The Washington Post is the latest major news outlet to change its stand-alone book section. Book World will no longer appear in print, but book coverage will be folded into the Style & Arts and Outlook sections. The last day of Book World in print will be February 15, and then its coverage can be found online.

Previously, outlets including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, NPR, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have decreased or changed book coverage. Now, the and San Francisco Chronicle are the only two major newspapers with a stand-alone books section.

After former MSNBC host Dan Abrams announced the launch of Abrams Research, a consulting shop that will hook companies up with PR advice straight from the mouths of journalists, the new company was immediately panned in the media community as mousetrap for conflicts of interest.

However, Abrams, the former host of Verdict with Dan Abrams, told PRWeek on November 24 that his agency will largely focus on creating a roster of bloggers, freelancers, retired journalists, or those on a leave. Abrams also responded that he has no interest in working with reporters or editors at major media institutions – both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times told New York magazine that the agreement would be a conflict of interest – that have standards prohibiting such an arrangement.

“There is going to be no one in the network who has any sort of employment agreement, standard, or contract that says they can’t do outside work. So as a practical matter, that means we wont have full-time employees of major media outlets; all the ones I know of have specific standards and practices,” he told PRWeek, adding that the company will also use its own guidelines. “I have no interest in inducing anyone to do anything that they can’t do.”

New York Times’ technology columnist David Pogue disclosed a few ideas for making the Web 2.0 world a more friendly, and factually accurate, environment for both people and products. Pogue spoke November 20 at the Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism conference, sponsored by the Columbia Journalism Review and Consumer Reports.

Step one: blogs should declare that they – gasp! – take responsibility for the words printed on their Web sites, said Pogue, who compared blogging in front of thousands of commenters to his days as a Broadway musician, calling it “a return to the live performance.” Pogue also advocated that Web 2.0 sites should take action on behalf of users who are attacked and banish anonymous comments, except in sensitive, cases such as medical discussions.

The New York Times on more bad news for newspapers, some of which, industry leaders say, are hoping for a Web-based silver bullet to rescue them from falling advertising revenues.

The Times’ Stephanie Clifford writes that second-quarter online revenue at newspaper Web sites fell 2.4% from last year in only the second year-over-year drop since the Newspaper Association of America first measured it in 2003. However, overall online newspaper advertising is strong, with display ads up 7.6% during the second quarter.

Clifford also reports that a recent survey from Bain & Co. and the Interactive Advertising Bureau shows that of seven (unnamed) high-end publishers, about 53% of the ad space on their Web sites went unsold last year - up from 50% in 2006.

Newsweek is responding to criticism over its October 13 , featuring a close-up shot of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, with a statement defending the photo choice.

The statement reads as follows: “Nigel Parry’s compelling portrait of Gov. Sarah Palin was shot and cropped so we could see clearly into her eye and be engaged by her smile. Gov. Palin and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) were photographed exclusively for Newsweek on August 29 and the portrait used on this weeks’ cover is from that session. As a news magazine, it is not our policy to cosmetically retouch the photography we publish; accordingly, we have not retouched the cover photos of Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. McCain.”

Said Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly this week: “When they put you up close and personal on a magazine, even the most gorgeous supermodels in the world, they retouch you to get rid of the normal flaws that human being have. That’s what they do in the magazine business. [Newsweek] didn’t do it for Gov. Palin.”

Republican media consultant Andrea Tantaros expressed many of the same concerns on CNN and Fox News, which, it should be pointed out, was heavily criticized in July for drastically altering the photos of two New York Times staffers.

At the time, Brian Lewis, Fox News EVP of corporate communications, The New York Times that the network’s PR staff does not alter images of competitors, but had no control over stories that appeared on the network’s shows. He added that Fox News personalities going after other reporters also makes the job of the network’s PR department more difficult.

Newspapers – hit by declining revenue streams and dropping circulation – are “waiting for Orson Welles,” said Peter Kaplan, New York Observer editor-in-chief, referring to radio’s popularity explosion in the late 1930s after Welles rescued it from relative obscurity.

Kaplan, speaking October 2 at the New York Public Library, also predicted that there will be an 18-to-24-month period of increased instability in newspapers, and added that the medium “is not considered essential to [the] lives” of consumers under 30.

In another event highlight, Garden State resident and New York Times writer David Carr discussed two of his fears: New Jersey’s state government operating without the watchful eye of Newark’s The Star-Ledger, which next January, and a New York economy that is 10% to 20% smaller at this time next year. Carr added that the latter “scares the s___ out of him.”

In this week’s issue, communications professionals from a number of businesses with interests in the Houston area emphasized their use of the Web in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.

It turns out that the local media in Southeastern Texas , and are using the Internet to stream coverage online and extend their local broadcasts. Most cable networks, according to The New York Times’ Brian Stelter, have switched to around-the-clock coverage of the financial crisis and the presidential election.

Following on-air tensions among its election-season hosts at the Democratic National Convention, MSNBC has removed prime-time anchors Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. David Gregory will lead the cable network’s coverage of the debates and election night, while Olbermann and Matthews will stay on as analysts.

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter that NBC Nightly News anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw “have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division.”

TVNewser’s Chris Ariens reported that insiders from NBC News and MSNBC told him prior to the change and on background that the Matthews-Olbermann tag-team “[Is] a completely untenable situation” and “It’s not going to be workable forever, to have two anchors like that. It’s just too bizarre.”

MSNBC’s , announced Tuesday, to remove legal analyst and former network GM Dan Abrams from its 9 pm time slot in favor of commentator Rachel Maddow, by The New York Times’ Brian Stelter as a move to the left in search of higher ratings. Stelter noted that ratings of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown have nearly doubled since he began delivering “special comment” on-air editorials, usually criticizing President Bush. Therefore, placing the generally liberal Maddow in a coveted spot where MSNBC could conceivably gain ground on ratings leader Fox News Channel, would seem to be a logical – some would say obvious – step.

The Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar, for the most part, concurs. However, the management of the Huffington Post, curiously, did not. Sklar’s column was published on a Poynter Institute forum by media blogger Jim Romanesko because the post was not “congruent with HuffPost’s editorial position against the media’s penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism.”

The New York Times recently published a lengthy-and according to the most e-mailed list- very popular on The Daily Show and how it has transcended its original charter as a fake news show, to become a legitimate and respected news source. And it isn’t just the show’s target “stoner” audience that sees the value; The Daily Show has become a must-stop for authors and politicians, especially in this election year.