Two Long Island weeklies saw an unusual spike in sales last week when to mystery shoppers bought out all of the Suffolk Times and the Riverhead News-Review from 7-11′s and bagel shops throughout the county. The two still-yet unidentified print fanatics picked up almost 4,000 copies of the September 22 issue from nearly 30 establishments, because, well, no one really knows why.

Sarah Palin and Katie Couric haven’t exactly been one another’s number one fans. You might recall that it was Couric who asked Palin – then John McCain‘s vice presidential running mate – what newspapers she read, prompting Palin’s now notorious and much-lampooned response: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

Leave it to Malcolm Gladwell to come up with a reason why journalism – particularly magazine writing – will survive. Gladwell believes that even if a tiny percentage of people in the world value and subscribe to publications like the New Yorker then that actually translates into a large enough number to sustain the industry. But Gladwell also warned in his chat with his friend, colleague, and debating partner Adam Gopnik that it’s not often that his theories get substantiated by subsequent events.

ohn Nichols and Robert McChesney, this was a book promotional event and an opportunity to outline their recommendations to save traditional journalism. It was a setup for a predictable night full of previews of what’s contained inside yet another “save journalism” solution book. Yet, thankfully, David Carr took a topic that has been spoken about to death and breathed new life into the discussion.

Newspapers doubtlessly spent yesterday preparing their Sunday covers, unable to foresee exactly how the health care vote and bill would shake out, but fully aware of its inevitable headline grabbing appeal. Between placement, prominence, photo selection and of course, headlines, the results provide a look into the disparate layouts of the country’s prominent papers. Gallery inside!

Self-described “newspaper junkie” President Barack Obama weighed in on the shambolic state of the newspaper industry yesterday, and said that he’d be “happy to look at” legislation that let newspapers get tax breaks if they restructured as nonprofits.

I wrote a piece of commentary about Joe Klein’s flame war with Glenn Greenwald yesterday in which I conceded Klein’s point about Greenwald’s publication of off-the-record emails. I also pointed out that Klein’s understanding of email confidentiality is shakier than a detoxing jackhammer operator. Rather than expressing appreciation for this turn of the tables, Greenwald had some reservations about the piece.

It appears that the scarcity of information about the Alabama Crimson Tide is far more valuable than pedestrian local news, at least in the eyes of one local paper. Editor & Publisher reports that The Tuscaloosa News announced the creation of a new site devoted to University of Alabama athletics, TidesSportsExtra.com. The daily paper will charge $10 per month or $59.95 per year for access to the site, and will be separate from the paper’s main Web page, which remains free.

An online feud is heating up between Time’s Joe Klein and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. Although the bad blood reaches back a stretch, at issue now is Greenwald’s publication of Klein’s off-the-record emails to the “Journolist.” Klein slammed Greenwald on Time’s Swampland blog: (h/t HuffPo)

Brilliant idea from Business Insider: Embeddable posts. Henry Blodget posted Thursday about the new feature, which permits bloggers to embed entire posts on their sites, rather than ye olde copy-and-paste.

It’s a genius idea, since it incorporates Business Insider branding and makes it easier to include the whole thing than just paste in an excerpt. In fact, it’s such a genius idea that it’s a wonder it took so long. It makes you wonder: Could it have helped save newspapers?