In the way the Haitian slave revolt played a role in the Louisiana Purchase, the recent Haitian earthquake can be seen as playing a role in this:

NEW YORK — The Super Bowl was watched by more than 106 million people, surpassing the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched program in television history.

The Nielsen Co. estimated Monday that 106.5 million people watched the New Orleans Saints upset the Indianapolis Colts. That beats the "M-A-S-H" finale, which had 105.97 million viewers in an era when there were fewer television sets.

And this is middle:

Our dear Fairview Fanny deserves a civic thump on the back for doing what a daily paper does best: deeply investigating a major problem, often gone unseen, and revealing it in a multi-day, front-page series. In "Seniors for Sale," the Times exposed the exploitation of elderly people living in homes overseen by the state. The results are evident in a follow-up piece today:

Gov. Chris Gregoire has ordered the Department of Social and Health Services to review its oversight of the adult-family-home industry, including each case of mistreatment detailed this week in a Seattle Times investigation.

The three-part series, Seniors for Sale, revealed that thousands of vulnerable adults have been exploited by profiteers and amateur caregivers inside adult homes — sometimes with deadly results.

Good work, Seattle Times. It almost makes up for publishing obtuse editorial after obtuse editorial.

Rush Limbaugh judging Miss America? How did I miss this???

If this was a calculated move to get into the good graces of the ladies spawned by his Female Summit last year ("I'm just a harmless little fuzzball...why do women hate me?"), it failed:

LIMBAUGH: Oh, I’m a huge supporter of women. What I’m not a supporter of is liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism has led women astray. I love women. I don’t know where all this got started. I love the women’s movement — especially when walking behind it. This idea that I don’t like women is absurd.

Remember a few months ago when he thought he was having a heart attack but it turned out to be gas or guilt pains or his heart gunning for a jailbreak? Ever since then, in repose, I've had wistful dreams of dancing on his corpse.

Just did an interview with a reporter from a daily paper in a city where I'll be speaking in a couple of weeks. We talked for an hour, we laughed and laughed, and then he said: "Man, funny stuff—too bad I could never get any of that in the paper." And what couldn't he get into the paper? Two adults talking to each other about sex, using the language adults use when they talk to each other about sex, both making the kinds of jokes and asides that adults typically do when they're talking to other adults about sex.

And none of that can go in the paper.

The new owners of Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, put the whole paper behind a firewall in October. The redesign and firewall launch, which cost $4 million, made it so customers could buy access to Newsday online for $5 a month. So how many people have subscribed in the past three months? The answer comes via the New York Observer.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn't know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.

"I heard you say 35 people," he said, from Newsday's auditorium in Melville. "Is that number correct?"

Mr. Jimenez nodded.

This sound effect has never been more appropriate.

For the second day in a row, NPR's Morning Edition makes the point that Americans who owe more than their homes are worth have more options than they usually consider—including the "immoral" route of defaulting.

There are good reasons for homeowners to break their contract, and... companies do it all the time when it makes financial sense.

"A contract is not a moral document, it's a legal document," [University of Arizona law professor Brent] White said. "So all this language about moral obligation and contractual obligations rest upon homeowners not knowing what a contract is."

He's not reading Slog. Yet. But hey, he's got at least three more years...

Obama is the first truly wired president, the first to have Internet access at his desk and to converse regularly via e-mail. This fingertip access sends him "constantly" online, said one senior adviser, and the information he finds there influences his thinking and some of his deliberations. He also "uses the Internet like a normal adult," said another aide, "reading news articles, checking sports scores."

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

Obama's favorite magazines? The New Yorker, The Economist, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. His favorite television channel? ESPN.

But I'm still stuck on that line about Obama using the internet "like a normal adult." Careful, Mr. President.

It's been rumored for a while, and now the Times confirms it:

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

It took the paper a year to come to this decision, and it's going to take another year for its executives to answer "fundamental questions," like, oh, how much it will cost per non-free click. In the meantime: click click click while it still costs nothing!

So says Baconcat in the comments of this post. I totally agree, and look! A flow chart has just appeared in my in-box, courtesy of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, whose lawyers created it.

• Courtesy San Francisco Bay Guardian

(Click the link or the pic to download it as a PDF.)

This may help out those of you who are following along with me as the complicated legal mess involving the Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly (and, potentially, the Seattle Weekly) unfolds.

This morning I linked to a Bloomberg story that suggested Village Voice Media, which owns New York's Village Voice and the Seattle Weekly as part of its sizable alt-weekly empire, could be put "into involuntary bankruptcy" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which has been trying unsuccessfully to collect on the $21 million it's owed by VVM's San Francisco paper, SF Weekly, as part of a predatory pricing judgment against SF Weekly.

Now Business Insider reports that VVM is saying Bloomberg got the story wrong.

Village Voice chairman and chief executive officer Jim Larkin tells us that the Bloomberg report needs corrections.

"The Bloomberg story is totally inaccurate regarding Village Voice, which is not a party to this judgment," he wrote us in an email. "Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC will be filing a demand for correction this afternoon with Bloomberg."

I think I know what's going on here, because I wrote about it at length yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal's "Bankruptcy Beat" and Bloomberg report this morning on something I've also heard in my conversations with lawyers about the crazy alt-weekly fight in San Francisco:

The entire Village Voice Media alt-weekly empire could be forced into involuntary bankruptcy if it doesn't pay the $21 million that its San Francisco affiliate, SF Weekly, and that paper's holding company now owe the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Because the Journal and Bloomberg are based in New York, they lead with the idea that New York's Village Voice is potentially in trouble. True, but you could say the same about the Seattle Weekly, which is also owned by VVM—or about any of the 16 other "operating entities" around the country that are connected to the company.

The Village Voice, a New York City alternative newspaper, could soon face U.S. Bankruptcy Court proceedings after its parent, Village Voice Media LLC, lost a $15.9 million judgment for ad-price fixing, a lawyer said...

“You learn in civics class that when you get a judgment against you, you have to pay,” yet the Village Voice group hasn’t done so, said Tim Redmond, the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s executive editor. He said in a phone interview yesterday that the judgment has risen to $21 million, with interest.

The ruling gives Bay Guardian a lien on all the Village Voice group’s newspaper properties, according to Redmond, who said Bay Guardian is considering petitioning to put the Village Voice chain into involuntary bankruptcy to collect the debt.

“We’re considering all options,” including forced bankruptcy, Jay Adkisson, a lawyer representing Bay Guardian, said in a phone interview.

If you read the response from Village Voice Media, owner of the Seattle Weekly, to all the legal drama that's erupted down in San Francisco between the Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly (background here, here, and here), you'll notice something interesting.

You'll notice that this case isn't just about the $20 million that a court says is owed to the Bay Guardian because the SF Weekly was found to have engaged in illegal predatory pricing of its ads. Nor is it solely about whether the Bay Guardian can now seize assets of publications like the Seattle Weekly in order to get its money. It's also a public relations war, an independently-owned David (the Bay Guardian) vs. a corporate-owned Goliath (Village Voice Media) in a race to see who can make the other look worse while both wait for an appeals court to hear their legal arguments all over again.

And VVM's public relations strategy so far shows that the company is in a bad perceptual bind.

In order to explain its belief that the Bay Guardian can't seize or sell off assets of VVM's entire alt-weekly empire in order to collect that $20 million, the people at VVM are having to explain the complex corporate structure that governs their alt-weekly operations around the country.

It's not what you might expect.

For example, you might have heard that in 2005 New Times bought Village Voice Media, creating "a chain of 17 free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million." But if you read the explanation for VVM's current position on what's owed the Bay Guardian, you learn this:

New Times is simply a holding company.

In effect, the Guardian has received an order for monies that don't exist.

Huh?

Here's what's going on, as I understand it after talking to lawyers for both sides yesterday: The Bay Guardian has a $20 million judgment against both the the limited partnership that owns the SF Weekly—SF Weekly, LP—and the company that controls that limited partnership, New Times Media, LLC.

New Times Media, LLC, according to a declaration made as part of the ongoing legal machinations by John E. Brunst, its chief financial officer...

...owns the membership interests or limited partnership interests in various separately organized limited liability companies or limited partnerships that own, operate and publish weekly print publications, a classified internet web site, and an advertising representation firm in various cities in the United States (collectively, the "Operating Entities"). New Times is a holding company and does not conduct any business. There are sixteen (16) Operating Entities located throughout the United States. The Operating Entities include San Francisco Weekly, LP ("SF Weekly")

In other words, New Times Media, LLC, has its hands in a lot of smaller LLC and LP pots (or "operating entitites"), but isn't holding money from any of them. Among those 16 operating entities, according to the declaration: Seattle Weekly, the Village Voice, and LA Weekly.

But how is it that New Times Media, LLC, which controls so many money-making alt-weeklies across the country, and according to a document from the case had $190 million in assets in 2007, now has only "monies that don't exist," aka $0?

Having shared Pat Robertson's insane blather about Haiti's earthquake-causing pact with the devil, it's only right for Slog to share this follow-up report from Rachel Maddow, featuring a heroically reasonable response to Robertson (who's practically a Phelps by now) from the Haitian ambassador to the U.S.

I love how Maddow points out that Robertson quotes the Devil.

But seriously, I cannot wait until that shitbag is dead and roasting in a Hell created by God for the sole purpose of making Pat Robertson suffer forever. (Or, as polite folk put it, "Bless his heart.")

Canada's second-oldest magazine is changing its name.

The Winnipeg-based magazine was launched in 1920 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade that led to the early exploration of Canada. But in modern times, the term "beaver" has become slang for female genitalia. "The Beaver was an impediment online," publisher Deborah Morrison told AFP. "Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters at home or at work were blocking it," she said. "I've even had emails bounce back because I had inadvertently typed the term in the heading."

Via Carnal Nation.

Glenn Beck calls bullshit on Sarah Palin. I'm going back to bed.

The Onion:

Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian

The boy's parents are confident that their son is just going through a conservative Christian phase.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Journal Register both named new publishers last week. The Tribune named Michael Klingensmith, who has worked for Time, Inc. for 30 years. The Journal Register hired John Paton, the head of Spanish-language publisher impreMedia.

Jeff Jarvis interviews Paton, and Cathy Wurzer of Minnesota Public Radio interviews Klingensmith.

While Paton talks about investing in digital media, training journalists to do multimedia, partnering with outside digital media brands and bloggers, Klingensmith talks about portals, the return of advertising revenue, and the long future of his two-paper market.

Place your bets.