Let’s just call it a final act of Mercury’s retrograde. They're good-natured about it, and are "going to post an update" to their story today, according to News Director Robb Atkinson, but last night's WGME News 13 broadcast had a very straight-faced Kiley Bennett (whom we really like, and who has been a celebrity presenter at our Portland Music Awards shows) announcing that three DJs at WCYY had been suspended for transgressions over the weekend.

UPDATED WITH LINK TO THE UNION'S SUMMARY OF THE CONTRACT.

After months and months of trying to put together a deal (and after years of preparation on the part of the Blethens), it appears that Richard Connor, the union-busting Bangor native who runs the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader newspaper in Pennsylvania, may be close to actually getting ink on paper to buy the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Central Maine Morning Sentinel, the Kennebec Journal, and associated Web sites and - most importantly - about $30 million in real estate

Our friends over at Mainebiz are reporting that the Conway Daily Sun will open a Portland Daily Sun sometime this month. It's expected to be free, and won't have an office, if I'm understanding the quote correctly - "our office will be the coffeehouse." (Saves cash, for sure, but how do you drop things off for people to look at or write about?)

Yes, it's true - the very show in which WCSH 6 denied the existence of global warming and allowed a man to claim that Earth's gravity has cycles that affect the climate also included an interview by Rob Caldwell with Senator John McCain.

Caldwell's interview (watch it below) is getting attention all over the blogosphere, mainly because McCain was such a horrendous liar and was unable to compently deliver non-answers to Caldwell's relatively simple questions.

I swear I'm stone cold sober, but I still am worried that I'm outright hallucinating. Flipping channels tonight, I hit on WCSH 6 just as the 207 show was opening up. And Cindy Williams (filling in tonight for Kathleen Shannon) compared complaints about global warming to Chicken Little's claims that "the sky is falling."

In the latest edition of the Portland Phoenix, which is on the streets now, we tell you about a hate crime that happened at 12:30 am on Saturday morning on Cumberland Avenue. (I'll post the link shortly.)

The Portland police held a press conference this morning on the matter, giving official commentary that will trigger reports in the other local media.

In a case of struggling media reporting on struggling media, Brian Williams closed last night's NBC Nightly News broadcast with a report from Portland, Maine, with people talking about the troubles the Portland Press Herald has been having.

The graphic for the segment was the Press Herald's logo over the words "FINAL EDITION?"

In Sunday's Washington Post, ex-Portland Press Herald DC correspondent Jonathan Kaplan laments the decreasing number of Washington correspondents reporting for regional and local newspapers around the country. It's as much a plea for his old job back as anything else - of course, the guy might properly claim to have been duped, as in December 2007 the PPH hired him away from The Hill, where he had worked for five years, and then barely six months later laid him off

Well, sort of. While Maine Public Broadcasting has been good about paying attention to our ongoing revelations about the conditions - living and working - at the Maine State Prison, none of the state's daily papers has picked up what appears - to us - to be a major story. (Never mind, we like owning scoops for two-and-a-half years and counting.

You will undoubtedly see a great deal of media coverage of the upcoming Beach to Beacon road race, slated for Saturday, August 2, in Cape Elizabeth. But the dirty little secret the newspapers and TV stations never tell you is that many of those stories, and even the story ideas, are not generated in the newsrooms of Maine. Instead, they are dreamed up in Arizona by the capable - and friendly - folks at Wolfe PR (they used to be based in Scarborough, but aren't anymore), and spoon-fed to Maine journalists.

UPDATE: Just before 11 am, the Tuesday news went live on the Press Herald's site.

For an organization that at least periodically claims to be looking to the Web as a key to the future, the Portland Press Herald is having a pretty rough few days. From Thursday night through Sunday morning, the site was unable to be updated - the best they could do was post stories in a small sidebar column on the site's front page.

Gosh, Kathleen Parker's op-ed in today's PPH [I can't find it on their website, so I'm linking to the syndicated column from another paper] really set me straight. I'm totally just going to chill out about all this gender-equality bullshit. Us women should stop trying to explore gender-equity issues and point out lingering lopsidedness -- it's so tiresome.

Truly, life gets more amazing every day.

Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the Gossip Girl YA book series that was then adapted into the BSE, is working on her first adult series, according to Hyperion. Due out in 2009, the series (first book is called "Cum Laude" -- really??????) will be about a group of young adults who meet during their freshman year at a small college in MAINE.