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If you've ever had the overwhelming desire to get busy in front of a "professional journalist," now is your chance.

Seen recently on Craigslist, a heartfelt entreaty:

"Sigh. I knew I should have stayed in advertising.

So really, I was assigned a story for a (non-smut) mag to watch and rate two people having sex. None of my friends will do it—and I don't think I'd want to see that anyway—so here I am, trolling Craigslist's casual encounters with the hopes of finding a normal, heterosexual couple who would be willing to get it on in front of me.

The couple will be completely anonymous in the story (unless they WANT to be ID'd/photographed), and I will not be participating nor doing this to get my rocks off. After all, I am a professional journalist...who isn't paid nearly enough.

Ideally, you and your partner will be somewhat new to boffing each other and not total exhibitionists, although at this point, I'll take what I can get. Also, I'm looking to set this up for Monday or Tuesday night, if possible. And I WILL expect to meet somewhere in public first, so I can rule out whether you're the kind of people who might want to chain me up in your rape room and anally violate me with my tape recorder. (Please don't be.)

So wanna screw in front of a reporter? Holler."

This scribe needs your help people! Get naked and make news. Likely, this is for either a "Talk of the Town" or a Time Out sex column. What do you think? Any guesses? More importantly, who's in?

[Craigslist]

After his comparatively disastrous speech at the Republican National Convention, it wouldn't seem John McCain could teach Sarah Palin much about public relations. But the Republican presidential nominee appears to have imparted an important lesson in one-on-one media manipulation: Sometimes the best response to a skeptical reporter is to draw him in as closely as possible. Politico said Palin will meet with ABC News' Charlie Gibson not only on Sunday, as originally reported, but in multiple interviews Thursday and Friday, as well, including at the prospective vice president's home in Wasilla, Alaska. Much as McCain used to score points with campaign reporters with seemingly chummy off-the-record chats, Palin no doubt hopes to soften Gibson up with a tour of her home state. Gibson, meanwhile, is supposedly racing to become the sort of interviewer who needs softening up:

ABC is war-gaming tough questions – not gotchas [no??], but some requiring policy knowledge — with the thoroughness that a network prepares for a debate.

...Officials wouldn’t say how the ABC anchor was chosen. “There were lots of tremendous and credible and fair journalists to choose from,” an aide said. “Somebody had to go first.”

After the interview, Palin will supposedly move on to actually speaking with the rest of the press and hoping everyone ignores the revelation she billed her state government for sleeping in her own home, or whatever would-be scandal is sliding right off of her at the time. But as the Observer writes, the lengthy interview will actually just take much of the pressure off the McCain campaign to make Palin available to the media, assuming the candidate doesn't screw up.

[Politico]

From the Department of ZOMG: Do you hate your stupid job and all the things you have to do at it? Do you secretly dream of writing things about The Hills (just like me!), like what the fashions are like and what the people are like to the other people on the show? Well you might be in luck. MTV, which airs the mostly-faked reality series about a dim archipelago of blondes who float, unmoored, around Los Angeles, is looking for bloggers!

One in particular who will win the coveted role of Head Hills Finale Blogger when this fourth season teeters off the air some time in the coming months. And they're posting the application guidelines on Faceebook. You have to send a photo, just so you know tho. So you can't be fat or ugly or have brown hair (unless you are Audrina—you should apply, Audrina) or walk with a limp (you can tell that from photos!) or be a boy (gay people frighten Spencer and uncomfortably arouse Brody) or are Sarah Plain or Madeline Albright or maybe have a glass eye. What else is required? Let MTV tell you:

Hey Guys!!!

Do you like to Blog? Love blogging about The Hills? We're coming directly to our most passionate fans of The Hills in search of Official Bloggers for The Hills on MTV.com. We'll be taking submissions over the next 3 weeks for 2 candidates to blog about each episode. If you are selected as one of our 2 bloggers, you will have your blog posted online each week. Your blog will be ranked by other fans, and the blogger at the end of the season with the highest ranking will win the opportunity to blog live from The Hills finale in LA with Lauren, Audrina, Lo, and other cast members!!!

What we need from you:

-Name

-Age

-Address

-Contact Info (phone)

-Photo

-Blogging experience (none required, but please list if you currently or previously have written a blog, including url(s))

-SHORT paragraph about your love of blogging and why you feel you deserve to be an official blogger of The Hills for MTV.com.

The contest will require you to post a blog of The Hills within hours after each new episode's airing. Please be prepared to submit material upon deadline. Monday September 8th @ Midnight is when we stop taking submissions.

Please email us here - mtvcontest@gmail.com

Pass this to on your friends - Thanks!!!!!!!

So, yes!, right??? You should totes apply, mostly because it sounds so soul-shudderingly awful and I have a general fear and distrust for other Hills blogger types, and I feel like this employment would probably eat you up and spit you out and then Jen Bunny would swoop down, like some demon raptor from a nefarious Otherworld of which we've no conception, and devour the remains of your masticated carcass in great slurpy, stringy bites. And then there'd be one less Hills blogger in the world. Last day to apply is today. Doooo it.

[L Magazine]

John McCain was likely clueless his running mate Sarah Palin had an underage daughter with a love child — or at least that's what the Times is implying this morning. Meanwhile it looks like everyone from Time magazine to the National Enquirer to the entire population of Wasilla, Alaska was hip to the scandalous pregnancy. How could McCain have been left in the dark? It seems the presumptive Republican presidential nominee settled on Palin at the last minute, after figuring out that social conservatives might use the convention to nuke his top two choices, pseudo-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, both pro-choice. Republican operatives vetted Palin for four or five days, one of them told the Times anonymously, but it sounds like even that's a reach:

"They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn't speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people...

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Palin's background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

Also, McCain's people won't say specifically when or how they found out about the pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old daughter. Maybe because they didn't really know in advance!

They probably should have just called any random house in Wasilla, population 10,000, because the love child was an "open secret" there, according to the Daily News.

The National Enquirer was chasing the story hard 36 hours before McCain addressed the situation, Radar reported.

And maybe Time knew, too, because just last week, before Palin was officially nominated but while she was being vetted, it asked McCain this question:

...And the question I got in the e-mail was: What does John McCain think of premarital sex? What do you think about that? What are your thoughts?

I don't have any response to that type of question. I'm running for President of the United States; write what you want.

McCain was smart enough not to fall into that little trap.

He was also lucky enough that the Palin news broke right when everyone was distracted by Hurricane Gustav in Florida and early enough in his presidential campaign that it's likely to be a non-issue by the time of the election. Some observers think it might even end up being a net positive for McCain.

Meanwhile, the hugely unpopular president's scheduled speech at McCain's coronation has been swept aside by the hurricane. And the candidate gets to go down to Louisiana and maybe make people forget about the big birthday party he had the last time New Orleans was hit by a hurricane.

Now all McCain has to do is convince everyone Palin isn't a secessionist and make them forget she helped start a group hilariously titled "Ted Stevens Excellence In Public Service Inc.," after the Alaskan who became "the first sitting U.S. senator to face criminal charges in 15 years." Should be a fun convention!

Not all reporters are created equal at Invesco Field, where Barack Obama is about to close out the Democratic National Convention. John Koblin at the Observer printed a seating chart (left) and gave a rundown on the winners and losers. It looks like the Obama campaign continues to snub the New Yorker for its controversial parody cover, sitting the magazine's correspondents in worse seats than Jezebel/Glamour (team Megan!), the Nation and the New Republic. More delightfully, the campaign totally dissed those conssumate insiders at Vanity Fair, "which is stuck in the back row in Section J" behind basically everyone except the Gotham tabloids. Ha ha, I guess the entire free world is not actually obsessed with getting into the Waverly or your damned Oscar party, Graydon Carter! After the jump, early chatter among reporters, plus a list of seating winners.

Winners:

• The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — they get 50-yard-line seats. It's noteworthy the Journal wasn't made to pay for its rabidly right-wing editorial page. Likely explanation: Murdoch is an "Obahh-mer" booster these days.
• Megan Carpentier, at the convention on behalf of Glamour and Jezebel (and formerly of Wonkette!). "One very pleased writer, Carpentier... couldn't be happier to be a few seats closer to the front of the podium than Mother Jones' David Corn and Portfolio's Matt Cooper, both writers sitting to her left... 'This is amazing! It's so completely random."
• Politico. Parity with Time and ahead of the New Yorker and New Republic is not at all bad for an 18-month-old publication.

From the press box, via Jezebel's liveblog:

9:00 ET: Michael McDonald is killing the crowd, and not in a good way. Most common journalist question: "Who the hell is that guy?" The New York Times David Carr comes in with the assist from down the row: Doobie brothers.

[Observer]

Former LA Times editor Andres Martinez's new lawsuit is a sad story of betrayal that should convince any journalist never to date a publicist, unless she can somehow find one who is not crafty and constantly scheming to leverage the relationship. Martinez left his job editing the editorial page amid scandal. He tried to have film producer Brian Grazer guest edit his section even though his girlfriend Kelly Mullens was flacking for Grazer. Dirty and stupid and unethical, right? Well, hold one one second: Martinez says in his suit that Mullens promised him she had recused herself from working with Grazer, a client of her firm, at least on this one project. This turned out to be an awful awful lie. Writes Matt Belloni at the Hollywood Reporter:

...when the date of the issue drew near, a draft press release was circulated with Mullens' name on it and Martinez later discovered that Mullens had "concealed her presence from Plaintiff during a conference discussing the section." ...Martinez... now says Mullens caused him irreparable harm by "having his professional reputation damaged, by his constructive discharge from The Los Angeles Times, and by the emotional distress and suffering that has resulted."

Martinez can't pin everything on the flack, however, since he should have known from the start that pimping a client of his girlfriend was going to get him in trouble, no matter how hard (and futilely) he tried to ethically cleanse the situation by bringing in other editors and making the girlfriend promise not to work on this one particular project. In other words, he was asking for it.

Mullens' attorneys, meanwhile, claim Martinez's suit is retaliation for a restraining order filed for "unstable behavior, threats, and harassment." In other words, they're not denying anything, just changing the subject. Total flack behavior, right there.

[Hollywood Reporter]

(Image via New York Social Diary)

Oh, hey, look who got a blog or column or whatever on the Huffington Post — Joe Dolce! How convenient that is for the thoroughly obnoxious former Star editor, because it turns out his new PR business, shepherded into existence by patron and fellow sometime slimeball James Frey, is promising clients it can "guide you through the new media landscape — ensuring that the attention you receive is the attention you want." The HuffPo slot will surely prove useful in that regard! Or at least it will once Dolce and business partner Davidson Goldin scare up some clients. For now, Dolce appears to be using his column to do some ambitious prospecting. He suggests a "summit" between celebrities and paparazzi, which will never work, especially given who Dolce suggests might host it:

1. The paparazzi. It's time to establish some rules that when broken have some punitive consequences.

2. The Stars... Brad and Angelina could have taken a lesson from Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick¹s playbook. When their son, James, was born, they called every photo agency in New York and organized a photo shoot at the door of hospital as they were leaving. In one five-minute frenzy of flashes, everyone had the photo..

3. The magazines and the media... Movies advertise "No animals were harmed in the making of this film." How many celebrity weeklies and tv shows can say the same about the stars they feature? Let's invite heads of photo agencies, the stars' PR agents or the stars themselves, top magazine editors, TV execs and web producers to sit and talk (no paps outside, ok?). My agenda, if I were leading such a summit, would include...

Keep leveraging those awesome communication skills Joe!

[Huffington Post]

newVideoPlayer("/andrea_mitchell_clip.flv", 506, 423,""); Barack Obama's advance staff confused everyone when they told journalists not to wear green during their trip to the Middle East. Obama's staff claimed green is the color of Hamas, which is actually isn't really. Though it is the color of Islam in general. So Obama is distancing himself from all the Muslims in the world, which should help dispel those rumors about him being a fist-bumping terrorist by seeming like he's trying way, way too hard, almost like a man with something to hide. Or maybe some staffer just did a shit job of research and thought that was a helpful and clever suggestion. Journos are also prohibited from wearing nail polish and tank tops and from actually asking the candidate any questions, as Andrea Mitchell bitches about in this attached Hardball clip. Chris Matthews is so thrilled that Barack Obama can shoot a basket (he is also shocked that there are so many black people in the military!), but Mitchell seems to think pretend interviews organized by the military are maybe a bad thing? She's not wearing green, though. Don't you hate how biased everyone is?

Hillary and Bill Clinton keep — oh, sorry, their "aide" keeps — a big ole list of everyone who has done them wrong, including allies who are perceived to have defected to the Obama camp. Many of their supporters and associates also have lists of the "ingrates," "traitors" and "enemies" who wronged the former president and his wife. Are there any media people on this list? Are you kidding? They are "charter members," because if there is anyone Hillary and Bill hate, it is the press. (Chelsea too, probably.) Some names:

• Matt Drudge, longtime nemesis who briefly was nicer to Clinton and then went back to completely hating on her. He recently "had the nerve to show up at Mrs. Clinton’s departure speech on Saturday"
• Chris Matthews, MSNBC host who said Clinton had succeeded thanks to her husband's infidelities and who called her staff "kneecappers" for seeking scalps over that comment and another allegedly misogynist statement from another MSNBC correspondent.
• Keith Olbermann, who actually left MSNBC once over its aggressive coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal but who became disillusioned with Hillary and issued several "Special Commentaries" against her and Bill involving, in one case, the Clintons' alleged race-baiting of Barack Obama. He also maybe said Hillary should be beaten. Physically.
• Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair. Duh.

At one point in time, being on the Clinton shit list might have meant you didn't get any favors from the White House or its federal agencies, and maybe also you committed "suicide" some day or had a terrible deadly "accident" on a deserted road. But what can the Clintons possibly do now? Cross your name of their hypothetical vice presidential inauguration list? Have David Brock hound you via Media Matters?

Besides, if Hillary ever makes another run at the White House, she'll make nice, just like she did with Richard Mellon Scaife and a million other people over the past year.