Los Angeles Times
The NBC News anchor has been on "30 Rock," Wait, Wait ... Dont Tell Me, and other comedy shows. "In airline pilot terms, I feel like I have enough stripes on my sleeve to be able to do more of it," Brian Williams tells Matea Gold. "People are much savvier now. They get the difference. They know when you change hats."

St. Petersburg Times | The Hollywood Reporter
e.Republic was chosen from among six bidders for the magazine. Several of the principals of the California media company are members of the Church of Scientology, and the St. Petersburg Times has been running stories critical of the church. "It's a business deal," says Times Publishing veep Andrew Corty. "We didn't want to exclude anybody because of their personal or religious beliefs." || Related.
> Sacramento News & Review: "Executives at e.Republic are so close to Scientology that they don't understand where the [company] 'training' ends and the religion begins."

Times West Virginian
Times West Virginian publisher Andrew Kniceley (left) used his newspaper to apologize for yelling at a football coach because his son played only three plays in a game. "I regret any embarrassment or discomfort that I have caused FSU [Fairmont State University], my newspaper and my family -- especially my son Josh," writes the publisher, who is also chairman of the FSU board.

The Kojo Nnamdi
Listen to Thursday's WAMU discussion of the state of alternative media. The guests: Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism; former Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff; Richard Karpel of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; and Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple.

Nieman Journalism Lab | Poynter Online
One of the tweaks that Zachary Seward has noticed: Steve Brill used to use the term "wall" to describe subscription content, but he's now abandoned that language. "We're not putting up any kind of a paywall," he's been saying. || Earlier Brill interview with Steve Myers.

Westword
That's the approach William Breathes takes. He describes the decor ("like that hippie kid's hangout in high school -- complete with a boom box and thrift-store furniture"); the service ("employees didn't seem particularly interested in ... even helping me"); and what he ordered ("I'd settled on a gram of hash and two grams of herb"). The only thing missing is the number of stars he'd give the place.
> Earlier: Over 200 apply to be Westword's pot critic

NPR.org
"I've even talked to writers who've told me that it's an obsession," says editor Joe Randazzo. "Nearly everything that they see, think or do gets instantly reframed into this kind of headline." Re the staff's political leanings: "I would not say that we are a group of Republicans, but I don't think we're a group of really left-wing liberals either."

Washington City Paper
Erik Wemple reports several WashingtonPost.com editorial staffers as well as some non-editorial workers are among those who've gotten the ax as the website merges with the main Post newsroom.

Tampa Bay Business Journal
83 Degrees, which launched this week, is getting money from the Tampa Downtown Partnership, Pinellas County Economic Development, and city leaders in Tampa, Largo and Clearwater. A critic of the venture has already launched a parody site.

Online Journalism Review
That's too bad, says Robert Niles, because "Walt's management style empowered the company to cultivate fresh ideas," while news business management has smothered creativity. "As a newspaper online producer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I'm quite familiar with the 'No, because...' speech, especially on projects relating to editorial coverage and social media."

Chicago Tribune
Chicago-Main Newsstand in Evanston has sold 140 copies of Granta 108: Chicago. The only other time the newsstand sold any issue that topped 100 copies was when Newsweek put out a special edition after Barack Obama won the presidential election. "It's unusual for a literary magazine to sell like that," says the newsstand owner. "Even mainstream magazines don't sell in that quantity -- 50 of anything is huge."

MarketWatch
"That makes us different -- doesn't make one right and one wrong," says John King, after being asked how his show will contrast with the one Lou Dobbs hosted.

Chicago Sun-Times
Richard Daley says gripes in the media about the city of Chicago shutting down part of Michigan Avenue for Oprah Winfrey's season kickoff may have been too much for the talk show queen. "You keep kicking people, and people will leave. Simple as that."

Columbia Journalism Review
"I actually hadn't seen the Economist cover when we designed this, so I wasn't even aware that they had arrived at the same design solution," says Atlantic art director Jason Treat. Graphic design historian Steven Heller tells Greg Marx that the similarity may be embarrassing, but "the off-the-cliff idea is one of those 'universal notions.'"

MinOnline
Steve Smith says the digital version of December's GQ isn't exactly the "App of the Year," "but Conde Nast's launch of the GQ 'Man of the Year' issue in an iPhone version brims with intriguing ideas about how to handle deeper magazine content on mobile platforms large and small."

Fayetteville Observer
Observer executive editor Mike Arnholt told the Army on Thursday that not allowing coverage of Sarah Palin's book promotion at Fort Bragg would set an unacceptable precedent. He was backed up by lawyer Matthew Freedus, who wrote: "As a general rule, military bases are not public forums. But when they are open to the public, they have to be open to the press to the same extent." The media now has limited access to Monday's event.
> AP lawyer calls restrictions "unlawful and unacceptable"

Chicago Tribune
Administrators at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill. spiked today's edition of The Statesman because of stories on drinking and smoking by honor students, teen pregnancy, and shoplifting. The Student Press Law Center's director says: "It is irresponsible to withhold this information so they can protect their fantasy image of Stevenson as a place where no one has ever gotten pregnant or shoplifted."
> Earlier: Statesman adviser quits over "hooking up" brouhaha

Reuters
Harbinger Capital Partners now owns 14.64% of the Times Co's publicly traded shares. In September, the hedge fund reported a 16.38% stake.
> NYT's Chicago Report debuts today | Read it
> Will NYT go easy on HBO because of documentary?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Madison attorney Jon Axelrod tells the Wall Street Journal in a letter that "it is totally inappropriate to demean [former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Butler Jr.] because of his race by comparing him to a butler, an occupation unfortunately stereotyped as predominantly African American."

Associated Press
It does that by laying off 90 newsroom employees -- about 2% of the workforce. || Gawker's been getting information from AP tipsters.
> AP reporters who found Palin book share $500 prize