Media Mob has learned that Washington lawyer and champion Beltway book broker Robert Barnett is representing soon-to-be-former Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli in his severance-package negotiations with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Mr. Barnett has, in the last year, brokered massive book deals for political heavyweights Karl Rove, Ted Kennedy, and Tony Blair.

They're working fast: the terms of Mr. Brauchli's departure from the Journal, which presumably depend upon his agreement, could be announced formally by News Corp. as soon as this afternoon, according to our sources at the paper.

Karl Rove's memoir, whose rights will be auctioned beginning today, should fetch around $3 million, according to an unnamed publisher who plans to bid on it and spoke to The New York Post's Keith Kelly.

That would be significantly less than memoirs by Tony Blair, Teddy Kennedy, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, all of whom were represented, like Mr. Rove, by Washington uber-lawyer/agent Bob Barnett.

The publisher says Mr. Rove is "moving beyond the cliches," though there was little evidence of that in Mr. Rove's first column for Newsweek.