Fairfax clearance sale continues. Fairfax Media is in the process of putting its Sydney newspaper distribution out to tender. It’s a cost cutting exercise of course, Brian McCarthy knows no other way to manage. So will he swallow the lowball offer from the embattled First Fleet operation which has struggled to make the lowball magazine distribution business for Gordon and Gotch and ACPs’ Network Services work smoothly, to the satisfaction of the distributors, the publishers (ACP and Seven’s Pacific Magazines), the contractor drivers, the newsagents and other outlets, and of course the customers?

Fairfax Media is also taking the axe to its inserted magazines. Saturday’s The Good Weekend was smaller than usual and had just one page of food instead of two and a bit. Today’s TV Guide is four pages smaller than it has been at 20. Icon, the technology part is one page. Clearly the geniuses at Fairfax won’t allow editorial without an advertising supplement, which is what Icon is these days with sections on cameras, ipod type machines, laptops and mobile phones. Clearly the advertisers have also run out of money, so a tree or three is saved somewhere and remains in a forest, upright. — Glenn Dyer

Fairfax churnalism creates interesting third person article dialogue. Very strange — this AAP copy is up on The Age website, reporting on a story that has “Fairfax papers” as the source. Essentially AAP repackaged a Fairfax article and Fairfax published the AAP copy as well as their own. “The inquiry, into suicides in the ex-service community, has found the departments of Defence and Veterans’ Affairs fail soldiers who have been discharged with mental health issues, Fairfax newspapers report.”

Saatchified. Aussie blog JustOneMoreGame has reacted to M&C Saatchi’s Cadbury Gorilla ad edit job by giving net users the tools they need so they too can “Saatchify” a well-known foreign commercial by inserting an innapropriate Aussie song. Users can paste their “Saatchify” URLS in the comments of the blog post below and/or tweet them with the tag “#saatchify”. Crikey says give it a go!

It’s time to go. A senior feature writer at The Australian, Elisabeth Wynhausen, is the latest to be told she has been made redundant at the newspaper. Wynhausen, who had farewell drinks on Friday at The Clarendon hotel, joins D.D. McNicoll who was called into the office of editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, on Thursday afternoon, the day before his 60th birthday, to be told he no longer had a job after 35 years at News Ltd. — The Canberra Times

Pimp This Bum: salvation or exploitation? Marketing specialist Kevin Dolan and his son Sean were looking for a way to test out a campaign to generate buzz for Ascendgence, their Internet marketing startup, when they approached a homeless man named Tim Edwards and paid him $100 a day to hold a cardboard sign advertising their Web site, Pimp This Bum. Now, the whole thing is making headlines for the Dolans, and thousands of dollars in donations for Tim Edwards. Corporate sponsors have even signed on, and Tim is receiving free rehab services from Sunray Treatment and Recovery in Seattle, airfare provided by Southwest Airlines. However, some homeless advocates are upset over the word “pimp” and are alleging that Tim is being exploited. — Adfreak

Democracy’s Cheat Sheet? Big love for newspapers has been flowing in from academy/activist circles. Bill Moyers encapsulated their view two years ago when he argued against the notion “that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it’s the truth of money in politics, the social costs of ‘free trade,’ growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation.” Yet now, as newspapers attrite and collapse, some scholars are telling us that newspapers are a necessary component of democracy. — Slate

All the news that’s fit to be birdcage liner. While technological and economic forces certainly battered newspapers, journalism also delivered a one-two punch to its own jaw. First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then, the providers of that national content diverted resources from tough-to-report investigative journalism that builds loyal readership and into paparazzi-like birdcage liner that unconvincingly portrays politicians, CEOs and their minions as celebrities. — Salon

Comic genius behind Dina Lohan’s fake Tweets outed. A LiveJournal user says the brilliant mind behind the crazed tweets of celebrity mom Dina Lohan is a 24-year-old Michigan man named Matt Cherette. Cherette, who’s confessed, has a career in Hollywood awaiting him. Assuming this prank doesn’t have yet another layer to it, congratulations, Matt. You have endless opportunity ahead of you getting paid to pretend you’re a celebrity. Cherette also says he’s the person who created Rosie O’Donnell’s fake Twitter account. — Defamer

Look out Conroy: torrent sharing comes to Facebook. Soon you may be seeing links to download copies of Star Wars or the newest Britney Spears album pop up your Facebook news feed. This is because The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most popular websites for file sharing and torrents, now allows you to share links to download these files right from your Facebook (Facebook reviews) profile. — Mashable