Inside, her crystal collection sat on a shelf above a bin of bras. A couple of stuffed animals, inspirational sayings and books with titles like Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind decorated the room. A file cabinet served as a combination bedside and dining room table next to a double bed with a plush green velvet headboard.

“See, this is what happens when I try to clean up,” said the Amazonian blond writer famous for revealing things that most people wouldn’t confess to their best friends.

That Ms. Stadtmiller would try to hide anything at all might surprise readers of her work on xoJane, Jane Pratt’s confessional website, where she has written about “hate-masturbating” to Paul Ryan and recording herself masturbating in the News Corp. bathroom for a potential suitor, and where she has crowd-sourced her search for both a gigolo and a fantasy to act out with him.

This past February, Ms. Stadtmiller and her colleagues detected a foul odor in the office, “forcing us to root around to try to find the dead mouse or rotting corpse that might lie somewhere buried,” she explained. It turned out that the pungent odor was the result of a tampon that had been trapped inside the author for a month. Naturally, Ms. Stadtmiller wrote a post about the incident. Actually, two.

While she is hardly alone in her TMI tendencies, Ms. Stadtmiller has become a master of the medium during her tenure at xoJane, where she is tasked with writing a daily personal essay—no easy feat. Her boundless ability to plumb her personal humiliations for blog posts raises the question: what could possibly come next? Where does a writer who has confessed to stinking up the office with a rancid tampon find the next degradation to exploit?

“Her writing makes me cringe, because I don’t get the sense that she’s capable of editing herself or being at all self-aware,” said a prominent female blogger. “It’s addictive to read, but in the same way that it’s addictive to watch Celebrity Rehab or the Real Housewives.”

Ms. Stadtmiller embodies an exhibitionistic media moment in which writers, particularly women, often find that they get more attention when they traffic in self-revelation rather than straight reporting. What was once a central tenet of the women’s movement has morphed into a no-holds-barred culture where nothing is off limits and everything is archived on the Internet.

The art of the transgressive disclosure, as seen in Erica Jong’s zipless fuck, Joyce Maynard’s J.D. Salinger affair, Amy Sohn’s blow-up boyfriend and even Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, has its roots in the consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, in which simply talking about sexuality and gender roles was an act of liberation. But is all silence meant to be broken?

“The most interesting stuff that I do is when I come from my own honest, authentic voice rather than through the zombie magazine filter that a lot of copy gets put through,” Ms. Stadtmiller said. “That’s why Girls is successful. It’s not impossible wish fulfillment, it’s flawed and messy and embarrassing.”

But there is a big difference between Girls and Ms. Stadtmiller’s work. Ms. Dunham may get pilloried in the press for what every single line in an episode says about our culture, but it is worth remembering that even pantsless Hannah Horvath is a character. In real life, Ms. Dunham has been extremely selective about what she will and will not share about her personal life. Even former xoJane train wreck Cat Marnell, who just signed what is in publishing parlance a “major” book deal for a reported half-million dollars, has a deceptively controlled persona. Ms. Stadtmiller, on the other hand, doesn’t hold anything back.

“Some people can’t handle Mandy because she is so endlessly, unabashedly herself,” said Sara Benincasa, Ms. Stadtmiller’s friend and fellow comedy writer. “She doesn’t hide embarrassing things about herself.”

In person, Ms. Stadtmiller is a towering presence: she is over six feet tall and has long blond hair, even features and a toothy smile. She has taken enough selfies that her face is familiar from a quick Google search.

Married to her college boyfriend at 25 and then divorced five years later, she writes a great deal about sex, but her romantic situation is currently in flux. She said she mostly dates men from the comedy scene, including an “almost-boyfriend” of a few months back, because they can handle her body humor. But even they can be wary of becoming column fodder.

“There is a dirty little secret about writing about your dating life,” she wrote last September. “What people don’t tell you about doing the whole personal memoir thing—or ‘oversharing’ if you want to be a reductive hipster dick about it—is that many dudes live in fear of being written about.”

Ms. Stadtmiller didn’t always mine sex and personal hygiene for material. The San Diego native studied journalism at Northwestern, interned at The Washington Post and got a reporting job at The Des Moines Register. She was working in a quasi-PR role for a medical school alumni magazine at her alma mater when she “found her voice” by hatching a blog called Bloggy McBlogalot and started doing stand-up comedy. She divorced her husband, who, she wrote, “cheated on me brutally,” and moved to New York to pursue writing and performing.

She was hired as an entertainment writer and eventually as a dating columnist at The New York Post, where Ms. Stadtmiller did not shy away from talking about herself. A casual newsroom encounter with her might result in a monologue about her upcoming comedy shows, or masturbating, or a “finger-banging” encounter of some sort.

Her dating column, “About Last Night,” made her a favorite Gawker punching bag back when the blog still had favorite New York media targets (the recurring slugline was “Oh Mandy”).

But she was also a workhorse who could turn copy around quickly. “Mandy would act bipolar. Sometimes she was so warm and would say ‘great to see you,’ and other days she’d walk past you like a zombie,” said a former Post colleague. “She was really hardworking and very talented—but very damaged.”

She made it onto the Post’s front page by going to a Nevada brothel to bed America’s first legal male hooker, but wound up making fun of him instead as he invited her to caress him, told her he wanted to be spanked and lavished praise on her naked body. (Documenting other people’s pleased reactions to her nudity and prowess is another branch of Ms. Stadmiller’s exhibitionism, one that would seem at odds with her willingness to project herself as sexually repulsive.) “It was like a bad second date. That cost $500,” she wrote.

The piece was a boon to her career, garnering attention on The Colbert Report and elsewhere. At the Post, some colleagues felt that she had exploited her subject, a 23-year-old ex-Marine who came across as earnest in his efforts to please, only to be mocked in print by the author in a Page 1
tabloid story. It was unclear whether he knew he was being written about. “We all died a little death when she went out and did that story,” said a former Post colleague. “We felt that if it is the future of journalism, get us out of here.”

She quit The New York Post in February 2012, when she said the culture of the features department changed and started taking on the “toxic” news mentality of the tabloid.

After the Post, Ms. Stadtmiller bounced between sublets and friends’ couches before landing at xoJane, a confessional web magazine whose writers are encouraged to share details of their lives. The magazine, founded by Jane Pratt, the editor of the much loved ’90s alt-beauty magazines Sassy and Jane, is a catalog of “It Happened to Me” testimonials about waxing, STDs, miscarriages, menstrual cups and, of course, orgasms. Ms. Stadtmiller was instantly at home.

To be fair, not all of her own posts revel in humiliation. As background for this piece, she sent links to 30 stories; sobriety, self-esteem and advice culled from personal experience were common themes. She has also mined her parents’ marriage; her mother left her fiancé to marry a marine vet who was blinded during combat in Vietnam. In an almost Parent Trap-like plot twist, her parents got divorced when Ms. Stadtmiller was in her 20s and then remarried five years later.

She wrote about adopting her dog, and penned an open letter to Lindsay Lohan encouraging the actress to get sober—like she herself has done. There is a new-agey, self-help quality to a lot of her posts, something that seems to resonate with xoJane readers, who lavish her with praise, thank-you notes and drawings.

“Thank you for helping me see myself as a player” read the subject line of an email Ms. Stadtmiller got in response to a recent post.

“I felt like you were talking directly to me,” the college-age reader continued. “I just can’t believe how much I relate to you and how similarly I feel.”

Colleagues at xoJane say she’s a generous editor. “What I don’t think Mandy gets enough credit for is her extreme generosity with other writers. She will break it down for you: ‘Here’s who to email with your pitch, here’s the exact word count you should use in that email ... here’s the time of day you should send it. Here’s how to follow up without being a little bitch,’” the writer and comedian Carrie Seim told us. “There’s a sincerity and nurturing quality—she’s genuinely thrilled when you succeed—that you rarely find in the brutally competitive New York media world.”

Ms. Stadtmiller does have an ethical code of sorts. She doesn’t write too much about her ex-husband, for example, a musician who likes to keep his Internet footprint minimal. She also insists that she filters out information that might compromise others, a practice she arguably did not deploy in her encounter with the prostitute, nor in her regular dispatches about sobriety. “I get shit sometimes for breaking the tradition of AA where you don’t reveal you are in it,” Ms. Stadtmiller writes. Anonymity isn’t really her thing.

In between xoJane posts, Ms. Stadtmiller is currently working on a roman à clef called News Whore, about her time at the Post. She expects to finish the book by the end of the year and start submitting it to publishers, although a self-published eBook prequel, a “compendium of blog posts” from the last eight years, will be available for download this month. The prequel, along with her podcast, is part of her effort to make the “News Whore” label into a brand.

Unsurprisingly for someone so concerned with branding, Ms. Stadtmiller is a tenacious profile subject. Within a 15-minute time frame on a recent Saturday, we received 10 text messages from her.

Following a prolonged back-and-forth to arrange details, we found ourselves back at Ms. Stadtmiller’s apartment. But this time, it had been transformed into a sound studio for her debut podcast. The bras were gone, replaced by microphones. The comedian Colin Quinn, whom Ms. Stadtmiller knows from the comedy world, sat in the upholstered armchair. Graham Smith, a musician friend, was on hand to help with the audio and chime in. Samsung was off in the park with a dog walker.

Ms. Stadtmiller, in sneakers, ripped jeans and a striped shirt, smoked an e-cig (she is an occasional vaper) and showed Mr. Quinn a childhood photo album. They bantered and traded barbs. Ms. Stadtmiller mentioned the summer that two different masseurs “ate her out” and volunteered that she has been listening to a tape of motivational speaker Louise Hay’s positive affirmations while masturbating.

“What’s my verbal tic?” Ms. Stadtmiller asked.

“Talking about sex,” Mr. Quinn replied.

“I don’t appreciate that,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s true.”

It was balmy: 60 degrees and sunny. The holiday decorations felt out of place in the mild breeze. But the frost was creeping in—media winter (as foreshadowed in October by the fall of Newsweek) was in full swing by 9 a.m. on the first Monday in December.

First came the announcement that The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s foray into iPad journalism, was being shuttered after less than two years and many millions of dollars. The news wasn't wholly unexpected. A third of the staff had been laid off over the summer, and a sense of doom and gloom had hung over the ninth floor of News Corp. HQ ever since. It was a matter of when, not if, the tablet app would disband. But, as with any death watch, just because it’s expected doesn't make it any less humbling.

The Daily debuted to great fanfare in 2011. It was heralded as Rupert’s pet project and named after Clark Kent’s Daily Planet. But just as Superman recently lost interest in journalism, so too apparently did The Daily’s readers. The app amassed only 100,000 subscribers.
There was small solace in the official memo—some of The Daily’s 100 or so remaining staffers would join editor in chief Jesse Angelo over at The New York Post, where he will take over as the tabloid’s publisher. “Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post,” said the News Corp. press release.
Richard Johnson, The New York Post’s former Page Six czar, was one such enfolded asset. Mr. Johnson made the high-profile jump out West to head up The Daily’s Los Angeles bureau back in 2011. “The Daily, the newspaper for the iPad we launched nearly two years ago, will stop publishing Dec. 15. I am now working for the New York Post,” Mr. Johnson explained on his Facebook page. There was no word on whether Mr. Johnson would return to Page Six, although a spokesperson said the scribe would stay in L.A.
But there were precious few announcements from such survivors. Most Daily staffers found themselves with spare time on their hands. Fortunately they got to keep their office iPads.
Then, even before the morning lines had died down at Starbucks, The New York Times announced that it was trimming the newsroom fat.
“As we all know, these are financially challenging times,” publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote in an icy staff email. “While our digital subscription plan has been successful, the advertising climate remains volatile and we don’t see this changing in the near future, None of this is easy in these difficult times. Thank you all for your courage, your talent and your commitment to fulfilling our mission. You will be hearing more from your managers.”
Employees were invited to take voluntary buyouts. Or else ... layoffs. Inevitable layoffs.
“I hope the needed savings can be achieved through voluntary buyouts but if not, I will be forced to go to layoffs among the excluded staff,” executive editor Jill Abramson wrote in a separate email to Times staff. “I expect that I will have to reduce the excluded staff by about 30 positions.”
But the Newspaper Guild, which just accepted a contract with the paper, wanted to extend the opportunity for buyouts to its members.
“The Newspaper Guild has asked that we offer Guild employees in the newsroom the opportunity to apply for buyouts. Among Guild employees, we are only looking for volunteers, for people who might see this offering as advantageous at this time,” Ms. Abramson wrote. “If you are interested in a severance payout, and leaving The Times, we invite you to pick up a copy of the guild package.”
The cold wafted through the newsroom.
The downsizing news at least gave new Times CEO Mark Thompson one more reason to be glad he had postponed his town hall meetings. Mr. Thompson has not had the smoothest transition into his new job, after all. The BBC Newsnight scandal followed the former BBC director across the Atlantic, raising questions both inside and outside the Times newsroom.
As Off the Record previously reported, Mr. Thompson planned to address the questions in town hall meetings on December 17 and 18. But, even before the cost-cutting news, Mr. Thompson announced he was pushing back the customary meet-and-greets to 2013. “I wanted to address questions about it at the Town Halls once the enquiry was out and all the facts were known,” Mr. Thompson wrote in a memo to staff. “It now turns out that Nick Pollard [who is in charge of the BBC enquiry] will not submit his report at the end of November as originally planned but some weeks later. As a result, I believe it makes sense to move the Town Halls to early in the new year.”
Hopefully, the thaw will have begun by then. Or at least temperatures will stabilize. For now, we are stocking up on long underwear.

The prospect of a merger between Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins doesn't come as a surprise to publishing insiders.

Although the talks are still just preliminary and no deal is imminent, rumors about a merger between the two publishing houses have been swirling ever since Rupert Murdoch expressed interest in acquiring Penguin. That interest was quashed when Random House and Penguin announced plans to merge at the end of October.

The real question, and the most fun part of any merger speculation, is what the combined HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster publishing company will be called.

When Penguin and Random House were still in merger talks, there was debate about whether it should be called "Random Penguin" or "Penguin House." They decided to go with the less fun, and more official, Penguin Random House.

We look forward to more details, as well as some fun naming combinations.

Little Green Houses.

So The Journal announced its new Friday real estate section today. You can read all about it in the release below. What struck us though, was the name. "Mansion" it will be called.

We couldn't help but think it lacked a certain sophistication (say the people who brought you VelvetRoper.com), so herewith are some suggestions:

• Penthouses
• Oh Castle, My Castle
• Third Homes and Gardens
• Don't Dwell, Buy
• Eight-Figure Estates
• Bubbles Weekly
• Finer Foundations
• You're Still Not Ira Rennert
• Money Boxes
• Jealous?

WALL STREET JOURNAL TO LAUNCH WEEKLY SECTION
FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE

Friday Journal Section to be Renamed; Showcase Expanded Arts & Culture, Sports

NEW YORK (Oct. 2, 2012) – The Wall Street Journal will debut a new weekly section covering the global luxury real estate market on Friday, Oct. 5. To serve a global audience, “Mansion” will appear as a stand-alone section in the Journal every Friday in the U.S., with select content appearing each week in the Journal’s Europe and Asia editions. Relevant content will also be presented across WSJ.com’s Chinese, Japanese and German-language editions.

Along with additional features and coverage on WSJ.com, all Mansion content will be available via the Journal’s universal app for iPhone and iPad.

“The mantra for real estate has always been location, location, location – the location for the most intelligent, original, trustworthy and insightful journalism on prestige property is now The Wall Street Journal,” said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “We all like to think of our home as a mansion, even if it is a humble abode, and we all have the license to aspire, so we have created Mansion to be the home of both aspiration and real estate realization.”

GLOBAL COVERAGE FOR A GLOBAL MARKET
Mansion will offer in-depth stories from a global team of journalists, including property-focused coverage with industry statistics and a focus on high-end financing; luxuryreal estate topics from iconic buildings and renovations to investments associated with those projects; distinctive neighborhoods and properties around the world; unique views from select residences and more.

Buoyed by the Journal’s existing staff of real estate reporters as well as a newly formed dedicated team for Mansion, led by editor Emily Gitter, recurring features include:

§  The Market: A data-driven look at a sector of the luxury market;

§  House Call: A notable person recounts a real estate adventure;

§  Private Properties: High-profile transactions and property news;

§  The Balance Sheet: A profile of a renovation project;

§  Who Lives Here: An in-depth profile of a building or iconic block, the notable people who live there, the history and recent noteworthy sales;

§  Inside Story: A profile of a prominent individual home;

§  Portfolio: A look inside the real estate portfolio of a well-known person;

§  Jumbo Jungle: How to finance a luxury home now;

§  The Trade: The business of buying and selling; real estate brokers on the rise; trends in marketing homes andmore;

§  Foreign Correspondent: A guide to buying homes overseas, with a look at the quirks of the particular localreal estate market.

WSJ.com will also unveil an enhanced experience on Friday at WSJ.com/RealEstate, the Journal’s portal for property coverage. A dedicated page for Mansion will have all slideshows, including House of the Day, as well as videos and articles exploring the world of high-end homes. WSJ Live will also offer a daily segment focused on realestate as part of its Lunch Break show. In conjunction with launch, Wall Street Journal real estate reporter Lauren Schuker Blum will host a chat Friday at1:30 p.m. EST on WSJ.com to discuss how the luxury-home market is being redefined.

Complementing Mansion, The Journal will continue to cover real estate news and features in its national news pages, the Greater New York section as well as Personal Journal and WSJ. Magazine.

In addition to the launch of Mansion, the current Friday Journal section in the Journal’s U.S. edition, which previously featured real estate coverage in addition to arts, will now focus on arts, culture and entertainment, showcasing the Journal’s expanded coverage of these areas. Renamed “Arena,” it will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Joe Morgenstern, a leading team of television and theater critics, and the Journal’s growing arts staff’s reporting on movies, music, television, books, art, and new media. The Journal’s sports coverage, currently part of Friday Journal, will also appear as part of Arena.

Mansion will be included with Arena as a single section in some U.S. markets.

ADVERTISERS TO REACH AFFLUENT, INFLUENTIAL AUDIENCE
A number of advertisers across multiple categories have recognized the opportunity Mansion presents to target the Journal’s affluent and influential audience. Launch advertisers include Coldwell Banker; Extell Development Company; LandVest; Luxury Portfolio International; NetJets; New York Design Center; Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate; Related Companies; Sheldon Good & Company; Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates, LLC; Stribling Marketing Associates; and Sub-Zero and Wolf.

“We know our audience is already well-versed and interested in the high-end real estate market, and Mansion provides advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to that audience with a proven affinity for real estate and the subjects and trends surrounding it – from investment to renovation to design,” said Michael Rooney, chief revenue officer, The Wall Street Journal.

"Today's consumers are demanding a single source for all the latest intelligence on the world's luxury real estate markets. The new section delivers this in a timely, consistent and trusted way, providing critical insights into the globe's most far-reaching markets," said Wendy Purvey, chief marketing officer, Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC. "With the Sotheby's International Realty® network's expertise and global presence, The Wall Street Journal is an ideal outlet for educating buyers and sellers on the latest industry trends and showcasing the most extraordinary property available today."

"We arethrilled to support The Wall Street Journal's newest section and see it as an exciting way to share our brands' stories about food preservation and greatcooking results with new readers," said Michele Bedard, vice president of marketing for Sub-Zero and Wolf. "Our work with The Wall Street Journal has been integral to the engagement of readers and consumers that are as passionate about design and cooking as we are at Sub-Zero and Wolf and lookforward to the same with the addition of Mansion."

We found ourselves on the receiving end of one today, however, that struck a chord of curiosity from one person who sent it on.

The email, which came with the subject line "FW: Eye Candy? Not." extols the educations and qualifications of Fox News's female on-air talent. It begins as follows:

Impressive backgrounds for Fox News' women reporters...

Check out these "Dumb Gals" on FOX News.

For the past 10 years FOX News has had higher ratings and the largest audience numbers (for news and business/political "talk" programs) than all of the other TV and Cable news channels combined, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS!

Some folks who are "bitter" about this claim that FOX's higher ratings are only because FOX purposely hires a lot of female "reporters" who do nothing but sit around in short skirts and merely "read everything off of a TelePrompTer."

Bottom line: The next time you hear someone criticizing FOX News for supposedly having a "bunch of dumb gals" doing the news, etc. that are only on the tube to serve as "eye candy" to catch the attention of stupid, right-wing men, etc. well don't be so quick to jump on that left-wing band-wagon!

Still not a believer? Well, scroll down and let the FOX ladies speak for themselves!

It's boilerplate email-forward type stuff, but it then goes on to briefly list the names and credentials (with photos) of "Fox News' women reporters."

We received the email by way of someone fairly close with Fox News, who's already received it multiple times from people having nothing to do with the network: In other words, it's making the rounds, whatever those rounds are, and it's going some degree of old-school viral.

But they correctly point out some omissions from the email: Lauren Green, an African-American woman who's worked as Fox News's on-air religion correspondent; Santita Jackson, one of the few African-American women working as on-air talent at Fox News (who also happens to be Rev. Jesse Jackson's daughter); Jemhu Green, also an African-American woman working at Fox News (who once called Tucker Carlson a "bow-tied white boy"); and Sally Kohn, an openly gay former community organizer whose partner was once the executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

This isn't the first place the women of Fox News have been quite literally "whitewashed" by their fans. Even the "Girls of Fox News and Fox Business" fansite—yes, it exists—omits most of the African-American Fox News contributors.

A screengrab of part of the email is at the end of this post. We're curious: Have you seen it? Who started this email? What prompted it? And why, with such careful diligence put toward comprehensively listing these women, were the omissions made? If you know anything about it, we'd love to hear it.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Rupert Murdoch

News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch sometimes thinks "out loud" on his Twitter feed, pondering recent news and issuing his own opinions. Today, while musing on the split between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Mr. Murdoch dropped this doozy:

Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

Twitter wits were driven from their heat-wave-induced torpor, assailing Mr. Murdoch for pointing out "the obvious" as well as implying the emperor of News Corp. was ignoring the phone-hacking elephant in the room.

Business Insider suggests an off-the-cuff, potentially provocative observation such as this from Mr. Murdoch is one of the best things about Twitter. Henry Blodget observes, "Never before have celebrities and media stars been able to show this side of themselves to so many people--in real time--without media intermediaries in the middle." We are inclined to agree. Anything that takes us away from panting through an apocalyptic heat wave for a moment.

UPDATE

Village Voice editor Tony Ortega, who has been on the Scientology beat for years, points out Mr. Murdoch was doubling down in his "creepy, maybe even evil" tweet on an earlier Sunday morning observation made about Mr. Hubbard's peculiar institution:

Scientology back in news.Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hiearchy.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

In an interview with the Journal—the crown jewel of his quarantined newspaper business— Mr. Murdoch denied that his decision was influenced by the so-called "Murdoch Discount." The Murdoch Discount is the theory that News Corp. shares trade at less than what they're worth because the company is run at Mr. Murdoch's whim and he's liable to do things like, say, grossly overpay for The Wall Street Journal.

"I don't give a ---- about that," he told the Journal.

Judging from Journal precedent, the four letter word at play was not "damn."

Thick-skinned.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed reports that he will divide the corporation into two companies—one for television and entertainment, one for newspapers and publishing—in a message to employees today.

The lengthy memo, obtained by the The New York Times, touches on everything from the First Amendment to the iPad but does not mention the ongoing phone-hacking and bribery scandal in the UK. Some think the restructuring, on which they'll reportedly be advised by Goldman Sachs, is an attempt to protect top management from this or future messes.

"Our publishing businesses are greatly undervalued by the skeptics," Mr. Murdoch wrote. "Through this transformation we will unleash their real potential, and be able to better articulate the true value they hold for shareholders."

According to the memo, Mr. Murdoch will "personally" lead the creation of the new companies. He will serve as chairman of both organizations and the CEO of the television and entertainment half. Chase Carey will be his COO. No word on who will head up the news and publishing division.

And it sounds like he's in good spirits:

"Over the years, I have become accustomed to the noise of critics and naysayers…and pretty thick-skinned! Remember what they said when we started the Fox Network, Sky, Fox News and The Sun? These experiences have made me more resilient. And they should you, as well. And time and time again, we persevered, creating new businesses, new products, telling new stories, informing and educating the public in new ways — and giving jobs to thousands more people."

One reason for triumphalism: News Corp. share price surged 6.6% after the company confirmed it was considering a split on Tuesday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

(Image via the BBC)

Tony Blair's tanned and confident appearance before the UK government's media ethics probe today was briefly interrupted when a heckler entered the proceedings and accused the former prime minister of profiting off the Iraq war through a contract with JP Morgan.

"This man should be arrested for war crimes," the man said, moments before he was tackled and removed.

Lord Justice Leveson apologized to Mr. Blair, wondering aloud how a protester had gotten into the meeting through a "secure corridor." He raised his eyebrows and promised to have the incident investigated immediately.

Mr. Blair said that, for the record, the JP Morgan-Iraq story was untrue.

Mr. Leveson assured him that he didn't need to respond to the heckler's accusations, but Mr. Blair said that, in his experience of how such events were covered by the press, even a brief protest ends up stealing the show.

"Someone gets up and shouts something, that's the news," Mr. Blair said. "The other 999 people might as well have not showed up."

Indeed, protester Johnnie Marbles made headlines at the first round of the Leveson Inquiry last summer by throwing a pie in Rupert Murdoch's face.

Mr. Blair told members of parliament that his close relationship with Mr. Murdoch and other newspaper executives represented a decades-long strategy to "manage" press rather than "confront" it. Explaining that his relationship with Mr. Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks had become more relaxed since he left office, Mr. Blair told MPs that he would never have become a godfather to Mr. Murdoch's daughter Grace while he was still prime minister.

Watch the rest of Mr. Blair's testimony live here: http://bcove.me/g445vx7i

• The Times of London is a Times Newspapers-owned newspaper.
• Times Newspapers is a subsidiary of News International.
• Which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

 
Ready?

Now you see it:

Now you don't:

The reason that second timestamp reads "Wednesday, May 2" is because somebody accessed the site from somewhere across the dateline (like CXT) where it actually is now Wednesday.

Now take a look...

The original headline somehow made the ticker. Maybe that's because someone caught it, and if you're a media editor—even if your a Murdoch-paid media editor—scrubs like that are a pretty bad look.

Then again, so is unemployment.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek