O’Reilly first let Zuckerman explain the larger claim that Trump could never be an effective president, asking why that would be given his success in the business world. “I think that’s a very different kind of thing than the successes he has had in business or whatever,” Zuckerman argued, noting that even that career was “up and down” and that, while he takes “nothing away from his ability to promote himself or his brand,” the presidency requires gubernatorial experience. “You can’t just go there and mouth off,” he noted, while adding as a disclaimer that despite his beliefs, “I don’t personally tell [NYDN writers] what to write or what not to write.”

O’Reilly then shifted to the cover’s racism allegations, and, noting that “I’ve known Donald Trump almost as long as you’ve known him,” O’Reilly had “never seen any racist element about Donald Trump.” Zuckerman agreed and this point, but added that “the issue carries with it certain overtones that I think are really serious,” referring to the birth certificate issue. This answer didn’t satisfy O’Reilly as “you’ve got a check next to racism here,” he noted of the newspaper’s cover. Zuckerman continued to note that he did not see how the issue could arise without race being an issue, arguing, “I don’t think it would’ve gotten traction with any other candidate” and that he lamented it received press at all because “this is not the issue that should be raised at this point.” Ultimately, O’Reilly agrees on that front, highlighting that “I said it was nonsense and I told Trump that to his face,” which concludes the debate on a rather conciliatory note.

The discussion via Fox News below:

As the Times story notes, “profitability is a new enough concept at The Atlantic that some there seem almost giddy about it.” That would include David Bradley, the man who purchased the magazine from Mort Zuckerman back in 1999.

Mr. Bradley asked his accounting department to find out which subscriber’s check officially put the company into the black. They pinpointed a woman from Livingston, Tenn., who sent in a $29.95 check for her renewal on Oct. 1. Mr. Bradley got her phone number off the check and called her to say thank you.

At first she mistook him for a telemarketer and almost hung up on him, but not before he promised to pay for her subscription for the next 10 years.

Bradley’s call was more than a quaint gesture; the man has reason to be genuinely excited. The article reminds readers that “The Atlantic lost $4.5 million in its first year under Mr. Bradley’s ownership,” a number that only ballooned over the years.

Of course, it took more than a bunch of $30 subscriptions to bring about the $1.8 million in profits his magazine’s slated to make this year. You can read more about the magazine’s turnaround here.

Apropos of very little, Zuckerman told Fox’s Neil Cavuto that “I voted for Obama, I in fact helped write one of his speeches, we endorsed Obama” but declined to say which speech. Turns out what sounded like misplaced overzealous cocktail chatter might have been just that. Politico’s Ben Smith says no one in the Obama camp can recall even meeting Zuckerman let alone getting speech assistance from him.

Among those with reason to be puzzled, a White House source tells me, were Obama’s speechwriters, Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes. Neither “has ever met or spoken to Mort Zuckerman” and the two have “been closely involved in every speech the President has given since 2005,” said the official.

Zuckerman has met President Obama a few times and no doubt encountered other Administration officials, and he could well have suggested a theme to the president or another aide. But the question of what he “helped write” remains a bit of a mystery.

Despite a recent, and encouraging, upswing in sales the magazine was painfully (and unnecessarily) late to the Internet game, and while they have been making great strides in the last ten months since their relaunch, they were playing a losing game of catch-up to other news magazines (Time, The Atlantic) who had spent years developing a smart, online brand. I suspect it was a case of too little too late. That said, as Colby Hall pointed out, Newsweek is a nationally recognized brand. Editor Jon Meacham himself has branched out to various platforms — and is apparently looking to purchase himself — so all in things considered it might make for a attractive acquisition. But for who? Here’s the top five people we think should consider buying Newsweek (plus one bonus).

Michael Bloomberg: Yes, his name comes up on every list ever of prospective people who could save struggling media brands. And yes, he just bought business week. But not only does Bloomberg have the cash he also has the ambition. Bloomy will be out of office in three years. A presidential run in unlikely. But this is a man who has grown accustomed to political and intellectual influence, what better way to extend than than buy purchasing a political and intellectual magazine that the sort of people he likes to schmooze with reads.

Rupert Murdoch/ Mort Zuckerman: Dream team! Kidding. But this might be appealing to either of them. Zuckerman already owns US News & World Report and this would be a step up from that. Meanwhile Rupe has demonstrated his need for respectable properties with his sort of disastrous purchase of the Wall St. Journal, but what if Rupe opted to turn Newsweek into a sort of Fox News Weekly. BAM! Get a couple a survival seeds advertisers and you’re all set.

Glenn Beck: This is a man looking to build an Oprah-like empire. He already has a hit cable show, a hit radio show, his own magazine, best-selling books, the ability to make books best-sellers, and a 100 year plan. All that’s missing is an infiltration in the high brow magazine rack. He has the sort of loyal audience that might make for a solid base, again throw in some survival seeds advertisers and voila G-Week.

Nick Denton: The man who launched the online media empire and changed how we write online. Despite all his online success it’s clear that Denton has a deep love for the magazines — or maybe just New York magazine. I have no idea what Denton would do with a weekly magazine, and likely he doesn’t have the funds to make it happen, but I’d be really excited to find out.

Arianna Huffington: HuffWeek! I know. Why would a website buy a magazine? Again, in the case of Newsweek, a lot of it has to do with credibility. Also a nice way to extend HuffPo’s reach, and/or let its longer, non-slideshow pieces shine. Plus they could devote and entire section to the best and/or most unhinged comments of the week.

Bonus:

Sarah Palin: Not really. But, if she did she could totally put Meacham on the cover in a pair of revealing running shorts.

This morning’s New York Times brings news that “a key figure in the domestic abuse scandal bedeviling Gov. David A. Paterson told investigators that the governor phoned to enlist her help in quieting the accuser, according to a person with knowledge of her account.” Also, the head of New York State police resigned yesterday. I suspect one of two things is going to happen here: Paterson will bow to political pressure and step down, or (and this seems increasingly likely, actually) he will cite polls that say New Yorkers don’t want him to resign and merely wait it out. At some point all these stories (barring anything truly shocking) will begin to have a numbing effect — it’s already starting to feel like the media version of Chinese water torture — and add to that the political chaos in the rest of the state and I imagine Paterson might soon be the better devil you know. Also, there is a budget that needs to be passed! The public’s attention span is only so long.

Jon Stewart weighed in the mess last night. On Rangel: “Hey, here’s an interesting law about rental income on foreign islands, someone get me some white out and my Tommy Bahama shirt.” Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

“At this time, it is very difficult to see how I can devote the necessary time to either a campaign, or to working in Washington, if I were to win.”

The Daily News also ran the story, albeit without an editorial from Zuckerman (perhaps that’s coming in tomorrow’s edition).

“I believe that there is a great deal that needs to be achieved in Washington, not only on behalf of the people of New York, but in trying to break some of the paralyzing deadlock that has gripped the political decision-making process, he said.

“However, it demands unhindered attention, which I am unable to give at this time.”

Another factor in Zuckerman not trying for Kirsten Gillibrand‘s seat was the recent death of his longtime associate and real estate partner, Ed Linde.

So how likely is a Zuckerman run? And is this actually a good thing. This from Ben Smith at Politico:

“A lot of donors were telling [Ford] that if Mort ran, they would be with Mort,” said a senior New York Democrat.

But Zuckerman – who would likely skip the Democratic primary and challenge Gillibrand in the general election as a Republican-Independent – poses a far graver threat to the national political status quo. The New York billionaire who owns one of the Democratic Party’s loudest megaphones, the New York Daily News, backed Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign but has emerged as a bitter White House critic, and his entry into the race would put Republicans clearly within striking distance of retaking the Senate.

Smith goes on to note that what may be holding Zuckerman back is his own hesitancy to “to give up the unusual status he’s bought as a figure who is public when he chooses to weigh in on public policy issues and utterly private in his unconventional personal life.” I suspect that all things considered at the moment, the personal life bit might be less of a problem than it once was. In the meantime, better the devil you know?

The Times article is based on the anonymous word of “two people told of the discussions,” likely meaning Zuckerman’s team or affiliated insiders, meant to get the press buzzing and political public talking in order to judge the initial response. According to the piece, “A Zuckerman spokesman, Ken Frydman, declined to address any discussions that Mr. Zuckerman might have had about a Senate run, or any plans to conduct a poll.”

What the newspaper feature does, though, is introduce Zuckerman formally to a public that may know his name and affiliations on a superficial level. Now, they’re privy to the surface level of his accomplishments, hopes and dreams:

Mr. Zuckerman, 72, has long sought a national platform. He has cut a wide swath through the media landscape, buying and selling magazines like The Atlantic and writing a regular column for U.S. News & World Report, which he owns.

Biographical information comes at no additional cost:

Mr. Zuckerman, a resident of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, was born in Quebec. He is now an American citizen.

And as a New York media kingpin, the Bloomberg comparison is automatic:

As a candidate, Mr. Zuckerman would be following the path of a close friend and fellow media executive, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican to run for office.

For more on the early rumblings of a Zuckerman run for Senate, read the rest here.

You may recall that last summer during talk of Murdoch purchasing the floundering Newsday the idea was floated the the Post and the News would share printing press costs. Turns out it was just too nice a story to be true (or, alternately, the apocalypse as measured by New York tabloid standards, has yet to arrive). From this week’s New York:

But in the end, the hatchet was simply too huge to be buried. According to sources involved in the talks on both sides, discussions between News Corp. and Zuckerman collapsed several months ago, never making it far enough for the moguls to appear in the same room. “It turned out to be too complicated, the cultures were too incompatible with too much bad history.”

Also too good to be true, rumors of NYP editor Col Allan’s retirement. The same New York piece reported that Allan was considering retirement. Not so, apparently that was merely “wishful thinking at the Daily News.”

It’s difficult to follow print journalism these days without feeling bashed over the head by the irony of the term. Most of the big stories are either about closures or firings (Gawker reports that AP layoffs may be coming today), and what positive news there is tends to be about innovative moves online.

But according to the New York Times, one man is doubling down on print: Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman. From Richard Pérez-Peña‘s article:

[Zuckerman] has sunk more than $150 million into expanding the newspaper’s printing plant, installing advanced high-speed presses — a statement of faith that print will still be big business for another decade or two, if not longer. As of this month, The Daily News can print full color on every page; executives say it is the only large paper in the country with that capability. (emphasis added)

The question is whether the investment makes business sense; the answer may never be made public because the privately held paper does not disclose its financial performance. Mr. Zuckerman signed the deal for the equipment almost two years ago, before the drop in advertising turned into a free fall, and before the weekday circulation of The Daily News fell to less than 550,000, from more than 700,000. He conceded that the paper, which had been marginally profitable for years, is at “worse than break-even.”

A key point: advertisers like full-color ads, so this isn’t purely a matter of reader aesthetics.

The price tag may doom this venture from the start, but if you’re going to stick with print, full-color’s not a bad way to go. Text on a page can always be delivered faster and better by a computer, but color on paper, much less stacks of paper, is so much more striking than color on a screen. And it can’t hurt that the Daily News can make the claim that that it’s the only large paper in the country able to do X. Also: full color will let it further stick it to the New York Post, which it surpassed in circulation not too long ago.

Still, there is the odd sense that The Daily News is reinventing itself as a cheap daily magazine on cheap paper, and magazines aren’t exactly doing great this year. Given its unique position, the paper will no doubt be able to negotiate unique deals, but it seems tough to recoup its investment by even the most optimistic layman’s projections. Maybe The Daily News should have just launched a better photoblog, kept the $150 million, and called it a day?

— Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, in discussion with Sam Tanenhaus about his latest book, The Death of Conservatism, on the echo chamber of current Conservative thought, and how it’s totally like being walled off in an overcrowded, disease-ridden plot of land where Germans went on killing sprees and then deported people to concentration camps.

Okay maybe that’s a bit harsh. But still — wow, rather a boneheaded comparison to make. Even worse, not sure if it registered on anyone in the group — Mort Zuckerman? Thoughts? — because no one on set indicated any reaction or made any comment (though music guy Q fired up the music pretty quickly after). Then Sam Tanenhaus said he thought David Brooks was one of the best Conservative thinkers writing today. But it wasn’t enough to get him to the editorship of the National Review, now, was it? Why was that again…? Hmm. An unexpected link here, but not an entirely inappropriate one.

Here’s the video of the full discussion – soundbite at 6:53:

The latest? Rupe is out the buy the New York Daily News! The speculator in this case is upstate New York-based media appraiser Kevin Kamen who had this to say to Jeff Bercovici:

“I believe that’s something that’s being looked at very seriously, although very quietly” inside News Corp., Kamen tells DailyFinance. “Obviously, I can’t say it’s definitely happening, but I think it’s being considered by Murdoch for sure. Nobody should be surprised, although everyone will be.”

Kamen, who says the purchase will happen before the end of the year, has gleaned this tip from confidential sources. He also says it is the next logical step to follow Murdoch’s more recent purchases of the Brooklyn Paper and the TimesLedger and Courier-Life newspaper groups. Sound fishy?

Ever since Murdoch shocked the heck out of just about everyone by buying the Wall St. Journal in 2007 rumors have persisted that he is also out to get the embattled New York Times (or Twitter, or even Facebook back in the day — basically the hot property du jour). But the NYDN? The Post and the Daily News have battled it out at the newsstands for years, though neither makes a great profit (the Post bleeds money actually, lately the NYDN drips).

Bercovici points out that things got so tough for both papers recently that they considered merging business operations. New York City tabloids may end up lasting longer than local newspapers nationwide merely by dint of of the fact New Yorker’s take the (internet-free) subway to work, but one imagines in this day and age one struggling tabloid on the books is enough!

Also? NYDN publisher Mort Zuckerman says fat chance! “The Daily News is not for sale, has never been for sale, and will not be for sale.” But it certainly makes for fun copy.