Crikey

Melbourne Weekly scrambles for a piece of the action. The appearance on Melbourne streets yesterday of Age-turncoat Antony Catalano’s real estate glossy The Weekly Review has shone the spotlight on the declining fortunes of Fairfax rival The Melbourne Weekly. This week’s edition of the slimmed-down mag, renamed from the ponderous ‘The Melbourne Weekly Magazine’, contained almost no houses from its eastern suburbs distribution area — Catalano having poached the bulk of advertising from the usual gold-plated catchment areas of Armadale, Toorak and Camberwell. Well-heeled Fairfax readers would have been shocked to discover instead that their next dream home was located in less salubrious suburbs such as Wandin North, Doncaster East or the bushfire-ravaged Flowerdale.

With its page count tumbling, Fairfax hopes to revitalise the Melbourne Weekly’s fortunes by recruiting columnists from other branches of its media empire — this week Age footy writer Caroline Wilson makes a bizarre appearance and next week readers will get to take in the (temporary) delights of Underbelly co-author Andrew Rule. Acting-editor Dan Stock continues to stand by the sinking ship, writing unconvincingly in his editorial that “our commitment to you, our community, is unwavering”. — Andrew Crook

Remember the Anzacs — and our new TV show. A bit of cynical cross-promotion by Channel 7 during the Anzac parade before the AFL match on Sunday. Playing the theme to The Pacific, a show about US Marines, is a bit much. — a Crikey reader

Shareholder scrutiny of APN shows low accountability

RiskMetrics, which figured prominently in Seven Network’s merger with WesTrac, has recommended its clients vote against the re-election of former APN chief executive Cameron O’Reilly at Friday’s meeting.” — The Australian

Times memo reveals fears for WSJ’s new section

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and his trusty CEO Janet Robinson sent out a snide, braggy memo congratulating the Wall Street Journal on the launch of its New York section. It is wildly out of whack in terms of tone; yet it is sort of admirably hostile, in a way? — The Awl

The Guardian’s editorial meeting open for debate

The purpose of this “have your say” was to open up, as far as we could, an important bit of Guardian tradition: the editor’s meeting at which all Guardian journalists can air their views of what the leader line should be, before the leader writers retire to some hallowed inner sanctum to compose whatever oracular statement the Guardian finally makes on the subject. — The Guardian

Doubts over police seizure of editor’s computers

Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers …  According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code. — Gizmodo

Bush tries to set the record straight with his memoirs

The ‘decider’ has turned ‘author’ to deliver his account of his political career. Former President George W. Bush will centre his ‘memoir’ on Sept. 11, his election win in 2000, as well as his battle with alcohol. Although he has failed to acknowledge mistakes in the past, Crown insists the former President ‘writes honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his historic achievements’. — My Daily News

Identity theft rocks Facebook foundations

A Verisign internet security group entitled iDefense has found that a hacker is attempting to sell one and a half million social networking usernames and passwords, and the more friends an account has, the more expensive the account. — All Facebook