John Koblin reports that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.'s son, Arthur G. Sulzberger, will begin writing for the paper on the Metro desk starting February 23rd. One staffer calls the 28-year-old, "Quite nice, eager to please and humble." Plus: Times 'Updates' Make Clark Hoyt Want to URL; ProPublica's 60 Minutes of Infamy?

Leon Neyfakh writes, "Niko Pfund, the 43-year-old publisher of Oxford University Press’ academic and trade division, has had one occasion after another during the past few weeks to squeal with delight."

Plus: Oscar and Me... Fashion Week's Brave Face... Begley the Bookie

Among the fiction finalists was the late Roberto Bolaño's 2666. In nonfiction, The New York Times's Dexter Filkins was nominated for The Forever War.

In September 2008, Mr. Filkins told The Observer's Leon Neyfakh he wanted his book to show readers:

A full list of the finalists can be found at the NBCC's Web site.

John Koblin checks in with Dean Baquet, The New York Times' Washington Bureau Chief who tells him, “It is a huge moment for the bureau and it is a huge moment for the paper."

Leon Neyfakh writes, "Maybe it’s all the inauguration business going to Pub Crawl’s head, but at the end of the day, you kind of have to hand it to Markus Dohle. The guy came out of nowhere—knew next to nothing of American book publishing when tapped last spring at the age of 39 to become CEO of Random House Inc.—and succeeded against all odds in drafting the blueprint for a radical restructuring of the company that not only didn’t inspire widespread contempt among his new American colleagues, but was met to a large degree with reluctant approval."

Gillian Reagan meets Aaron Cohen, who's making a documentary called The Aaron Cohens, all about... Guys named Aaron Cohen. "There's 1,187 Aaron Cohens in the world," Mr. Cohen says. "We're going to try to meet all of them."

Plus: George Gurley's emails... Moira Hodgson's memoirs... Begley the Bookie.

After hashing out Mr. Klosterman's rise from obscurity to admired and derided cultural critic, Ms. Hepola writes:

Will readers really have to live without Mr. Klosterman's observations on everything from Snakes on a Plane to different lighting schemes used by television networks?

Only for a little while, according to Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger. Reached by Media Mob, Mr. Granger clarified:

Felix Gillette wonders who will be replacing Tim Russert as NBC's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief. Whoever fills that role "must continuously grapple with producers in New York to make sure his reporters get plenty of airtime on the morning and evening newscasts."

Leon Neyfakh tells the tale of Reif Larsen, a "28-year-old Columbia M.F.A. student [who] wrote a novel about a whimsical child from Montana who likes maps, and suddenly all kinds of famous editors in New York were calling his agent, Denise Shannon, and telling her they really wanted to publish it." Plus: Andrew Wylie snaps up Nabokov, Achebe, and Bolaño.

Plus: Ivy League Slaves of New York... Summer Phobias '08... Hunter Johansson... Arianna Huffington.

Email from Mr. Denton follows:

I'm amazed we've managed to keep a lid on this news; that, given your naturally gossipy natures, must be a first! We're spinning off three sites: Idolator, Gridskipper and—this one may be a surprise—Wonkette. There were indeed some rumors about Maura Johnston's music blog late last year; they were true of course. For reasons that I'll explain below, both it and our travel and politics sites have better commercial futures outside Gawker than within. (Excuse the corporate lingo: some of it is unavoidable.) But, first, the facts, which will be hitting the wires later this morning, or as soon as you leak this email. Go ahead!

* IDOLATOR is going to Buzznet, a music-focused web and social network. Buzznet recently acquired Idolator's chief rival, Stereogum, and received a big investment from Universal Music Group.

* GRIDSKIPPER isn't going far: it's being taken over by Curbed, the network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a shareholder.

* WONKETTE is being spun off to the managing editor, Ken Layne, former founder of one of the web's very first news sites, Tabloid.net. The title will become part of the Blogads network of political sites, which includes Daily Kos, among others.

Why these three sites? To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did.

Music audiences are fragmented across genres; Maura's Idolator gave Stereogum a good run, but a group with a whole array of music sites will command more attention from record labels than we could. In the case of Gridskipper, our urban travel guide, we could never match Curbed in attention to city-specific content and advertising. As for Wonkette: political advertisers are a strange breed; they don't come through the same agencies our sales people deal with.

I'm relieved we've found pretty decent homes for the three sites, and most of their writers, but we're gutted to lose them. Idolator's Pop Critic's Poll was a tremendous coup—and Patric's bleeding-heart logo for the site was one of my favorites. Gridskipper is so far the most sophisticated travel blog: it entirely deserved its inclusion in Time's list of the 50 coolest websites.

The Sound of Silence: In The Guardian, writer Nicholas Lezard profiles the legendary Moxon Garbutt, a writer whose alleged raison d’être "was to leave no trace of himself behind, except his influence—and even that to be ambiguous and tentative." For some strange reason, all the commenters on the site think a famous writer who never wrote a word is an April Fool's prank. Lezard jumps into the fray to declare "Moxon Garbutt is as real as you or I. I can't think why everyone assumes this is an April Fool." He would've been more convincing if he said nothing at all.

Speaking of Fools...: Didja hear the one about the Tribune Company changing it's name to ZellCoMediaEnterprises Inc.? We're laughin' all the way to our buyouts. (WSJ via Romenesko)

Featuring a Cast of Over 4,000: ABC News' Marcus Baram reports that Oliver Stone's W—about a humble, self-made man who remade the world in his humble image—begins shooting this month with Josh Brolin as George W. Bush. Hey, wait, is it a comedy in the spirit of Dr. Strangelove? "In one scene, Bush practices his parachute landing in the White House pool but forgets to properly release the harness and sinks to the bottom. In another scene, Rumsfeld doodles a drawing of Condoleeza Rice standing on a piano with a globe spinning on her finger."

The site promises this is merely part one, leading The Atlantic's Britney-obsessed readers to chant "Gimme, gimme more."