, 2001.

Recently, Media Mob had a bad dream in which we found ourselves back in our high-school Latin class, facing a pop quiz on—let's call it Cicero—and realized with growing dread that we hadn't picked up a Latin book in ages, and were on the verge of wildly failing said test.

Speaking of failing to prepare, knowing nothing about the subject at hand, and being humiliated as a result ... have you seen the above clip from yesterday's Hardball on MSNBC?  read more »

It seems like just yesterday—well, late October, anyway—Brijit.com, the website that read and summarized magazines, was launched. At the time, The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens profiled Brijit's founder, Jeremy Brosowsky, and wrote, "[T]he Internet is littered with good ideas that turn out to be bad businesses, and online publishing can be especially tricky: Do you go mass-market or niche? Subscription-based, or free and ad-supported? Original content or aggregation of other content?"

Yesterday, the site ceased publishing new content. In a farewell post on his own site, Brosowsky wrote, "Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we’ve run out of money, and can no longer afford to pursue our vision of adapting great long-form content for a short-form world, at least not as a stand-alone company. As recently as yesterday morning, we thought we had the funding in place to continue our work together. But as it turns out, we don’t."  read more »

Do not ask Katie Roiphe what she's been working on. In today's installment of "Stray Questions," on The Times' Paper Cuts blog, Dwight Garner asks the author and NYU journalism professor just that and receives this answer:

Because I can’t really answer this question I have noticed that people ask it all the time. I never go anywhere without someone asking me what I am working on, and without me stuttering and fumbling over an answer. I can’t answer because I am working on a book so new and unformed it is still in the delicate phase before words. It hasn’t yet reached a point where I can confidently sum it up in a neat sentence and be done with it. I am also a little bit superstitious.

When Garner asks whose books she finds herself shelved next to, Roiphe says, "Occasionally my books are next to my mother’s books, which is a little strange, and reminds me of the extreme lack of imagination I showed in my career choice. It also reminds me of something my older sister said to me once: 'Our entire professional lives can be reduced to the kind of drawing that children make for their mother to put up on the refrigerator with magnets.'"

It's quitting time at Blackbook.

On the heels of the major departures of its managing editor and photo director, Blackbook has now lost its publisher, Joe Landry.

Mr. Landry is returning to his old stomping grounds and will become group publisher of both Out magazine and The Advocate, replacing Jay Adams, who was fired earlier this week. Mr. Landry worked with both Out and The Advocate for years before he ditched them for Blackbook two years ago.

"It's an opportunity to go back to the brand that I built," said Mr. Landry to Media Mob. "The new owners are very passionate about the brands that I bought."

"We’ve been bought by a company that primarily deals with television and film and therefore lacks some of the experience in publishing that Joe will bring to the company when he returns," said Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out, in an interview. Last month, Out and The Advocate were purchased by Regent Publishing for the tiny sum of $6 million (five times less than what they were purchased for 2.5 years ago).

And so what in the world is happening at Blackbook? Within the last month, the magazine has lost both its managing editor, Una LaMarche, and its photo director, Shannon Hall.

Journalista: The Comics Journal Weblog is reporting that Will Elder, the famed illustrator and one of the founders of Mad Magazine, has died at 86. (This comes via boing boing.) Elder was considered a major influence on artists like Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes.  read more »

CBS has just announced plans to acquire online media company, CNET, in a deal worth $1.8 billion.

The press release says: "The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide."

Most of you probably know CNET.com, the Web site that breaks news about online and tech industries.

They're also the purveyors of ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, mp3.com, CNET news.com, UrbanBaby, CHOW, Search.com, BNET, MySimon and TechRepublic.

Full press release after the jump, and thanks to PaidContent.org, where we first read the news (you can find some more analysis of the deal there, and we'll come back to this when we've had a chance to think it through a bit).  read more »

The Media Mob has learned that longtime New York Times editor Mike Oreskes is leaving the company for the Associated Press.

Mr. Oreskes, who is currently the editor of the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, has been working in one capacity or another under the Times umbrella for the past 27 years. Before he took his position as executive editor of IHT in 2005, he was the deputy managing editor of The Times for Bill Keller, and an assistant managing editor under Howell Raines before that.

At the AP, he'll become the managing editor of the wire service's U.S. News department, a newly created department there.

Update! AP has confirmed our report with a press release. Follow the jump to read it ...  read more »

And another one drops at the Washington Post! Michael Calderone at Politico is reporting that legendary writer David Broder is the latest to take a buyout from the paper, though he'll remain on contract. The 78-year-old Broder told Calderone there were two reasons he's leaving: (1) he can get off the newsroom budget, and help them save a little dough and (2) they're giving him a "generous" package.

So with chief editor Leonard Downie apparently days away from taking a buyout of his own, and with loudmouth, thin-skinned Tony Kornheiser also taking one, let's do a quick round-up of everyone else. The rule of the land is you can only take a buyout at the paper if you're older than 50.

Patrick Gavin at Fishbowl DC has been doing an almost daily round-up lately, and here's our best attempt at compiling what they have confirmed:

Kathy Legg
Don Podesta (AME/Copy Desk)
Sue Anne Pressley
Joe Elbert (former AME/Photo)
JoEllen Murphy (Art Director, HOME)
David Broder
Tony Kornheiser
Linton Weeks
Mike Keegan
Deb Heard (AME/Style)
Steve Fehr (Assistant Virginia editor)
John Pancake
Belle Elving
Anne Groer.
Walter Nicholls
Peter Carlson
Bill O'Brian
Tom Ricks
K.C. Summers
Desson Thompson
Eve Zibart
Richard Harrington
Tamara Jones
Susan Schmidt
Tim Page
Maralee Schwartz

Ann Gerhart is not taking the buyout.

Gene Weingarten is not taking the buyout.

And Peter Baker left for the Times Magazine after his wife, editor Susan Glasser, was fired.
More here.

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Fashion Week Daily has confirmed that Nina Garcia has accepted an offer from Hearst Corporation and will be joining Marie Claire as its new fashion director in the fall. Meanwhile rumors about Marie Claire replacing Elle as Project Runway's sponsor still have not been confirmed, but a source tells FWD that "negotiations are just starting, if even that," and that Ms. Garcia's hire at the magazine is "completely separate from Marie Claire's possible interest in Project Runway."

An official announcement from Hearst is expected by the end of the week.