From the keyboard of the San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll: (h/t to Romenesko)

Prologue: The paper you are holding in your hands is a miracle. It has been put out by men and women dealing with sadness and loss. The personnel cuts have begun at the newspaper, and they ain't stopping any time soon. Everyone will be losing friends; some have already lost them.

By today's standards of job "mobility" (oh look, my job is moving! And so am I! Only not in the same direction!), the people at this newspaper, the combined staffs of The Chronicle and the Examiner, have been together a very long time. They have worked diligently while enduring various kinds of stress, layoffs and threatened strikes and the much-discussed decline of print journalism, and they have had to go home after too-long days and hear some smug academic talk about what a lousy newspaper The Chronicle is.

And after all that, a 25 percent staff reduction. And yet, here is today's paper, professional and informative and useful and entertaining, put out by people under siege. It's as though Travis at the Alamo had found time to write an opera. ...

Journalism is a noble profession. It can be used ignobly, but so can anything. It's one of the best things a person can do. It's wonderful to be able to feed your family while doing it. And now there is a withering away, and I hate every single part of the process.

From the NYT:

The Wall Street Journal, already roiled by a proposed takeover by Rupert Murdoch, will announce today a major newsroom shake-up, including the reassignment and replacement of several top editors, officials there say.

The reorganization represents a bid by the managing editor, Marcus E. Brauchli, who took the top job in the newsroom just a month ago, to put his stamp on the upper echelons of one of the nation’s most respected and widely read newspapers. A spokesman for Dow Jones & Company, The Journal’s parent company, declined to comment on any planned changes.

The newsroom announcement will come on the day that the Bancroft family, which owns a controlling interest in Dow Jones, is expected to make a new proposal to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation on safeguarding The Journal’s editorial independence in the event of a sale. The Bancrofts’ goal is to keep the appointment of The Journal’s top editors out of Mr. Murdoch’s hands.

From the BBC:

Yahoo shareholders have rejected plans for the company to adopt a policy that opposes censorship on the internet.

Proposals to set up a human rights committee which would review its policies around the world, specifically China, were also heavily defeated.

Yahoo has been criticized by human rights groups since 2005 for its role in turning over some political dissidents' e-mails.

The materials were used to prosecute and imprison them.

From the AP story on CTV.ca:

CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves shot back at former CBS news anchor Dan Rather on Tuesday, saying remarks Rather made about his successor, Katie Couric, were "sexist."

Rather, speaking on MSNBC by phone on Monday, said CBS had made the mistake of taking the evening news broadcast and "dumbing it down, tarting it up," and playing up topics such as celebrities over war coverage. The comments appeared in blogs and in a story published Tuesday in the New York Daily News.

While referring to Couric as a "nice person," Rather said "the mistake was to try to bring the 'Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News,' and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."

Moonves, asked about the remarks at an appearance in New York sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, called the remarks "sexist" and said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving. Couric, the first solo female news anchor, has been struggling in the ratings.

"She's been on the air for nine months," Moonves said. "Let's give her a break."

From the keyboard of the Washington Post's Marc Fisher:

Before trial began yesterday in the case of the D.C. judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaners after they lost his pants, the most extraordinary fact was Roy Pearson's demand for $65 million in damages.

That was before Pearson, an administrative law judge, broke down while testifying about the emotional pain of having the cleaners give him the wrong pants. It was before an 89-year-old woman in a wheelchair told of being chased out of the cleaners by an angry owner. And it was before she compared the owners of Custom Cleaners in open court to Nazis.

"I knew it: It's all my fault," said the reporter from German television who was sitting next to me.

The global import of Pearson v. Custom Cleaners was evident from the start. The courtroom was packed with members of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association and reporters from print and broadcast outlets in at least five countries. The guy from the tort reform lobby handed out bright green buttons protesting the $65 million "pantsuit." The gent from Fox TV sported neon-color paisley pants.

And Pearson, who by his account has spent more than 1,400 hours preparing his case, arrived in a black pinstripe suit. I hope he won't sue me if I mention that the pants could have used a pressing.

Here was the bizarre Nazi reference:

Grace Hewell, a retired congressional staffer, said Jin Chung, Soo's husband, "chased me out of the store" when she complained that her suit pants "looked like they had been washed" and no longer fit properly. "At 89, I'm not ready to be chased," she said. "But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews."