Critiques of Donald Trump‘s so-called presidential run have suggested that it’s merely a publicity ploy to beef up ratings for his reality show Celebrity Apprentice. Yesterday, for instance, Newsmax (along with other outlets) reported that Trump would announce whether or not he’ll be running for president in 2012 during the show’s season finale.

Trump, however, has since shot down that rumor, telling Talk1300 that he’s not actually allowed to announce such a thing during the show and he doesn’t know from where rumors to the contrary came.

The Associated Press’ decision to package news that President Barack Obama quit smoking as an “alert” has inspired its fair share of eye rolls among those in the media whose job it is to, well. Cover the media. Not that anyone is anything less than thrilled by the President’s progress, of course.

Elizabeth Spiers – founding editor of Gawker, former editor in chief of mediabistro, and founder of Dead Horse Media – has been named as editor in chief of The Observer, where she will be overseeing both print and digital content.

Gawker is losing one of it’s longest tenured writers, as Alex Pareene announced yesterday afternoon, after it was posted by John Koblin at the New York Observer, that he was leaving Nick Denton’s employ for Slate’s “War Room” blog. This is just the latest in a recent succession of departures from the influential blog, and has been raising questions about what’s going on at their Nolita offices.

After the New York Times cut 100 jobs, editor-in-chief Bill Keller told his staff that they should not fear a “next round” of layoffs because more cuts were neither “planned or foreseen.” In a memo that circulated Friday, as reported by The Observer, Keller was somber, yet hopeful, but his statements echoed the ones he made last year. And it only got worse.

There have been whispers in the publishing world for months now about a group solution to the print problem, in which all of the big dogs — including Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Time Inc. — would come together to offer competitive marketplace solutions to widespread magazine woes. Today, they announced their big plans, including a “digital storefront” and much more.

Some of the biggest rivals in magazine publishing are close to a deal that would combine their forces in an effort to resuscitate a dying print industry. Titans of the media world — including Condé Nast, Heart and Time Inc. — are working to form an alliance that would recreate magazines for a digital age, in a plan that includes new mobile iterations sold in an iTunes-like store, as well as print magazines, according a report in The Observer.

Traffic, schmaffic at NYTimes.com; Obama’s consigliereValerie Jarrett; Caveman chic… and other fun things we’ve come across during our day reaping the fruits of the Internet!