Deadline‘s Ray Richmond first reported that Griffin was unhappy with Buchanan’s book, and had not made a final decision on whether he would be back on MSNBC:

Griffin told me after the panel, “I don’t think the ideas that [Buchanan] put forth [in the book] are appropriate for national dialogue on MSNBC. He won’t be coming back during the book tour.” Will Buchanan be back at all? “I have not made my decision,” replied Griffin, who did say he will be tinkering with the network’s format as the year goes on. Pat’s a good guy. He didn’t like [being removed from the air], but he understood.”

The New York Times reported similar comments from Griffin, who added there that “Pat and I are going to meet soon and discuss it” and that “Pat is a good guy. Some of his ideas are alarming.”

The book, Suicide of a Superpower, brought to MSNBC calls from several civil rights groups and the Anti-Defamation League to drop Buchanan for its incendiary racial and anti-Semitic remarks, among which are, according to the Times, claims that America is being damaged “ethnically, culturally, morally, politically” by the rise in minority populations and the lament that the “European and Christian core of our country is shrinking.” Griffin described the ideas in the book as not being “really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC.”

So the official position is that Buchanan’s future is unclear. But its hard to imagine a scenario whereby Griffin, who runs the leading progressive news channel, would covertly take someone like Buchanan off the air, then question him publicly and then welcome him back. But who knows.

Gawker once offered a $1,000 reward for a recent photo of Finke – or, as they phrased it at the time, “the scourge of industry reporting” – but their endeavor ultimately proved fruitless.

Now, The Daily has published a photograph of Perhaps Finke, Possibly Maybe, depicting an older, platinum blonde woman seated in her car. Their story, by reporter Hunter Walker in the “Flash” section helmed by gossip veteran Richard Johnson, attempts to cover its tracks by asking “Is this the most powerful woman in Hollywood?” instead of outright declaring it an image of the elusive gossipmonger. Those asked by The Daily to verify that this woman is indeed Finke each replied that they couldn’t be sure.

Finke, for her part, has publicly (from the privacy of the home she rarely leaves – not that we blame her) stated that the photo is not of her. But, as The Daily reports, she has called several higher-ups at The Daily’s parent company, News Corp, threatening that her site’s coverage of News Corp’s media outlets might take a negative turn if the photo is not taken down.

Finke wrote to Gawker, attempting to set the story straight because, come on, like she’d be caught dead in a Yaris:

What is ‘preventing’ the Daily from publishing the photo in its possession is that, in fact, it is NOT of me. According to what the Daily tells me, it was taken of a woman driving a green Toyota Yaris and I not only have never owned, driven, rented, or borrowed a Toyota Yaris, but also not any Toyota since the 1980s. There are other details about the photo demonstrating it is not of me. Also, Johnson told me the photo was taken at a time when, in fact, I was not driving any car or outside my home. News Corp has not shown the photo to me.

As The Wrap – positioned as a rival to Finke’s Deadline – reports, Walker (formerly of The Wrap, now working at The Daily) had informed Finke’s boss, CEO of Mail Media Corporation Jay Penske, of his plan to hunt down a recent photo of Finke.

The Wrap has since heard that Finke’s outrage may be something other than frustration over her association with a Toyota:

We are told something slightly different: that Johnson mentioned an identifying feature of the image – a watch Finke was wearing in the photo – and that left her ballistic.

The report, titled “A Habitat for Profanity: Broadcast TV’s Sharp Increase in Foul Language,” reveals that both the quantity and, er, quality of swearing has increased. “Profanity is far more frequent and the profanity itself is far harsher than just five years ago,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “Even worse, the most egregious language is being aired during the time slots when children are most likely to be in the audience.”

Nellie Andreeva of Deadline culled from the report these interesting statistics:

Use of the bleeped or muted f-words increased from 11 instances total in 2005 to 276 instances in 2010 – an increase of 2,409%.

Use of the bleeped or muted s-word increased from 11 instances in 2005 to 95 instances in 2010 – an increase of 763%.

During the family hour, instances of the f-word increased from 10 in 2005 to 111 in 2010. Use of the s-word during the family hour increased from 11 instances in 2005 to 42 in 2010.

The Fox broadcast network showed the greatest per hour increase in use of profanity from 2005 to 2010 with a 269% increase across all prime-time hours.

All of this prompted Winter to dramatically proclaim, “The public airwaves should offer a banquet for all. But increasingly, the broadcast networks are telling American families to swallow whatever they’re fed or starve.”

Whoa. Let’s hope the dude never finds out about cable networks. You can read the full PTC report here. (h/t Deadline)

Sadly, that’s what’s happened with the poster for Brittany Murphy’s film Deadline, which depicts a dead-looking Murphy in a bathtub. Murphy, as you likely know, died earlier this week from cardiac arrest after being discovered unconscious in her shower by her mother.

Redbox, a DVD distribution company, is currently attempting to remove 19,000 outdoor posters for the movie.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, have you noticed that in the wake of Twilight: New Moon’s premiere, there are an awful lot of Twilight-related articles gumming up the Internet lately? Is it possible that accomplished journalists are writing about Twilight not because they are deeply interested in it, but because they are trying to get traffic to their websites?

Bonnie Fuller‘s HollywoodLife.com launched today. According to the press release, “HollywoodLife.com’s digital conversationality also provides a richer take on lifestyle and beauty as always-updated, style-sensible women across the country will be able to respond, giving approval of the latest trends in beauty, weighing in on fashion, or revealing their own secrets of shopping.” Yet the lead story is a wallpaper-sized graphic of Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart, and Robert Pattinson proclaiming “New Moon Mania!” below which is a link that says “Everything New Moon, All The Time!” and blanket coverage of the premiere.

Why is an accomplished journalist like Bonnie Fuller, who was born in 1956, so into the tweenish vampire saga? A hypothesis: Twilight has a rabid fan base who tend to travel in packs, and getting some of them via Google search and cross-promotion with her parent site Mail.com could not only give her strong first-day traffic, but could grab for the longer term some of that coveted eighteen-to-thirty-five female demo that her site is after.

And it’s not just HollywoodLife: Fuller’s Mail.com colleague Nikki Finke, hailed by this very site as “a one-woman trade publication whose tenacity has landed her scoop after scoop,” routinely posts about Twilight, though she often prefaces with a wry aside like “Yes, this is another in my shameless plugs for Twilight fan traffic.”

This is to say nothing of Entertainment Weekly, whose PopWatch blog sees fit to Twilight it up, or Cinematical, with their ”Fan Made: Raunchy, Vampiric ‘Twilight’ Underoos:” (image via Twitarded)

Or Mediaite, which took a break from their probing, insightful media coverage to note that Geraldo Rivera looks like Charlie Swan.

it's probably because they both have brown hair.

Twilight bait works, or thinks it works, because it’s something for very little. It’s like blowing a dog whistle: the people who care about it come flocking when they hear it, and the people who don’t will go happily about their ways.

Only instead of not hearing it, they hear a faint but shrill sound, and are mildly irritated. And if you, the publication, spend too much time blowing on the dog whistle that is Twilight, then you are neglecting many fine woodwind instruments that you could be playing otherwise, such as the piccolo. Even though you thought that you were getting something for nothing (dogs) by playing on the dog whistle, in reality, the dog whistle was playing you.

In this extended metaphor, the “piccolo” equates to outstanding investigative journalism.

In all seriousness, any site that covers popular culture or Hollywood should be talking about Twilight, because like it or not, it’s one of the great pop cultural happenings of our time. The bigger issue is when sites overcover it to the exclusion of everything else, or stray too far and too frequently off their actual beats. A website is not a magazine, and part of the beauty of the web is that it allows readers and writers to connect who might not encounter each other otherwise. But when every site chases the same few stories, they all take on a watery, same-y flavor that can’t be too pleasing to the loyal readers who are supposed to be their audience.